Sonic, Gaming-Focused Layer-2 Chain on Solana, Raises $12M
The Sonic project's Series A round was led by Bitkraft and joined by investors including Galaxy Interactive and Big Brain Holdings.
Updated Jun 18, 2024, 2:30 p.m. Published Jun 18, 2024, 1:00 p.m.
Sonic, a gaming-focused layer-2 blockchain atop Solana, has raised $12 million in a fundraising.
The Series A round was led by Bitkraft and joined by investors including Galaxy Interactive and Big Brain Holdings, according to a press release.
The money will be used for growth initiatives for the Sonic protocol, which comes with "built-in mechanisms designed specifically for game development and execution on Solana, such as a sandbox environment, customizable gaming primitives and extensible data types, all while boasting the fastest on-chain-gaming experience," according to the press release.
The project was built by the two-year-old infrastructure Mirror World Labs, led by CEO Chris Zhu. According to his LinkedIn profile, Zhu received a bachelor's degree from New York University in 2020 and has worked for ByteDance, the parent company of the TikTok, the video-sharing platform.
"We expect the Sonic SVM to become the go-to destination for any gaming studio that wants to build games within the Solana ecosystem,” Justin Swart, principal at BITKRAFT, said in the press release.
The latest fundraising follows an earlier $4 million seed round in 2022, bringing cumulative funds raised to $16 million, according to the press release.
Bradley Keoun
Bradley Keoun is CoinDesk's managing editor of tech & protocols, where he oversees a team of reporters covering blockchain technology, and previously ran the global crypto markets team. A two-time Loeb Awards finalist, he previously was chief global finance and economic correspondent for TheStreet and before that worked as an editor and reporter for Bloomberg News in New York and Mexico City, reporting on Wall Street, emerging markets and the energy industry. He started out as a police-beat reporter for the Gainesville Sun in Florida and later worked as a general-assignment reporter for the Chicago Tribune. Originally from Fort Wayne, Indiana, he double-majored in electrical engineering and classical studies as an undergraduate at Duke University and later obtained a master's in journalism from the University of Florida. He is currently based in Austin, Texas, and in his spare time plays guitar, sings in a choir and hikes in the Texas Hill Country. He owns less than $1,000 each of several cryptocurrencies.
