Layer 1 blockchain
Sonic ticker S
Summary
Proof of stake with a leaderless, DAG-based asynchronous Byzantine fault tolerant consensus that Sonic's docs describe as a continuation of Lachesis, the design Fantom Opera also used. Each validator batches transactions into event blocks that reference other validators' events, building a directed acyclic graph. An event that builds on root events from validators holding more than two-thirds of stake in the previous frame becomes a new root; Sonic's docs describe this loosely as most validators having received and agreed on it. Decided roots fix a deterministic order of events, which is cut into ordinary blocks and executed by an EVM. Sonic's docs put submission-to-inclusion at about 1 to 2 seconds and elsewhere claim sub-second finality. 12917182223
Design
- System
- Layer 1 blockchainDescribes Sonic (chain ID 146, token S), launched by Sonic Labs on 18 December 2024 as the successor to Fantom Opera (chain ID 250, token FTM); the slug stays fantom for continuity. Sonic is a new chain with its own history, and FTM upgrades to S one for one. Opera is legacy: a 30 June 2026 retirement was postponed on 23 June 2026 until at least the end of 2026. Sonic is unrelated to the separately profiled Sonic SVM.
- Settlement family
- Ethereum / EVM
- Scarce resource
- Stake (proof of stake)
- State model
- Accounts
- Finality
- Other
- Who makes blocks
- Validators registered in the staking contract with at least 500,000 S of self-stake; a validator's total stake, including delegations, may be at most 16 times its self-stake. Registration is a direct contract call with no approval step documented. Every validator emits events concurrently rather than taking turns as a single proposer. Validators offline for more than about 5 days can be suspended. The number of active validators and the total staked were not confirmed from a published source.
- Fork choice
- There is no heaviest-chain rule. Nodes derive the same final order from the shared event graph once roots are decided. Fantom's Lachesis design notes state that every confirmed transaction is final unless more than one-third of validator weight is Byzantine, and Sonic's docs claim zero risk of rollbacks or reorganizations. The published staking contract marks a validator caught double-signing as a cheater and burns its stake, and its delegators' stake, on withdrawal, except for a refund share the contract owner may set for that validator.
Qualifications
- Finality · Applies. Finality is deterministic once events are ordered: there is no probabilistic confirmation depth. Sonic's docs give both sub-second and about 1 to 2 seconds. The guarantee assumes fewer than one-third of staked weight is faulty. The published staking contract burns a double-signing validator's stake, and its delegators', on withdrawal, but its owner can set a refund share per validator, so the penalty is discretionary and this is not recorded as stake-backed economic finality.
- Fee destination · Contested. Sonic's gas pricing page says the base fee is not burned and that 90% of fees go to the fee monetization treasury for developers and 10% to validators. Its gas subsidies page says fees are burned through the staking contract like ordinary gas fees. The staking contract's published source takes a treasury share and a burnt share of each epoch's fees, both changeable by its owner; its genesis set-up set 90% and 0%. The shares in force at review time were not confirmed from a published source.
- Legacy chain fantom opera · Partial. Fantom Opera still runs as legacy infrastructure: Sonic Labs committed on 23 June 2026 to keep it live until at least the end of 2026 and to keep the bridge funded. Opera's current validator set and block production were not confirmed from a published source. Opera's history was not copied to Sonic, and this profile's fields describe Sonic only.
- Staking parameter control · Applies. The staking contract at 0xFC00FACE00000000000000000000000000000000 reads its parameters from a constants contract whose update functions only its owner can call, per the published source; the owner can also set refund shares for slashed validators. The genesis set-up set the 500,000 S minimum self-stake, the 16 times stake cap, 15% commission and 90% treasury and 0% burnt fee shares. Who controls the owner address was not confirmed from a published source.
- Token issuance · Applies. Sonic's S token page says validator rewards for Sonic's first four years come from roughly 70 million tokens a year of block rewards reallocated from Opera, with new issuance of 1.75% a year after that, and records a separate issuance of about 472.4 million S on 4 September 2025 for expansion plans. Sonic Labs' 21 September 2026 letter says no new manual mints will happen and only the automated validator emissions continue.
