Exclusive interview with Chris Zhu, co-founder of Sonic: Solana has outstanding performance, why do we still need Layer2?

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. The Opportunity to Enter the Web3 Field

3. Motivation and Process of Creating Sonic

4. The impact of experience in different fields and projects on entrepreneurship

5. The development process and direction change of Mirror World

6. Comparison of Solana’s Scalability and Ethereum’s Scalability

7. Sonic’s extension solution Hypergrid

Challenges faced by Layer2 expansion on Solana

9. Future Outlook of Web3 Gaming Track

01, Introduction

Welcome to the Ryze Up program brought to you by Ryze Labs. Ryze Labs is a bridge between the East and the West, and we aim to accelerate the development of Web3 in emerging markets and influence the global Web3 world. Local Insights, Global Impact, let’s embark together, Time to Ryze Up.

Host of this episode

Fred, a researcher at Ryze Labs, focuses on expanding the influence of the fund in the Chinese-speaking community and providing ideas and suggestions to the fund’s portfolio companies.

Special Guest

Chris, whose career began at ByteDance, accumulated rich experience in consumer entertainment and SaaS market research during his time there before entering the Web3 field. Subsequently, Chris joined the RCT AI team, which focuses on the intersection of AI and Web3, to explore the combination of AI and Non-fungible Token, AI and Crypto. These new business models have inspired his interest in Web3. After founding Mirror World and following game asset issuance, he discovered the variability of market demand and collaborated with the Solana Foundation to develop Sonic, a proprietary chain designed for game services, aiming to solve the scaling problem in the Solana ecosystem. With his rich experience and deep understanding of technology, Chris has become an important driver of the Web3 gaming ecosystem.

02, The Opportunity to Enter the Web3 Field

After leaving ByteDance in the second half of 2021, Chris began to get involved in the Web3 field. During his time at ByteDance, he was involved in research on the consumer entertainment industry and the SaaS market. He later joined the RCT AI team, which focuses on the intersection of AI and Web3. This team has conducted in-depth research on the integration of AI and Non-fungible Tokens (NFTs), as well as AI and Crypto. These research findings and the new business models based on the concept of Decentralization deeply attracted Chris and prompted him to enter the Web3 field.

03, Motivation and Process of Creating Sonic

During the creation of Sonic, there was a transformation from the Mirror World to Sonic, and Chris identified three core issues in the process:

1. Diversity of game assets and users: In the early days of Mirror World, the Chris team focused on asset issuance through Non-fungible Token collections to serve multiple game projects. Over time, they found that the demand for game asset issuance is higher in the market during upcycles, but during Bear Market or downturns, project parties tend to focus more on building and addressing core issues. The diversity of game assets can directly bring about user diversity. However, on the Solana chain, the number of assets for consumer applications, games, and social applications is relatively small.

2. Solana’s on-chain computing resources and congestion issues: It has been observed that a single project occupying a large amount of computing resources on-chain has led to congestion on the Solana Mainnet. Although Solana’s TPS is already very high and the cost is low, when more applications put their logic on-chain, congestion issues still arise. Therefore, Chris and the team are considering using sidechains or proprietary chains to share computing resources and avoid overloading the Mainnet.

3. Insufficient capability in game issuance: Solana itself does not have the ability to issue games, which is not only a technical issue, but also involves organizational structure, team background, etc. Chris believes that the gaming industry needs proprietary resources and professional issuance institutions to support content development and issuance. Therefore, they have discussed with the Solana Foundation to develop a game-specific chain for game services through the SVM framework to address these issues.

Based on these three core issues, Chris’s team collaborated with the Solana Foundation to propose a solution to develop the game-specific chain Sonic on Solana, making full use of their research and development capabilities and resources in the Mirror World, successfully transitioning to the game SVM track.

04. The Impact of Experience in Different Fields and Projects on Entrepreneurship

Chris’s professional experience has covered multiple fields, from ByteDance to RCT AI, and then to Mirror World and Sonic, each step providing him with valuable experience. During his time at ByteDance, he learned corporate management concepts and efficiency management methods in a rapidly developing environment, which played an important role in his future entrepreneurship. At RCT AI, Chris joined a young and international team, which further honed his skills in managing businesses and recruiting talent, laying a solid foundation for his later entrepreneurial endeavors.

These experiences have become particularly important to Chris after he entered the Crypto field. He realized that the Crypto field has strong periodicity and volatility, with a clear time window for capital inflows, unlike the sustainable rise of SaaS products. Therefore, when managing the Sonic team, Chris adopted a more flexible and adaptive strategy. He emphasized keeping the core members of the team lean and quickly expanding when market demand surged, in response to the rapid changes in the industry. This flexible management approach helped Sonic maintain competitiveness in a turbulent market environment.

