TL;DR
Coming at you with the biggest news to happen this month. This week we’re introducing the new Sonic Network to the world. The transition from Phantom to Sonic was announced over a year ago. It’s been a long time coming for cryptoholics. Involving a complete rebrand of the network. Sonic was originally set to launch in Q4 2024. However, after careful consideration and a bit of technical hiccups. The launch was postponed until this month. Giving the team some extra time to work out the kinks and launch the best version of Sonic possible. Let’s take a look at what’s new on offer and see if Sonic Labs has what it takes to differentiate itself from the original network.
It’s no surprise to anyone that I was never a fan of Fantom. Their focus on providing payment rails for a central bank digital currency made it impossible for me to support the project. Having heard about and watching the transition from Fantom to Sonic over the last year has me interested to see if any directional changes have been made, how the ecosystem stacks up against the last few years, and if Sonic is even worth a second chance.
From Fantom to Sonic
Previously sold to the public as the nervous system for smart cities. Fantom was launched to be the cheapest and fastest network available. To a large degree, this has remained a core principle of Sonic. Operating a hybrid version of asynchronous Byzantine fault tolerance and Directed Acyclic Graphs to update their Proof of Stake network. So if the only thing you wanted to know is if this Sonic update is nothing more than an optics change. The answer would be yes.
However, the verbiage is a bit different now. Focused on the fast settlement times of Sonic instead of its technology. Sonic is said to achieve 10,000 transactions per second with sub-second finality for immediate, irreversible transactions. This is said by them to have zero risk of rollbacks or reorganizations, making every transaction final and tamper-proof. While this is all well and good. Nothing has changed from Fantom. There are still only a few transactions a second being processed on the network. Making the real-world usage still untested. But, the issue with Fantom was never its finality. It was centralization.
This has unfortunately not changed in any way. Sonic is nothing more than a fork of the previous Carmen and Tosca upgrades. This signifies that Sonic is not looking to change its intentions of being a “permissioned” network that it can have ultimate authority over. As a licensed product, Sonic is not an open-source network that operates in a decentralized manner. It’s a closed environment catered to government and bank usage. If that is something you support, then Sonic is a perfect fit. While it’s no longer referred to as the Ethereum killer. Ethereum can kill itself just fine these days. Sonic still has a very high premium of 500,000 S tokens required to operate a node. This is half the previously required 1 million FTM tokens. But, still unobtainable for many investors. So if everything but the name is the same. What has changed?
Sonic Bridge
Perhaps the biggest change you’ll notice on Sonic is the extension of their bridging technology. This is a huge upgrade for the network as the Sonic Gateway allows users to transfer between…
Head of Research Jesse is a passionate seeker of truth who enjoys educating others about Bitcoin. As a free thinker and 2nd amendment advocate, Jesse believes each individual has the right to monetary freedom. “The swarm is headed towards us” -Satoshi Nakamoto