Tradeoffs
- Emphasizes
- Scalability and Security Contested
- Gives up
- Operational decentralization. A validator needs 500,000 S of self-stake, at least 32 GB of RAM, local NVMe or SSD storage and 1 Gbps redundant connectivity. A single owner address can change the staking contract's constants and set slashing refunds, the Gateway bridge has multisig-held admin roles, and one company, Sonic Labs, steers client releases, fee policy and token issuance. The size of the active validator set was not confirmed from a published source.Security here means deterministic finality with no reorganizations while fewer than one-third of staked weight is faulty, not a large or widely spread validator set. The staking contract's owner can refund slashed stake, so what a misbehaving validator stands to lose is discretionary, and the security reading is marked contested. Headline throughput figures in Sonic's materials come without a published method and are recorded only as unclassified claims.
- Full node at home
- Demanding 3910Sonic's docs list for an archive node at least 4 vCPU and 32 GB of RAM (8 vCPU and 64 GB recommended, 128 GB for high-demand use) and about 3 TB of free local SSD; a validator needs at least 4 vCPU, 32 GB of RAM, 1 TB of local SSD or NVMe and 1 Gbps redundant backbone connectivity, and the docs advise against remote block storage. Live pruning lets validators keep only current state without going offline. No separate specification for a non-archive, non-validator node was found.
- Throughput claims
- Unclassified: 400,000 tx/s 1Unclassified; do not compare.Sonic's docs state this figure with no method, time window, hardware, transaction type or network size, so it cannot be classed as a benchmark or an observed rate. It is a headline claim and says nothing about propagation limits, state growth or load made of padding transactions. It is 40 times the figure in Sonic's own mainnet launch post, which shows these claims are not comparable with each other or with other chains.
- Unclassified: 10,000 tx/s 24Unclassified; do not compare.Stated in the mainnet launch post of 18 December 2024The launch post calls the figure verifiable but gives no benchmark conditions, hardware, transaction mix or whether it was measured on a test network or mainnet. No reproducible benchmark was found for this review, and it is not an observed mainnet rate.
Scaling layers
No scaling layer recorded in this profile.
Capabilities
| Capability | How it is provided | Notes and sources |
|---|---|---|
| Account abstraction | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Atomic swaps | Unknown | Not yet assessed under the current definitions; mainnet activation of transaction bundles is not settled. Bundles (Brio upgrade, client version 2.2) let two parties each sign their own payment into one all-or-nothing plan on Sonic, so both land or neither does, and each signed transaction commits to the plan's hash. Sonic Labs scheduled Brio for 22 September 2026 and a news report says it went live that day, but the client changelog records only client support, and Sonic's network parameters page still listed Brio as disabled. Cross-chain hash-locked swaps were not reviewed. 6162128 |
| Authenticated data publication | Unknown | Not yet assessed under this row's current definition. |
| Light clients | Unknown | No light-client protocol or production light client for Sonic was found in the docs reviewed. |
| Native staking or delegation | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| On-chain governance | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Parallel execution | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Payment or state channels | Unknown | No payment or state channel network settling to Sonic was reviewed. |
| Programmable spending | Native (protocol or core-team software) Earlier definition | Sonic runs the EVM with Solidity and Vyper contracts and supports account delegation to contract code for ordinary accounts (EIP-7702). Spend conditions are smart contracts and smart accounts. 45 |
| Protocol-verified messaging | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Reversible transfers or recovery | Unknown | Not yet assessed under the current definitions; Sonic's wallet page lists Safe among its institutional wallets, and its account abstraction page describes smart-contract accounts with customizable authorization rules and delegation of ordinary accounts to contract code (EIP-7702), but no delay or recovery module on Sonic was verified, and the guardian key-replacement standard that page mentions is only a proposal. The Sonic Gateway's 14-day fail-safe recovers bridge deposits after an outage; it is not a sender reversal or an account recovery path. 51213 |
| Rollups | Unknown | No rollup settling to Sonic was reviewed. Sonic SVM, a separately profiled project with a similar name, is not a rollup on this chain. |
| Shielded transfers | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Signed partial offers | Unknown | Not yet assessed under this row's current definition. |
Reading these values
- How this feature is provided
- Built into the protocol, core-team software or independent software says where a feature lives and who can change it. These are implementation layers, not quality: core-team software is not closer to the protocol than independent software.
