From Fantom to Sonic (S): Enhancing speed and scalability in DeFi
Launched in 2019, Fantom has long been regarded as one of the leading Ethereum virtual machine (EVM)–compatible blockchains. For years, the blockchain has been highly valued by decentralized application (DApp) developers and operators for its high-performance characteristics. In over five years of operation, until early 2025, Fantom has attracted hundreds of DApps in decentralized finance (DeFi), gaming, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and other niches.
In August 2024, the Fantom team announced a significant rebranding and migration to a new blockchain platform, Sonic. Four months later, in December 2024, the Sonic chain’s mainnet was officially launched.
A key part of the migration process has been the transition from Fantom’s FTM coin to Sonic’s S token, which was officially launched in January 2025 at a 1:1 rate to FTM. While Fantom has always been known as a fast, scalable blockchain, Sonic takes these technical advantages to a completely new level, boasting a throughput of 10,000 transactions per second (TPS) and a sub-second transaction finality.
In addition to technical improvements, Sonic has introduced an attractive developer incentive program that’s not only generous, but also has the potential to significantly accelerate DApp growth on the new platform.
With the launch of Sonic and the migration from FTM to S, Fantom’s team is opening a new era in the project’s history, one in which the platform’s well-regarded technical features are being combined with an unprecedented developer incentivization drive. This could potentially position the new Sonic chain as a major force in the world of EVM-compatible blockchains.
Key Takeaways:
Sonic (S) is a high-performance Layer 1 blockchain, launched in late 2024, that’s an upgraded and enhanced version of Fantom (FTM) — one of the oldest EVM-compatible decentralized networks.
With the launch of Sonic and its throughput of 10,000 TPS and sub-second finality times, the Fantom project has rebranded to Sonic Labs and will likely retire the older Fantom chain in the future.
The Sonic blockchain's native crypto, S, is primarily used for staking, stake delegation, block reward payouts, gas fee payments and governance.
What is Fantom?
In 2018, South Korean computer scientist Ahn Byung Ik founded the Fantom (FTM) project to develop a fast, high-performance blockchain. In December 2019, the Fantom blockchain was officially launched, quickly becoming one of the leading decentralized networks in the industry. The platform was and still is known for its excellent scalability, low transaction confirmation times and minimal costs. Notably, the EVM-compatible blockchain makes transitioning between the tremendously popular Ethereum (ETH) and Fantom a smooth and quick process.
In addition to these advantages, Fantom also boasts a secure, highly fault-tolerant consensus mechanism, and is environmentally friendly. Fantom's website proudly states that the network consumes 70 million times less energy to process a transaction than Bitcoin (BTC). This staggering difference is attributable primarily to Fantom's efficient proof of stake (PoS) block validation method, which is vastly more energy-efficient than Bitcoin's proof of work (PoW).
However, even compared to many other PoS blockchains, Fantom stands out in terms of its energy efficiency and performance. Fantom's Virtual Machine, Opera, remains one of the industry's most scalable and fast processing engines.
As of early 2025, Fantom continues to operate as usual, despite the migration announcement (covered in detail in the section below). According to data from DappRadar portal, its network features 450 functioning DApps as of Mar 3, 2025. Popular DApp categories on the chain include DeFi, gaming and NFTs, as well as apps in smaller niches, such as SocialFi and gambling.
Transitioning From Fantom to Sonic
In August 2024, the Fantom project announced a rebranding and migration to a new blockchain, Sonic (S). The organizational entity behind the blockchain was also rebranded, from Fantom to Sonic Labs. Sonic's mainnet was launched in mid-December 2024.
As of February 2025, the migration of FTM coins, the native cryptocurrency of the Fantom chain, to Sonic's S token is ongoing. Users can migrate their FTM to S at a fixed rate of 1:1 using the project's migration portal. This fixed ratio will be maintained for an initial period of six months after the launch of Sonic (i.e., until about mid-June 2025).
