Sonic raises $12m to drive Solana gaming ecosystem

Sonic, Solana’s first layer 2 gaming infrastructure protocol, has raised $12 million in a series A round that has attracted interest from a number of venture capital investors.

The round brings Sonic’s total raise to $16 million, following a $4 million seed round the protocol raised in early 2022.

Solana’s first L2 gaming platform

Developed by GameFi infrastructure platform Mirror World Labs, Sonic is a Solana Virtual Machine compatible atomic L2 for sovereign gaming economies.

HyperGrid, the core technology from Sonic developer Mirror World, powers this ecosystem. Sonic aims to drive Solana’s gaming ecosystem through a set of tools that include Web2 and Web3 login methods, an NFT marketplace, a wallet, and an NFT Launchpad.

The team at Mirror World also envisions the introduction of custom-made aggregations in Solana.

“Over the past two years, we have worked with hundreds of games in the Web3 gaming ecosystem, helping them monetize and list,” Sonic founder and CEO Chris Zhu said in a statement.

“Solana, with its full suite of tools and frameworks for games, was our biggest focus. “We believe Sonic SVM will be the key to unlocking the Solana summer of gaming, launching and bringing thousands of games to market with our support.”

Sonic SVM as the go-to protocol for gaming on Solana

Mirror World expects to funnel the new funds into initiatives that will enable Sonic to grow further. Envisaged uses include distributing Sonic donations to increase the participation of new developers in Solana’s gaming ecosystem.

Solana has gained a lot of attention in the blockchain ecosystem in recent months thanks to the boom in meme coins. The same trend has not occurred for the gaming industry on the leading retail-friendly blockchain.

Sonic today announced that venture capital firm BITKRAFT Ventures led its series A funding round. The fund also attracted participation from Galaxy Interactive and Big Brain Holdings, among other crypto-focused investment firms.

However, BITKRAFT Manager Justin Swart said that they expect Sonic SVM to become the network of choice for game studios.