- Structured assessment pending
- The shared review has not assessed this feature for any chain yet (Account abstraction, Native staking or delegation, On-chain governance, Parallel execution, Protocol-verified messaging and Shielded transfers). That does not mean it is absent, and a chain’s profile may already describe it.
- Unknown
- The review has not established this for this chain under the current definition; the note beside it says why. Unknown is not absent and not a low score. A feature reads “Not present” only when a source shows it is absent.
- Earlier definition
- Payment or state channels, Programmable spending and Rollups keep the earlier definition until the next fact-check. There, “Native” does not separate the protocol from core-team software, “Ecosystem software” does not say who publishes it, and “Partial” does not say which layer.
- Reading across rows
- The list of capabilities is incomplete. Do not read these rows as a chain leading or lagging overall.
Ecosystem & custody
| Product type | Status | Notes and sources |
|---|---|---|
| Automated market makers | Established in the ecosystemBeets (uses Balancer technology), Shadow Exchange | Beets' docs call it the flagship hub for AMM and liquid staking on Sonic and include a section on the Balancer technology it uses. Shadow's GitHub organization describes a Sonic-native concentrated-liquidity exchange with its core contracts for Sonic mainnet. Liquidity depth and current activity were not measured, and other venues were not reviewed. 3334 |
| Issuer-native stablecoins | Established in the ecosystemUSDC (Circle), USSD (Sonic Labs, built on Frax infrastructure) | Circle lists a native USDC contract on Sonic and supports Sonic in its cross-chain transfer protocol. USSD, launched by Sonic Labs on 9 March 2026, is Frax's frxUSD offered under a Sonic name; Sonic says it is backed one for one by short-dated US dollar assets such as tokenized Treasury funds. USSD is Sonic Labs' own product, not part of the protocol. Reserve attestations were not reviewed. 1528293132 |
| Algorithmic stablecoins | Unknown | Algorithmic or hybrid stablecoins on Sonic were not reviewed. USSD and USDC are described by their issuers as asset-backed. |
| Bridges | First-partySonic Gateway (Ethereum), Circle CCTP (USDC) | Sonic Labs' Sonic Gateway moves tokens between Ethereum and Sonic in batches: about every 10 minutes from Ethereum and hourly back, with a paid fast lane, and it uses Circle's transfer protocol for USDC. Circle lists Sonic as a supported chain. FTM holders on Opera upgrade to S through Sonic's upgrade portal, and FTM on Ethereum through the Gateway. Third-party bridges were not reviewed. Risk: Gateway transfers depend on validators posting Merkle roots through an off-chain relay. OpenZeppelin's audit (September to October 2024) found no critical issues, one high (resolved) and three medium (two unresolved in the report). It notes multisig-held admin roles: a compromised top admin could grant a role able to withdraw all deposited funds. The fail-safe lets users recover deposits on Ethereum only after the Gateway or Sonic is down for 14 consecutive days. The USDC route relies on Circle's attestation service. 1225273032 |
| Block explorers | Established in the ecosystemSonicScan (Etherscan), Sonic Explorer (explorer.soniclabs.com) | SonicScan, built by Etherscan, showed recent Sonic blocks when fetched on 27 September 2026 and is the explorer named in Sonic's docs, which also list Arkham. The community chain registry also lists Sonic Labs' own explorer, whose content could not be read. Explorer data is provider-indexed, not consensus. 143536 |
| Hardware wallets | ThinLedger (Ledger Wallet support behind a feature switch), Trezor (through MetaMask or Rabby) | See custody rows: Ledger's wallet code has a Sonic network behind a feature switch that is off by default, and no readable Ledger page confirms it is available to all users; Trezor's Sonic page says Trezor Suite does not support Sonic and names MetaMask and Rabby. Sonic's wallet page lists software and institutional wallets but no hardware vendor. 1337383940 |
