AC's comeback announcement claims to surpass "parallel EVM." What exactly is Fantom Sonic?

Written by: Deep Tide TechFlow

Fantom seems to be rising against the odds.

In the context of a significant pullback in the overall cryptocurrency market over the past week, the price of FTM has been spiraling upwards, breaking new highs not seen in nearly a year.

The key figure behind Fantom, the star of the last DeFi Summer, AC (Andre Cronje), has made a comeback, frequently promoting on X and even creating a new "MEME" primitive:

The protagonist of the meme is Fantom Sonic, implying a strong performance that "punches and kicks" the "parallel EVM."

AC candidly stated:

"In the benefits brought by our technological improvements, parallelization doesn't even rank in the top 3."

On one hand, the narrative of "parallel EVM" from high-performance new L1s like Monad and Sei is being embraced by the market, while on the other hand, older L1s like Solana and Avalanche are experiencing a strong rebound;

In the war of L1s, Fantom appears to be a hidden gem, not in the spotlight but not completely out of the competition either.

As the launch of the Fantom Sonic mainnet approaches this spring, could this become a key catalyst to propel FTM into a frenzy?

Faster than Parallel EVM?

What is Fantom Sonic?

In short, Fantom Sonic is the next generation of the Fantom network, set to replace the previous Fantom Opera, which can be understood as Fantom 2.0.

Fantom Opera includes a new client, validator side, virtual machine (FVM), Carmen database, and an optimized Lachesis consensus mechanism, which will significantly enhance the execution efficiency of the original Fantom.

Existing smart contracts on Fantom Opera are fully compatible with Fantom Sonic, as FVM is completely compatible with EVM and its programming languages (Solidity, Vyper).

In fact, Fantom Sonic did not just emerge recently.

As early as the end of October last year, the Fantom Foundation officially announced the launch of the Sonic testnet; according to their plan, the mainnet is set to be officially released this spring. Now that we are in late March, market speculation has naturally increased.

Regardless of how the L1 story is told, the core message remains the same --- our performance is better.

From the publicly available testnet data and materials of Fantom Sonic, its selling point is very clear: it focuses on being faster and more powerful than all existing EVMs.

The data publicly shared by AC on social media is:

Currently, based on EVM, the theoretical limit is about 200 transactions per second. By adding "optimistic parallelization," it can increase by 40 transactions, reaching a maximum of about 240 transactions per second;

But if based on the new FVM, the theoretical limit is about 30,000 transactions per second, and even with additional parallelization technology, the maximum increase can only reach 4,500 transactions per second.

The implication is that the performance foundation of Fantom Sonic is already strong enough, and the room for improvement with so-called parallelization is limited.

How is it achieving performance enhancement without resorting to parallelization?

To enhance the performance of an L1, one typically needs to optimize the following aspects: the environment for executing transactions, the environment for storing transactions, and the method of achieving consensus.

Sonic's answers in these areas are:

• FVM: While being compatible with EVM, it provides a faster environment for executing smart contracts, improving execution efficiency;

• Storage Environment: Introduced the Carmen database storage solution, equivalent to installing a smart indexing system in the archive room, significantly improving data access efficiency, reducing the required storage space by 90%, and allowing RPC service providers to achieve a 95% reduction in costs (cost efficiency increased by 20 times).

• Consensus Algorithm: Fantom initially adopted the Lachesis asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerance (aBFT) consensus mechanism, which already has good consensus efficiency. In the Sonic update, the Lachesis algorithm underwent further optimization, reducing information redundancy in the network and improving decision-making efficiency. This not only accelerated the transaction confirmation process but also increased the overall throughput of the network.

We may not fully understand and study the specific details of these technology stacks, but in a crypto environment where narrative significance and attention often outweigh the technology itself, the core of Fantom Sonic can be simply understood as: "faster and stronger."

Some publicly available data also corroborate this significant performance enhancement.

In the current design of Sonic, the testnet is divided into two categories. One is a closed testnet, used to showcase the performance limits that Sonic can achieve in an ideal environment; the other is a public testnet, which can simulate performance results in an environment connected and interacting with the outside world.

From the end of October last year to January this year, the Fantom team conducted multiple rounds of testing on the closed testnet of Sonic to simulate the performance of Sonic under the pressure of real user influx, including transaction confirmation, TPS, token swaps, and transfers.

