Sophon, the entertainment-focused zkSync Hyperchain, has successfully raised nearly $60 million in less than a week from their node sale. The Hyperchain modular blockchain architecture, developed by Matter Labs, the creators of zkSync—the first zk-rollup in the Ethereum Layer 2 space—is utilized by the blockchain.
The Sophon node sale, offering 200,000 nodes for purchase across various levels, quickly surpassed $60 million in wETH. The fundraising round, which was previously announced to have raised $10 million and included participation from Spartan, SevenX, and OKX Ventures, was led by Paper Ventures and Maven 11. It is expected that Sophon will be launched in Q3 2024 alongside the zkSync ZK Stack toolkit as an L2 rollup validium.
Although 121,000 nodes have been acquired so far, this does not necessarily mean that there will be 121,000 validators available on Sophon. The ERC-721 tokens purchased by buyers will enable them to:
– Earn Sophon tokens: Node license holders will receive 20% of the entire token supply during the first 36 months after the launch of the Sophon mainnet.
– Participate in the Sophon network validation process: Similar to the current L2 domain, there will be a single centralized sequencer when Sophon starts as an L2 validium rollup using the zkSync codebase. Node license holders will be able to assign their licenses to the node operator to receive their fair share of network fees.
Furthermore, these license holders will have a say in the operation of Sophon, such as indexing the chain or using the chosen DA layer to run a light node. In the future, node licenses will be required to run the network, whether in a PoA or PoS configuration, if the Matter Labs team decides to decentralize their consensus.
Therefore, no, Sophon does not need 200,000 nodes to function, and users can simply delegate and benefit from it without actually running a node. Additionally, any unsold or unused node licenses at the end of the sale will be burned instead of being circulated.
The $SOPH token will be widely distributed through a special airdrop initiative. Users will be able to stake assets to receive $SOPH allocations through this campaign. The first known staking asset is the native token of the Beam network, $BEAM. The second token, $ZENT, comes from Zentry. The Sophon team will reveal more information about the mode assets in the coming weeks, as well as details about their distribution.
Sophon was co-founded by several well-known semi-anonymous builders, including Pentoshi, a renowned figure and trader in the Crypto Twitter community who was a team member at Merit Circle, and Sebastien (‘Seb’), the former Head of DeFi at zkSync.
With the aim of creating an entertainment platform, the Sophon Hyperchain utilizes zkSync features like native account abstraction to provide a seamless user interface that attracts new users to cryptocurrency. Through strategic alliances and the involvement of top developers in the gaming, general entertainment, and crypto x AI sectors, Sophon aims to differentiate itself from competitors. Based on its previous performance, the team is positioned as the top Hyperchain in the zkSync ecosystem. Furthermore, several projects are scheduled to debut on the network.
Seb stated:
