- Sonic is expanding its reach with EVM compatibility.
- The move promises to bolster its ecosystem by luring Ethereum developers.
- While still in the early stages of testing, the project is already showing significant interest.
Plagued by development complexity and scaling challenges, Web3 gaming has struggled to take off as many expected. Still, the industry continues to show steady signs of growth as development efforts have not waned.
Among projects seeking to push the boundary of what is possible in the space is Sonic, a gaming-focused Layer-2 rollup built on Solana. Launched in March 2024 with the vision of unlocking new experiences and expanding the Solana gaming ecosystem, the firm has taken a significant step towards its goals by announcing an expansion to become EVM compatible.
Solana’s Sonic Looks to Lure Ethereum Developers and Games
Sonic is acting on its promise to bring more games to users. In a Thursday, July 11 press release, the project disclosed that it would integrate Neon EVM, a solution built to allow Solana projects to support EVM dApps. According to Sonic CEO Chris Zu, this move promises to bolster the ecosystem by luring Ethereum developers and games looking to tap into the budding user base on Solana.
"Our effort to expand the Solana gaming ecosystem isn't limited to the SVM. With Neon Stack, we're able to onboard web3 games built on EVMs and bring them onto the Solana ecosystem. Solana has one of the most active and engaging user bases in the blockchain industry, and we're excited to enable EVM developers to be able to tap into this vibrant community via Sonic's L2," Zu asserted.
Beyond bringing more games to users, Sonic’s EVM move also represents a major step towards its goal of creating a virtual machine-agnostic framework in which developers are free to focus on development without technical constraints.
The recent development comes as the project has seen keen interest from day one of its testnet launch.
Solana’s Sonic Off to a Great Start
On June 19, Sonic’s testnet went live with a campaign called Sonic Odyssey, giving users a glimpse of what the network could do through quests and ecosystem games. Just over three weeks after this launch, the network has registered nearly 19 million wallet addresses and processed over 182 million transactions per data from the network’s explorer at the time of writing. As highlighted by the team, 3.2 million transactions came within the network’s first 36 hours.
Sonic’s impressive metrics will likely reassure investors that have raised $16 million for the project in two funding rounds.
On the Flipside
- Sonic has yet to go live on the mainnet.
- The network faces significant competition from industry leaders like Immutable, Polygon, and Ronin.
Why This Matters
Despite the recent buzz around Solana, Ethereum continues to dominate on several fronts, including its development community size. Sonic’s recent move promises to leverage Ethereum’s large developer pool to benefit Solana users.
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