Sophon is building an application ecosystem for gaming, social, AI, and prediction-market use cases with the goal of changing how users live, play, create, and connect in the internet economy. The platform leverages the ZK Stack and native account abstraction to provide a “gasless” user experience. Sophon is built on the zkSync codebase, described in the article as a battle-tested zkEVM with steady throughput and cost metrics important for scalable consumer applications. The project was incubated by Merit Circle and has partnerships with Beam, Zentry, Aethir and other expected partners; its mainnet is expected to launch soon. Reported funding will be used to boost ecosystem growth, recruit talent, and enable development of projects that connect entertainment, creativity, community, and technology. Sophon positions itself to cultivate an ecosystem that transcends mere financial incentives and to equip developers with tools to accelerate their applications. Sophon is an entertainment-focused blockchain ecosystem built as a rollup network atop Ethereum using zkSync technology and Celestia for data availability. The project sold node licenses as ERC-721 NFTs in a node sale that netted roughly 20,391 ETH (about $62.7M) from about 121,000 nodes out of 200,000 offered. Node holders can operate or delegate nodes and collectively qualify to earn 20% of the project’s future SOPH token distribution over the first 36 months after mainnet launch, expected in Q3. The sale used tiered pricing (Tier 1 at 0.0813 ETH up to Tier 11 at 0.2524 ETH), saw about three-quarters of nodes sold to whitelisted buyers, and imposed a 12-month transfer restriction on purchases. Unsold or unused node licenses at sale end will be burned, and project officials said the network does not require the full 200,000 nodes. The team is semi-anonymous, citing co‑founders including Sebastien (“Seb”) (formerly head of DeFi at zkSync) and Pentoshi, and previously raised $10M in a traditional round led by Paper Ventures and Maven 11 with participation from Spartan, SevenX and OKX Ventures. Sophon markets itself as a modular blockchain, but the project’s technical details and value proposition remain largely undisclosed in public channels. The team has shared only a handful of tweets and an enigmatic X bio, leaving specifics blank. Despite the secrecy, Sophon says it is building via strategic collaborations and has attracted interest from multiple industries. The project has raised $10 million from a consortium of investors, giving it early financial backing. Several projects are rumored to be building on Sophon in gaming and AI, and the team indicates more details will be revealed in due course. Investors and angels supporting Sophon describe the undertaking as innovative and impactful.

Total raised

$10M

Funding rounds

2

Latest round

Equity

Latest activity

Mar 2024