Hassan Maishera
Sophon, the entertainment-focused zkSync Hyperchain, announced on Wednesday that it has successfully raised approximately $60 million.
In a press release shared with Cryptowisser, Sophon revealed that its node sale, offering a total of 200,000 nodes for purchase structured in multiple tiers quickly reached over $60 million in wETH.
The $60 million raised was in addition to a previously announced $10M funding round led by Paper Ventures & Maven 11, with participation from Spartan, SevenX, and OKX Ventures.
Sophon plans to launch as an L2 rollup validium in the third quarter of the year, alongside the zkSync ZK Stack toolkit. The team revealed that investors are already purchasing ERC-721 tokens. The tokens would enable them to earn Sophon tokens and participate in the validation of the Sophon network. Node license holders will be able to delegate their licenses to the node operator and earn their share of network fees.
Sophon token holders can also participate in the functioning of Sophon. If and when the Matter Labs team will decentralise their consensus, node licenses will be required to operate the network - whether in a PoA or PoS setup.
The team further explained that unsold and unused node licenses when the sale ends won't come into circulation and will be burned.
Sophon will widely distribute its $SOPH token from the very beginning in a unique airdrop campaign. The airdrop campaign will allow users to stake assets to receive allocations of $SOPH.
Users can stake $BEAM, the native token of the Beam network, and $ZENT, from Zentry. The team will unveil additional mode assets in the coming weeks with more details regarding the distribution to be disclosed in the future.
The Sophon Hyperchain focuses on developing an entertainment platform, leveraging zkSync features like native account abstraction to build a seamless user experience that will convert new entrants to crypto.
While commenting on this latest development, Sophon co-founder, Sebastien (Seb) said,
“When I decided to build Sophon, choosing the ZK Stack was no brainer. I know the product inside-out in comparison to other stacks on the market. It’s all about building for tomorrow rather than yesterday, and I'm convinced that in a few years, looking back at the design and infrastructure choices Matter Labs made will seem obvious. I will continue to work closely with the amazing Matter Labs team.”
Sophon is an entertainment-focused ecosystem built as a modular rollup leveraging zkSync's Hyperchain technology. As a zkSync hyperchain leveraging the ZK Stack, Sophon is intended to be tailored for any high throughput applications such as artificial intelligence and gaming applications. Sophon facilitates the connection between developers and users, backed by a strategic collaboration with ecosystems like zkSync, Beam, Zentry, and Aethir.
