Sonic Labs Achieves Genesis Block

Sonic Labs, the Layer 1 blockchain project spun off from the Fantom network, has successfully produced its first block of transactions, marking the achievement of its “Genesis”. The company announced this milestone on Monday via an X post, stating that the network is expected to go public soon.

Earlier in the day, the team shared that they were “Summoning the Sonic mainnet.”

This announcement follows the recent unveiling of an upgraded default testnet 2.0, named Blaze, for the EVM-compatible blockchain. A statement from late November highlighted impressive performance enhancements for the Sonic testnet, achieving an average block time of 1.17 seconds and a finality time of 0.85 seconds for the first 221,000 blocks.

Sonic aims to achieve sub-second finality and set a new benchmark for high-performance chains, aspiring for 10,000 transactions per second and one-second confirmation times.

Originating from Fantom’s Opera blockchain launched in late 2019, Sonic Labs has raised $10 million from notable investors, including Stani Kulechov, Robert Leshner, Michael Egorov, and Tarun Chitra, with Andre Cronje as the chief technology officer.

The team previously indicated that they anticipated launching the mainnet in late November or early December, aligning with their projected timeline.

On Sunday, Sonic Labs mentioned they had completed a “snapshot” for their airdrop allocation of tokens. After launching, tokens on the Sonic network will be represented by the ticker $S and will be exchangeable at a 1:1 ratio with Fantom’s existing FTM tokens.

The new chain will include a bridge to Ethereum, known as the Sonic Gateway, which will enable it to utilize Ethereum’s liquidity and user base, all while maintaining high throughput and low transaction costs. Additionally, it will feature a shared sequencer that allows for the simultaneous production and securing of blocks for multiple rollups.