05, the development history and change of direction of Mirror World

Mirror World was initially serving game projects through the issuance of Non-fungible Token assets. However, over time, Chris and his team found that simple asset issuance could not meet the long-term needs of the market. Especially in the market downturn cycle, project parties are more eager to solve infrastructure problems, such as Fiat Currency deposit, Liquidity, and Cross-Chain Interaction exchange. Therefore, the team began to cooperate with the Solana Foundation in early 2022 to develop Wallet, market, deposit, and Swap tools in the game. This transformation makes Mirror World not only limited to asset issuance but also begins to provide a wider range of infrastructure support.

In 2023, with the outbreak of the FTX incident, the number of projects in the entire ecosystem decreased sharply. Chris and the team realized that the existing solutions alone were unable to cope with the new market challenges. They had in-depth discussions with the Solana Foundation and ultimately decided to develop a SVM extension chain called Sonic specifically for game services. This new direction not only leverages their R&D experience in the Mirror World but also helps game project parties operate better on-chain by addressing the Solana scaling problem.

06. Comparison of Solana Scalability and ETH Scalability

When discussing the scaling problem of Solana and Ethereum, Chris pointed out that they have different purposes and characteristics. The main purpose of Ethereum’s scaling is to address the speed and cost issues of the Mainnet, and to improve transaction speed and drop Money Laundering through Layer 2 solutions. On the other hand, Solana already has high TPS and low Transaction Cost, so its scaling is more focused on meeting specific needs in different fields.

Solana’s expansion is to provide proprietary chains for different fields to ensure that each field has its independent economic effects and computing resources. This expansion method can not only share the load of the Mainnet, but also provide more professional and efficient services for each field. For example, in the gaming industry, developing a proprietary gaming chain can better support on-chain operations of game logic and assets, improving overall operational efficiency.

07, Sonic’s expansion plan Hypergrid

Sonic’s extension solution Hypergrid on Solana is a framework designed to create an SVM environment specifically for gaming services. Through Hypergrid, Sonic became the first project to use this framework. The design concept of Hypergrid is to provide proprietary chains for different fields through horizontal expansion, thereby solving the scaling problem of specific fields. Chris expects that in the future, not only the gaming industry, but also other fields such as Decentralized Finance and AI will have proprietary chains, so that each field can enjoy customized expansion services.

The core of Hypergrid lies in its flexibility and adaptability. Through horizontal scaling, each domain can develop independently while staying connected to the Solana Mainnet. This approach not only enhances the professionalism and efficiency of each domain, but also improves the performance and scalability of the Solana ecosystem as a whole.

08, Challenges Faced by Layer2 Expansion on Solana

Solana faces multiple challenges in terms of Layer2 scalability. The first challenge is to assess which areas truly require an independent scalable virtual machine (SVM) chain. While independent scalability chains can improve efficiency in certain cases, not all areas require such a solution. Chris mentioned that Ethereum also faced similar issues in the early stages and eventually determined which areas were suitable for Layer2 scalability and which areas could run directly on the Mainnet.

Secondly, there are technical challenges in the continuous splitting and maintenance process of Solana’s codebase. For example, the code splitting of Solana’s client and runtime environment was recently completed, and the ecosystem is still adapting to this change gradually. In the process of rapid development, ensuring the stability and compatibility of the code is an important issue that the team needs to address.

Finally, the rapid development of the Solana ecosystem requires constant resolution of new problems. Chris pointed out that Solana is more like a fast-moving startup, constantly adjusting and optimizing during the development process. Therefore, the team also needs to maintain flexibility and be ready to respond to new challenges and changes during the development of Sonic.

09, the future prospects of the Web3 gaming track

Chris is confident in the future of Web3 games. He believes that the quality of game content and payment toolkits have significantly improved compared to the previous cycle. Although the coin price performance of Web3 games is currently not ideal, he feels that the quality of games and user willingness to pay have reached a fairly high level. For example, games like Big Time have continuously risen in terms of monthly active users and overall revenue, indicating that Web3 games have great potential in terms of user base and economic effects.

Future game design will put more logic on-chain. When the technological costs and speed reach a certain level, fully on-chain games will become possible. Sonic is also striving in this direction in technical development. Although 80% of the focus is currently on asset-chained games, there will be more focus on following the development of fully on-chain games in the future. He believes that with the advancement of technology and the maturity of the market, Web3 games will achieve breakthroughs in gameplay and asset innovation, and may even see the emergence of the first blockbuster fully on-chain game.