Solana Optimistic Network (SOON)

Solana Optimistic Network, known as SOON, has successfully raised an undisclosed amount in what is termed a “cobuilder” round.

Participants

Prominent figures participating include:
– Lily Liu (Solana Foundation President)
– Anatoly Yakovenko (Solana Labs co-founder)
– Jonathan King (Coinbase Ventures Principal)
– Mustafa Al-Bassam (Celestia Labs co-founder)
– Prabal Banerjee (Avail co-founder)
– Robinson Burkey (Wormhole Foundation co-founder)
– Others

According to a press release, this round focuses exclusively on builders, hence the name, and has no involvement from venture capital firms.

Purpose of Funds

The funds raised will aim to position SOON as the highest throughput rollup stack, delivering scalability and efficiency for decentralized applications and any Layer 1 blockchain by developing the flagship:
– SOON Stack: A modular framework that integrates SVM and OP Stack.
– SOON Mainnet: A general-purpose SVM Layer 2 that settles on Ethereum.

Vision Statement

Joanna Zeng, SOON CEO and co-founder, stated, “Our vision with SOON is to combine the power engine of Solana, SVM, with liquidity and user base from other L1s, making SVM the standard for every L1 ecosystem. This will allow every developer constrained by the execution environment to provide the best user experience.”

Zeng further added, “With SOON, we aim to deliver the most efficient rollup, reducing costs and improving performance by 100X across every ecosystem compared to the highest performing EVM, alongside fostering a culture that is welcoming to non-Solana blue chip projects.”