Hardware-wallet custody
| Device maker | Status | What users can and cannot do |
|---|---|---|
| Ledger | PartialSame as native: Unknown | Can: Possibly add a Sonic account in Ledger Wallet: Ledger's wallet code includes Sonic among its EVM-family networks, but behind a feature switch that is off unless Ledger turns it on remotely Can: Read Sonic balances through a Ledger-hosted Sonic node, which Ledger's status page lists Cannot: Rely on a readable Ledger page for Sonic: Ledger's Sonic coin page returned not found and its support article did not render Cannot: Treat the older Fantom Opera network, which Ledger Wallet does enable by default, as Sonic: Opera is a separate chain with its own historyRecorded as partial under the custody evidence rule and the shared vendor baseline. Ledger's current wallet code (develop branch, read 27 September 2026) has a Sonic network tied to a feature switch declared with no default value, so it is off unless switched on remotely; no readable Ledger page confirms it is on. The earlier native reading rested on a published library configuration, Ledger's status page and its asset registry, which the rule does not accept as enough for native. 383940 |
| Trezor | Through an intermediaryMetaMask or RabbySame as native: No | Can: Manage S with a Trezor Safe 3, Safe 5 or Safe 7 through MetaMask or Rabby, per Trezor's Sonic page Cannot: Manage Sonic in the Trezor Suite app, which Trezor's page says does not support itTrezor's page lists Sonic as the only network for this asset and does not mention Fantom or FTM. 37 |
Public data
iKnow Blockchain has no public-data lookups for Sonic yet. This is a limit of the service, not a statement about the network.
| Lookup | Status | What it covers and its limits |
|---|---|---|
| Address or account | Not available yet | Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet. |
| Tokens and assets | Not available yet | Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet. |
| NFTs | Not available yet | Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet. |
| Transactions | Not available yet | Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet. |
Sourced developments
Developments: Review overdue Reviewed Sep 27, 2026; next review was due Oct 7, 2026, 12:00 UTC.
Publication date · newest first
-
Sonic version 2.2 with the Brio upgrade set to go live on 22 September 2026
Sonic Labs' 21 September 2026 letter said version 2.2 would go live on 22 September 2026. Client release 2.2.0, dated 2 July 2026, adds support for the Brio upgrade: transaction bundles, a 48 KiB contract size limit, a per-transaction gas cap, a 10 MiB block size cap and new cryptographic precompiles. A news report on 23 September 2026 said Sonic Labs had announced version 2.2 live on mainnet; Sonic's network parameters docs page still listed Brio as off at review time.
- Implementation:client 2.2.0 released 2026-07-02
- Release:Released
- Activation:scheduled for 2026-09-22 and reported live by a news report of Sonic Labs' announcement; activation block not recorded
Sources: Sonic Labs blog — Day 100 - Where We Are, And Where We're Headed. (external site) · Sonic Labs (GitHub) — Sonic client changelog (external site) · Cryptowisser — Sonic Mainnet 2.2 is Now Live (external site) · Sonic Labs blog — Doubling The Limit (external site) · Sonic Labs docs — Bundled Transactions (external site) · Sonic Labs docs — Network Parameters (external site)
-
Sonic Labs says it will make no new manual S mints
In its 21 September 2026 letter Sonic Labs said it was cancelling all manual mints of S, leaving only the automated emissions that pay validators, and that it had commissioned an independent third-party audit of the S supply and related reporting. Sonic's S token page records an earlier issuance of about 472.4 million S on 4 September 2025 and describes yearly funding issuance; how the new policy affects that yearly issuance was not stated.
