Sonic, a Solana SOL -0.087% Layer 2 network focused on gaming, has raised $12 million in a Series A funding round. Bitkraft Ventures led the round, with Galaxy Interactive, Big Brain Holdings and others participating, Sonic said Tuesday.

The project began raising funds for the round in April and closed it earlier this month, Sonic founder and CEO Chris Zhu told The Block. The round was structured as equity with token warrants and brought Sonic's fully diluted valuation to $100 million, Zhu said.

As part of the deal, Bitkraft has joined Sonic's board. The Series A round brings Sonic's total funding to $16 million, having previously raised $4 million in a seed round in 2022.

What is Sonic?

Sonic is a gaming-focused Solana Layer 2 network under development by Mirror World Labs, a legal entity of Sonic. MWL has built a proprietary technology called HyperGrid Framework, which enables horizontal scaling via rollups on Solana, and Sonic is being built using that technology.

"Sonic offers an exceptionally fast on-chain game experience, powered by Solana Virtual Machine (SVM), at minimal cost," Zhu said, adding that developers can "seamlessly deploy dApps [decentralized applications] from Ethereum ETH -0.44% Virtual Machine (EVM) chains to Solana via HyperGrid's interpreter."

Justin Swart, principal at Bitkraft Ventures, said in a statement that he expects the Sonic SVM to become "the go-to destination for any gaming studio that wants to build games within the Solana ecosystem."

Sonic itself started as a mobile game first, Zhu said, adding that the project then realized there was a lack of gaming infrastructure. For example, applications like games find it challenging to internalize value on a shared Solana layer not designed with just one application in mind, Zhu said. He added that specific applications may require custom features such as privacy, instant settlements, asset transfer rules and compliance, which were not supported.

The Sonic game still exists and is used as a demo for technical documentation, Zhu said. The project has also built a decentralized application called World Store, an asset aggregator designed to assist game studios in distributing and settling assets. The Layer 2 network is Sonic's last tool to increase gaming adoption on Solana, Zhu said.

Sonic's closest competitor is Eclipse, although it is building an SVM Layer 2 on Ethereum, according to Zhu. Ronin Chain and Redstone Network can also be considered Sonic's competitors, he added.

Sonic mainnet and token launch

Sonic is currently on devnet, where the first set of five gaming studios is building with its tech, Zhu said. The incentivized testnet campaign called "Odyssey" is set to launch later this week, allowing users to send transactions, play the games launching on Sonic, and earn "rings" for their on-chain activities, Zhu said. He added that rings are like points, which will not be directly converted into Sonic's token, but contributors will be rewarded in some way.

Sonic's mainnet and its own token are expected to launch in the third quarter of this year, Zhu said.

To that end, Sonic is looking to expand its core developer team, developer and game relations team and marketing team to expand globally, Zhu said. Sonic's current headcount is 20 people, and its core team is in New York.

Sonic also has grants and acceleration programs to onboard game developers onto its platform. The size of the grants program is $20 million and consists of a mixture of token grants, token swap deals, and stablecoins or fiat, Zhu said.

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