The migration portal will support two-way transfers between FTM and S until mid-March 2025. After that, only one-way transfers from FTM to S will be possible. Eventually, the Fantom chain is expected to be retired, although the project’s team hasn't yet announced a precise date for the chain's discontinuation. Per the project's public communications, the Fantom chain and its Opera smart contract layer will continue operating for the "foreseeable future."
Fantom is also in discussions with major crypto exchanges to facilitate the automatic transfer of user funds from FTM to S, and any staked FTM funds can be unlocked immediately for the migration to S.
The Sonic upgrade allows the platform to achieve a stellar throughput rate of 10,000 TPS, one of the best results in the industry. Sonic also features sub-second finality times, meaning that transactions are rarely reversible on the network. This feature is critical for many DeFi apps, as operators and users prefer the certainty of quickly finalized confirmations. Slow finality times on blockchains have often been linked to poor user experience, as well as a range of hacks in which user funds have been compromised.
The claims of outstanding throughput and finality aren't just sloganeering by the Sonic Labs team. Per information from the project, Sonic has been thoroughly stress-tested in its testnet mode with up to 175 million daily transactions, demonstrating its ability to withstand heavy loads. Even when subjected to the heaviest loads, the network has managed to maintain transaction confirmation times of no worse than 1.1 second. In short, the S chain is among the most scalable and fast networks in the blockchain world.
As with Fantom Opera, Sonic's processing engine is also EVM-compatible and smart contract–capable.
To encourage the development and growth of the Sonic ecosystem, the project has introduced a novel Fee Monetization (FeeM) incentive program. FeeM is a gas monetization system that rewards developers with up to 90% of the network fees generated by their applications. This initiative aims to provide a sustainable income stream for developers, encouraging them to focus on scaling their apps and growing their user bases on the platform.
How Does Sonic Chain Work?
While the Sonic network has inherited some of Fantom's core properties, it’s introduced significant upgrades to improve network performance. Sonic’s Layer 1 chain features a PoS block validation model, an asynchronous Byzantine fault tolerance (aBFT) consensus mechanism and a directed acyclic graph (DAG)–based architecture.
Optimized Lachesis Consensus Mechanism
Sonic's consensus mechanism is based on the Lachesis aBFT model, which Fantom first popularized. Combined with a DAG structure, it allows block processing without the need for a strict sequential order of confirmations.
Sonic's approach allows nodes to reach agreement independently without waiting for other nodes to confirm the blocks. Unlike traditional BFT systems, Sonic's aBFT consensus mechanism ensures the blockchain is fast and efficient, even under heavy loads, with transactions finalized almost instantly. Using the Lachesis model allows Sonic to maintain rapid transaction processing, excellent scalability and industry-grade security without sacrificing the network's decentralization.
Sonic Virtual Machine
The Sonic Virtual Machine (SVM) is the platform's smart contract–capable execution engine. Sonic’s documentation states that the SVM will replace the default EVM engine used by the blockchain, a move that’s expected to boost Sonic's processing speed further.
The SVM is fully compatible with the EVM, and supports the main development tools used in an EVM environment, specifically the Solidity and Vyper programming languages and the Go-based implementation of Ethereum, Geth.
Sonic Database Storage
Sonic's database storage system is designed to efficiently manage the blockchain's "world state," which includes everything from address account data to virtual machine code and smart contract storage. A key feature of this system is its live pruning capability. In blockchain technology, “pruning” refers to removing outdated or unnecessary historical data from the network's database to save storage space and improve efficiency.
In the past, pruning required validator nodes to go offline, risking downtime and creating operational inefficiencies. Now, the process can be completed by a node in real time without having to go offline. This means validators can continue to process blocks while the system automatically discards outdated data. This ensures smooth network operations while significantly reducing storage space requirements.
Sonic’s live pruning system separates the database into two parts — LiveDB and ArchiveDB. LiveDB stores only the current block’s world state, while ArchiveDB keeps the history of all previous blocks. Validators interact exclusively with LiveDB, handling only the current state of the network, while specialized archive nodes manage both LiveDB and ArchiveDB to process historical data requests when requested.
