- Through the sale of nodes, Sophon, a zkSync “hyperchain,” has raised $60 million.
- Maven 11, Paper Ventures, Spartan Group, and SevenX Ventures were among the investors.
Through a node sale, Sophon, a zkSync “hyperchain” or Layer 2 network being developed with Matter Labs’ modular, open-source ZK Stack platform, has raised almost $60 million.
200,000 nodes were available for purchase at the sale, with tiers of pricing from 0.0813 ETH to 2.0556 ETH per node. But according to the startup on Wednesday, investors bought 121,000 nodes, giving Sophon over $60 million in wrapped ether (wETH).
Sebastien (“Seb”), the semi-anonymous co-founder of Sophon and the former head of DeFi at zkSync, disclosed to The Block in an interview that Sophon had amassed 20,800 wETH. The other two co-founders of Sophon are “a trader and team member at Merit Circle,” a decentralized autonomous organization that focuses on gaming, and popular cryptocurrency Twitter user Pentoshi, who has almost 800,000 followers.
Node purchase
Seb claims that the last two weeks saw the start and conclusion of Sophon’s node sale. Seb claims that investors who participated in Sophon’s $10 million seed round earlier this year included Maven 11, Paper Ventures, Spartan Group, and SevenX Ventures.
Additionally, he stated that other launchpads and syndicates, such as Impossible Finance, Holdstation, and ICO Drops, helped with the node sale that involved the general public.
Of the $60 million invested, Seb said that about $45 million came from private investors and about $15 million from retail investors. Selling node licenses is the basis of a relatively new method of raising funds called node sale. Earlier this year, the DePIN project Aethir raised about $100 million through node sales.
Node sales, in Seb’s opinion, provide communities more power because they let them to obtain token airdrops and early access to project tokens at a reduced cost. Twenty percent of Sophon’s total token supply (SOPH) has been set aside for distribution to node license holders within the first three years following the mainnet launch of Sophon.
According to Seb, node purchasers have gotten ERC-721 NFTs that represent their node licenses because Sophon has not yet launched its mainnet and coin.
Launch of Sophon
The network rollout is anticipated by Sophon over the upcoming months. According to the startup, there will be a single centralized sequencer at launch, and node license holders will be able to assign their licenses to Sophon in exchange for a portion of network costs.
According to the project, these holders will also be able to take part in how Sophon operates, such as by indexing the chain or by using the DA (data availability) layer that Sophon chooses to utilize to run a light node.
Whether the Matter Labs team decides to decentralize consensus in the future, node licenses will be necessary to run the network, regardless of whether a PoA (proof of authority) or PoS (proof of stake) configuration is used.
Disclaimer : This article was created for informational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice. An asset’s past performance does not predict its future returns. Before making an investment, please conduct your own research, as digital assets like cryptocurrencies are highly risky and volatile financial instruments.