The results showed that under simulated real traffic, Sonic could support a comprehensive TPS of 2000 and achieve final consistency in about 1 second (the time from transaction submission to final confirmation, which cannot be changed, takes about 1 second).

Although this is just theoretical data from closed testing, for comparison, Ethereum's final consistency actually takes about 1.5-3 minutes, while Solana can achieve second-level consistency, but its TPS does not match Sonic's test data.

If only handling swap transactions, Sonic's theoretical data is 4000 TPS, with final consistency around 1.3 seconds; if only handling transfers, the situation is even more impressive --- 10,000 TPS, with final consistency of 1.6 seconds.

Pure test data may not hold much reference value; it can be more understood as Fantom Sonic showcasing its capabilities, while the actual user experience is more persuasive.

On another Sonic public testnet, we can see a maze-like full-chain game, where you need to control a green dot to navigate the game board to win.

Every step taken is an on-chain interaction, and in my experience, each move indeed triggered a wallet interaction and required a signature.

It is worth mentioning that from obtaining test tokens to continuously moving and interacting, the confirmation time for each step felt like just 1-2 seconds; if the mainnet can achieve such a fast experience, there will be great potential for supporting full-chain games or more high-frequency interactive DApps.

Establishing Sonic Labs, AC Personally Guides Ecological Projects

No matter how fast Sonic is, having ecological projects running on it is key.

To complement the technological and performance enhancements, the Fantom Foundation established an incubator called Sonic Labs at the end of December last year to help developers build innovative DApps and prepare for the Sonic mainnet.

The top 5 winners of the application development competition will also have the opportunity to share a prize pool of 1,000,000 FTM tokens, along with personal guidance from Andre Cronje. Additionally, the winners will receive guidance from Pyth, Request Finance, and the Fantom Foundation on technology, compliance, salary, and company structure, and have the chance to raise funds from VC partners.

This can be seen as the official support for ecological projects.

In February this year, the Fantom team announced the 5 winners of the aforementioned activities, which naturally also constitute new ecological projects worth paying attention to after the launch of Sonic:

• Lynx Protocol

A perpetual contract trading DEX that allows any token to be used as collateral, offering 100X leverage.

Twitter: @Lynx_Protocol

Website: lynx.finance

• ++Thunder Dome++

A SocialFi project that allows users to interact with the community through tickets (tradable social tokens).

Twitter: ++@ThunderDomeSoFi++

Website: ++thunderdome.so++

• ++Debita++

A P2P lending platform that allows users to choose the collateral, interest rates, etc., when seeking to borrow assets.

Twitter: ++@DebitaFinance++

Website: ++debita.fi++

• KiricCoin

A green tech startup that tracks and rewards individuals for sustainable behaviors to help combat climate change.

Twitter: ++@KiriCoin++

Website: ++kiritechnologies.com++

• Froqorion

A team role-playing game set against the backdrop of the ancient frog civilization Froqorion.

Twitter: @Froqorion

Website: http://froqorion.com

Not Paying for "Speed," but for "Action"

Is the current speed and strong performance of Fantom Sonic the reason for the market to price in FTM?

The hype around technological narratives is certainly a constant theme, but the L1 race has long passed the stage of "only telling the TPS story." Simply having strong performance is not enough to stand firm in the fierce competition for attention, especially since Fantom itself is not a new project like Monad.

On social media, some of Fantom's ecological projects have been subtly mocking L2s for their low gas fees, pointing out that Fantom's gas fees have actually been low for the past 4 years.

This precisely highlights a key issue: if the market is only buying into Fantom's good performance, why hasn't it consistently enjoyed the spotlight in the crypto arena?

Clearly, technology is just the foundation of the narrative; whether the market buys into it and whether it can create action is also crucial.

In this regard, Fantom's key figure AC has always been known for creating action. While the performance of Fantom Sonic is indeed strong, the market's pricing of FTM undoubtedly has a larger component betting on AC and his team's upcoming "actions"; whether he can support ecological projects to explore more possibilities and whether he can play a larger role in operations and communication are additional expectations for Fantom Sonic.

Not just paying for performance, but paying for action is the unspoken consensus among both new and old investors in the attention economy of the crypto market.

As for whether FTM will maintain its upward trajectory against the wind, and whether Fantom Sonic will become a new winner in the L1 war, we shall wait and see.