Forwarding the original title "Binance Alpha Coming Soon, Why Are We Investing in Sophon?"

Sophon is a Validium Layer 2 network built on the zkSync Elastic Chain, dedicated to creating a Web3 consumption application ecosystem for ordinary users, covering scenarios such as gaming, social interactions, artificial intelligence, and prediction markets.

Binance Alpha will launch and open trading for Sophon (SOPH) on May 28, 2025, at 21:00 (UTC+8). In addition, the Binance Futures platform will launch the SOPHUSDT perpetual contract on May 28, 2025, at 21:30 (UTC+8).

Inception had the privilege of participating in the early investment of Sophon in 2024. While congratulating Sophon on its upcoming launch on Binance, we also hope to take this opportunity to share the reasoning behind Inception's decision to invest in this project between 2023 and 2024.

1. The origin of Inception and Sophon:

Inception Capital, as an early-stage investment firm focused on blockchain and emerging technologies, has been paying attention to the composability and user growth potential of blockchain games and virtual worlds. Inception Capital was an early investor in Beam (formerly Merit Circle), a decentralized DAO gaming guild built on Ethereum and BSC. Its founder, Mark Borsten, is an experienced gamer with many years of background in cryptocurrency investments.

During our communication with Mark, we greatly appreciated his unique understanding of the gaming experience and on-chain architecture. Therefore, in 2023, when we learned that Beam was also beginning to incubate Sophon, a high-performance public chain designed for gaming and AI scenarios, we started to engage with Sophon. In the early stages of the project, when the product had not yet taken shape, the token mechanism was unverified, and the user base was yet to be established, the team's judgment became the key to our investment decisions. Especially in the gaming sector, successful teams are often deep participants in the gaming community, with a profound understanding of user behavior and cultural atmosphere.

2. Why do we still need game / entertainment-oriented public chains?

Sophon is not an impractical new public chain; it is an infrastructure upgrade plan incubated internally by Beam: Beam itself already has over 100 game projects. However, in the long run, "every game having its own chain" is not realistic—what they need is a chain that serves the entire gaming ecosystem, providing a unified entrance and underlying protocol.

However, in the gaming / entertainment sectors, most mainstream chains have inherent limitations and have not truly addressed some specific characteristics of user communities, such as:

• Ethereum Mainnet: Although the network provides security guarantees, the high gas costs and low TPS are not suitable for real-time gaming scenarios.
• Solana: Despite its strong performance, its ecosystem is more geared towards trading and memecoins, lacking an incentive system aimed at gaming users.
• OP/Arbitrum and other general-purpose L2s: the infrastructure is solid, but "games" are just a small branch of their ecosystem.

This is precisely why, despite the huge investments in the industry and continuous technological innovations, cryptocurrencies remain confined to niche markets. Sophon fundamentally addresses these challenges of adoption, with its core philosophy focusing on the real needs of users in gaming and broader entertainment consumption.

As Seb, the founder of Sophon (former head of DeFi at zkSync), stated, "We should not continue to force users to adapt to the complexities of blockchain; instead, we should present the value of blockchain through scenarios that users are already familiar with, such as games, ticketing, social interactions, etc., allowing them to enjoy the benefits brought by on-chain technology 'unconsciously.'" This concept is highly aligned with Inception's long-standing vision of promoting the large-scale adoption of blockchain. We believe that in the future, when users are immersed in entertainment, socializing, or AI interactions, the complex technology of blockchain will have already become invisible in the background.

3. Forward-looking in Technical Architecture

Sophon has achieved significant breakthroughs in technology, aiming to reshape the user experience of blockchain. It adopts the ZK Stack combined with Validium architecture, migrating most transaction processing off-chain, allowing users to almost completely ignore gas costs, significantly lowering the barrier to entry. At the same time, Sophon supports native account abstraction, allowing users to log in directly with their Google accounts, with smart contracts automatically managing private keys, effectively eliminating the usability barriers posed by mnemonics. In addition, the platform employs a batch verification mechanism realized through zero-knowledge proofs, greatly shortening transaction confirmation times, bringing the experience closer to traditional Web2 payments. This series of technical designs not only focuses on performance optimization but also aims to create a blockchain user experience that is more convenient and intuitive than Web2.

4. Current Development

In May of this year, Sophon's latest zkTLS "Social Oracle" system allows users to chain achievements and social data from Web2 platforms such as Spotify and Steam while protecting privacy, creating a more personalized on-chain identity system. As of May 2025, the market value of Sophon's native token SOPH reached 32.39 million USD, with a circulating supply of 32.89 billion tokens. It has already been listed on exchanges such as MEXC, KuCoin, and Bitget, and will be listed on Binance for spot and perpetual contract trading on May 28. Sophon is building a Web3 entertainment ecosystem that covers areas such as gaming, social, ticketing, and AI, aiming to achieve the mainstream vision of "technology invisibility and value visibility."

We greatly appreciate the Sophon team's commitment to long-termism and their exploration and innovation regarding the possibilities of combining Web 2 and Web3. We believe that Sophon will work hand in hand with the community to create a prosperous and sustainable innovation ecosystem that benefits creators and users. As one of the few Asian funds still actively investing during the industry's bear market, we also hope to collaborate with more founders who share the same vision.

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1. This article is reproduced from [TechFlow] The original title is 'Why are we investing in Sophon with the upcoming launch of Binance Alpha?', copyright belongs to the original author [Inception Capital] If there are any objections to the reprint, please contact.Gate Learn TeamThe team will handle it as quickly as possible according to the relevant procedures.
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