Sonic Gateway
Sonic Gateway is a bridging solution designed for asset transfers between Ethereum and Sonic. The bridge offers a convenient, two-way transfer system. When you deposit your assets, it takes around 15 minutes to confirm on Ethereum and only about a second on Sonic. After the confirmation, your deposit is batched with others to save on gas fees, and processed in intervals — every 10 minutes for transfers from Ethereum-to-Sonic, and once an hour for Sonic-to-Ethereum transactions. If you don't want to wait for batched processing, you can pay a Fast Lane fee to execute your transfer instantly.
What Is the Sonic Crypto Token (S)?
The Sonic chain's native coin, S, first became available on the crypto market in early January 2025. S is used for staking, stake delegation, block reward payouts to validators, gas fee payments and governance.
Validators stake S to participate in the block processing activity on the network. Users who don't act as validators can delegate their S to a preferred validator node in order to earn a share of block rewards, which are also paid out in S.
In addition, S is used to pay for network fees on Sonic, similar to the way that Ethereum’s blockchain uses Ether (ETH). S holders can also participate in governance votes for a say in the platform's future direction and existing operations.
As noted previously, in February 2025 there's an ongoing migration process from Fantom's FTM to Sonic's S. Using the migration portal, you can move your FTM funds to S anytime. The project hasn't announced a deadline for the migration.
The S token’s total supply of 3,175,000,000 is exactly the same as FTM's total and maximum supply. However, unlike FTM, S isn’t a supply-capped token. For the first six months after the blockchain's mainnet launch (until mid-June 2025), the supply of S will remain fixed, with no additional issuance. After that, it's expected that S will include a certain supply inflation, with new S released for ecosystem growth, incentives and validator rewards.
However, the emission rate is reduced with three burn mechanisms:
1) Fee Monetization Burn — Fifty percent of the transaction fee will be burned if a user transacts on an app that isn't participating in FeeM.
2) Airdrop Burn — Users who choose not to wait for the full 270-day maturation period for 75% of their allotted airdrop will lose a portion of their S tokens, which will be burned.
3) Ongoing Fund Burn — Unused tokens from Sonic’s annual minting (for the first six years) will be burned.
Sonic Airdrop
Sonic has announced an airdrop event during which 190.5 million S will be distributed to active ecosystem participants both on the Fantom Opera and Sonic chains. During the first season of the airdrop, S allocations can be claimed until June 2025.
As part of the airdrop, users can earn Sonic Points, reward points that qualify you for S coins. You can earn Sonic Points by holding or deploying whitelisted assets on the chain. The table below lists these whitelisted assets.
Source: docs.soniclabs.com
There are also developer-focused reward points called Sonic Gems. These are distributed to contributing DApps, and can be further reallocated by DApp operators among their own users.
Where to Buy the Sonic Crypto Token (S)
Sonic’s S coin is available on Bybit's Spot market as a swap pair with USDT.
Sonic Crypto Price Prediction
As of Mar 4, 2025, the S coin is trading at $0.53, which is 47.8% lower than its ATH of $1.03 on Jan 4, 2024 and 49.3% higher than its ATL of $0.3596 on Feb 3, 2025. Long-term price forecasts for S are mostly bullish.DigitalCoinPrice predicts an average rate of $1.85 in 2027 and $2.85 in 2030, whileCoinCodex expects (S) to trade at around $0.63 in 2027 and rise to $2.17 in 2030.
Closing Thoughts
Since the early days of its market presence, Fantom has been recognized as a highly scalable and efficient blockchain. With its transition to Sonic, the project’s team hopes to solidify this reputation even further. Sonic isn’t just a rebrand of Fantom — it's an entirely new platform that incorporates technical upgrades and improvements, resulting in impressive properties — such as 10,000 TPS, one of the best throughput capacities in the industry. Moreover, in addition to technical enhancements, the platform's generous developer incentive program, FeeM, is hard to ignore if you’re in the game of building or operating DApps. Along with Sonic's stellar technical characteristics, FeeM may just help drive the project's ecosystem growth on a scale that the original Fantom chain could only dream of.
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