Alright, I’ve been watching Sonic #Sonic
I was active on Fantom back in the day— SpookySwap, dozens of tomb forks, riding the DeFi wave. It was a rush.
So let’s walk through Sonic’s story. Where it came from, where it’s at, and why it’s quietly doing its own thing—maybe even surprising us.
1. From Fantom to Sonic: A DeFi Glow-Up
Fantom was my playground once. Fast, chaotic, full of DeFi action.
By 2024, it had faded. $FTM’s market cap (green) lingered at $1.5–2 billion, but Total Value Locked crashed to $60 million at the lows from a wild $7.7 billion peak.
I felt that drop—things got quiet. While price did recover 2024, the TVL never caught up again.
Sonic’s rebrand was a reset. Swapped $FTM 1:1 for $S , launched mainnet in December 2024. TVL’s now over $585 million—growing so fast that I had to update this figure 4 times while writing.
Market cap’s at $2.1 billion. Here’s the kicker: S jumped 35% in the last few days to $0.75. So obviously there are things cooking.
2. Ecosystem: Rebuilding the Vibe
Fantom’s ecosystem hooked me — it was a DeFi mess, but my kind of mess.
By 2024, it was a ghost town. Just a few staking protocols limping along.
Sonic’s picking up where that left off. A $120 million fund’s nudging projects over. They’ve tossed a 200 million S airdrop pool to devs and users.
Over 60 dApps are live now, with an Aave V3 deployment very likely to happen soon. Governance proposal seems to be in the final stages.
Before Aave arrives, @SiloFinance is the undisputed lending platform on Sonic, also the protocol with the highest TVL at $190m.
The DEX with the most recent traction is @ShadowOnSonic boasting almost $100m TVL (DefiLlama). The oldie @beets_fi (prev. on Fantom) seems to lack behind a little bit.
It’s not the chaos I loved, yet. But it’s got that Fantom spark—needs time to catch fire.
And shoutout to @SonicAssistant for consistently surfacing quality alpha across the network.
3. Technical Side: Speed Speed Speed
Fantom’s speed played a large role on why its fun. Sonic’s doubling down on that.
@AndreCronjeTech is very vocal about Sonic's speed capabilities, claiming a maximum theoretical TPS of around 400k
calculation:
~ 5bn mgas / 0.6s blocktime / 21k transfer = 396825.3968253968 TPS
Supposedly, the next Sonic consensus will bring a 2.04x average speed increase and 67.8% memory usage reduction, with plans for a further 3.1x VM throughput boost.
Under the hood, Sonic's consensus doesn’t even run on traditional blocks.
Andre Cronje’s laid out how it uses a DAG structure instead—a web where transactions stream and confirm peer-to-peer. A transaction locks in once 2n+1/3 of the network’s stake picks it up. That’s finalized, no ifs or buts.
Here’s where it gets slick. That confirmation can happen in under 400ms—faster than most chains churn out blocks. For compatibility with wallets, explorers, and RPCs, Sonic spits out a block every ~600ms, but only after 2n+1/3 of the network agrees on the prior receipt.
Andre calls this true finality. Unlike probabilistic or optimistic setups, Sonic’s RPCs are synchronous—when you get a 200 OK, it’s done, not just submitted.
“That is guaranteed finality”
Exchanges only need one block to trust it—Sonic and Avalanche are the only ones pulling this off. You will see this when depositing/withdrawing S
4. Tokenomics: DeFi-First Tune
Sonic keeps Fantom’s 3.175 billion supply. 6% airdrop hit users and devs.
It’s for fees, (delegation) staking—1 S to start—governance too. If you want to run your own node, you do need 500k S, quite high barrier to entry, but they did hint on lowering it.
Fee Monetization’s the twist. FeeM hands devs up to 90% of their app’s network fees. Steady cash flow, no constant pressure for fundraising or financing.
Likely one of Andre's developer aligned ideas, couldn't find any proof for that though.
Half the supply’s off exchanges—could jolt prices. It’s not perfect, but it’s DeFi-first, not validator-heavy. Feels like Fantom’s spirit, refined.
5. The Sonic Way: DeFi, Done Right
Sonic’s not chasing TON’s Telegram crowds—or Solana’s spotlight (not a good idea rn anyway). It’s sticking to DeFi, EVM roots, eyeing lending markets.
It’s got that DeFi pulse I knew—just less loud. Sonic’s carving a lane, not shouting about it.
Conclusion
Sonic’s rebrand is Fantom’s next chapter. TVL’s rising, tech’s tight, ecosystem’s budding.
S is climbing lately, dodging the altcoin slump. DApps are relatively thin still, but Sonic Labs is threading it together.
Fantom was my DeFi crash course. Sonic’s picking up that baton—might run further than I expected. Worth a watch. You?