- Implementation:stated policy; no enforcement mechanism described
- Release:Announced
- Activation:announced 2026-09-21; not verifiable on chain in this review
Sources: Sonic Labs blog — Day 100 - Where We Are, And Where We're Headed. (external site) · Sonic Labs docs — S Token (external site)
-
Fantom Opera's shutdown postponed to at least the end of 2026
On 7 April 2026 Sonic Labs said validator migration was complete and set Fantom Opera's retirement for 5:00 PM GMT on 30 June 2026, after which the Opera FTM to S bridge would close; the route for FTM held as a token on Ethereum was not affected. On 23 June 2026, alongside a leadership change that made Matt Visser chief executive, Sonic Labs said Opera would stay live until at least the end of 2026, that the bridge would be funded regularly for that period, and that any change would come with plenty of notice.
- Implementation:retirement postponed
- Release:Announced
- Activation:Opera to stay live until at least the end of 2026, per Sonic Labs
Sources: Sonic Labs blog — The First 1% (external site) · Sonic Labs blog — Sonic's Successful Network Migration: What This Means for Fantom Opera (external site) · Sonic Labs blog — Leadership update from Sonic Labs (external site)
-
Sonic Labs launched USSD, a dollar stablecoin built on Frax's frxUSD
Sonic Labs announced USSD (US Sonic Dollar) as the network's own dollar stablecoin, built on Frax's frxUSD infrastructure. Sonic says it is backed one for one by short-dated US dollar assets including tokenized Treasury funds, can be minted without fees against assets such as USDC, USDT and PYUSD, and can be redeemed one for one on a chosen chain. Yield from the backing assets is meant to fund buybacks and ecosystem incentives.
- Implementation:contracts deployed; Sonic docs list the USSD contract address
- Release:Launched
- Activation:live per Sonic docs on 27 September 2026
Sources: Sonic Labs blog — USSD: Sonic's Native, Permissionless USD Stablecoin Built With Frax (external site) · Sonic Labs docs — USSD (external site) · Sonic Labs blog — Day 100 - Where We Are, And Where We're Headed. (external site)
-
Legacy Fantom Opera node client v1.2.1-j released as an optional peer-connection fix
Version 1.2.1-j of the legacy Fantom Opera node client was published in the Fantom-foundation/Sonic repository. The notes list two fixes: a check for a no-archive error when a node sends new-block notifications, and explicit name lookup for bootstrap nodes. They say operators need it only if their node cannot find a peer to connect to. The repository states this client runs Fantom Opera only and will not work with the Sonic network, whose client lives in the 0xsoniclabs/sonic repository.
- Implementation:two fixes merged: no-archive error check for block notifications and bootstrap-node name lookup
- Release:released 2026-03-05 as GitHub release v1.2.1-j
- Activation:no network upgrade or activation; optional install for Opera node operators, per the release notes
Sources: Fantom-foundation (GitHub) — v1.2.1-j (external site) · Fantom-foundation (GitHub) — Release notes from Sonic (Fantom-foundation/Sonic) (external site) · Sonic Labs blog — Sonic's Successful Network Migration: What This Means for Fantom Opera (external site)
Topics your AI can explain
Your AI can explain these topics for Sonic through the connection, with sources.
Known gaps
What this profile's review did not establish:
- Fantom Opera is legacy but still running under Sonic Labs' 23 June 2026 commitment to keep it live until at least the end of 2026; no later shutdown date had been announced by 27 September 2026.
- Opera's current validator set and block production, who operates its validators, and what happens to FTM left on Opera after it stops were not found in a published source. An unpublished direct read of Opera's public endpoint on 27 September 2026 suggested it was still producing blocks with 4 validators; this is unverified.
- Sonic's active validator count and total stake were not confirmed from a published source. An unpublished read of the staking contract on 27 September 2026 suggested 37 validators and about 1.19 billion S staked; this is unverified. Operator concentration and client diversity were not measured.
- Who controls the staking contract's owner address was not confirmed from a published source. An unpublished contract read suggested a 3-of-4 Safe multisig; this is unverified.
- The net destination of fees is contested: two Sonic docs pages disagree, the published genesis set-up set a 90% treasury share and no burn, and an unpublished contract read suggested a 5% burnt share now. Fees from apps outside the fee monetization program were not traced.
- Sonic's docs describe slashing only in general terms; the published contract source shows double-sign penalties with owner-set refunds, but no slashing events or refund decisions were reviewed.
- Headline throughput figures have no published method; no benchmark or observed-rate study was reviewed.
- Brio activation on 22 September 2026 rests on Sonic Labs' schedule and a news report of its announcement; Sonic's network parameters docs page still lists Brio as disabled.
- No light client, channel network or rollup settling to Sonic was found, so those rows are unknown rather than confirmed absent.
- No recovery or delay module for smart accounts on Sonic was verified, so the reversible transfers and recovery row is unknown; Safe being listed as a Sonic wallet does not show such a module.
- Algorithmic stablecoins, third-party bridges and exchanges other than Beets and Shadow were not reviewed; liquidity was not measured.
- Ledger support rests on Ledger's wallet code, where Sonic sits behind a feature switch that is off by default, and on its status page; Ledger's remote switch settings and support articles could not be read, so the signing app, token coverage, staking and whether Sonic is on for all users were not confirmed.
- OpenZeppelin's Gateway audit left two medium-severity findings unresolved in its report; later fixes were not reviewed.
- USSD reserve attestations and the identity of the legal issuer (Frax or Sonic Labs) were not confirmed.
- Chain size on disk for a full non-archive node was not stated in the docs.
Sources
Oldest dated source check: Source checked Sep 27, 2026 Next check due Oct 27, 2026.
- Technology Overview (external site)
- Consensus (external site)
- Database Storage (external site)
- EVM Compatibility (external site)
- Account Abstraction (external site)
- Bundled Transactions (external site)
- Gas Pricing (external site)
- Gas Subsidies (external site)
- Validator Node (external site)
- Archive Node (external site)
- S Token (external site)
- Sonic Gateway (external site)
- Wallets (external site)
- Tooling and Infra (external site)
- USSD (external site)
- Sonic client changelog (external site)
- 0xsoniclabs/sonic README (external site)
- SFC.sol (Sonic staking contract source) (external site)
- ConstantsManager.sol (staking constants contract source) (external site)
- NetworkInitializer.sol (genesis staking constants) (external site)
- Sonic Mainnet 2.2 is Now Live (external site)
- aBFT Consensus (go-lachesis wiki) (external site)
- Lachesis: Scalable Asynchronous BFT on DAG Streams (external site)
- Sonic Mainnet Launch: EVM-Compatible, Verifiable 10,000 TPS, and Sub-Second Finality (external site)
- The Ultimate Sonic Upgrade Handbook: FTM to S (external site)
- Sonic's Successful Network Migration: What This Means for Fantom Opera (external site)
- The First 1% (external site)
- Day 100 - Where We Are, And Where We're Headed. (external site)
- USSD: Sonic's Native, Permissionless USD Stablecoin Built With Frax (external site)
- Sonic Gateway Audit (external site)
- USDC Contract Addresses (external site)
- CCTP supported blockchains (external site)
- What is Beets? (external site)
- Shadow Exchange (GitHub organization) (external site)
- SonicScan: Sonic Explorer (external site)
- eip155-146.json (Sonic Mainnet) (external site)
- Safe & secure Sonic wallet (external site)
- Ledger Wallet EVM network configuration (@ledgerhq/live-common 36.0.0, families/evm/config.js) (external site)
- Ledger Status (external site)
- currencySonic feature switch definition (ledger-live, develop branch) (external site)
Report an error
Found something wrong or out of date? Reporting is free, and every chain goes through the same process. Published corrections appear in the public log.
Funding disclosure
Funding disclosures appear here when an upkeep arrangement exists, in the form “Upkeep funded by [name]; verdicts unaffected.” The funder ledger has not been published yet. Neutrality & funding