Sophon

Market position

Sophon is one of several smaller Layer 2 and Layer 3 projects that wound down or restructured in 2026, alongside Botanix Labs' Spiderchain and Scroll's DAO restructuring, according to The Defiant. At shutdown its chain served roughly 100 to 200 daily active users and generated about $30 in daily fees against the $60 million raised, and SOPH traded around $0.0048, roughly 90% below its token generation event price. Its move to Base is characterized as a bet that consumer crypto products scale better on an established, high-liquidity chain than on a proprietary Layer 2 [5][6].

Sophon positions itself around owning consumer applications rather than general-purpose infrastructure, framing its category as "entertainment finance" and adding interactive game mechanics to everyday payments rather than conventional cashback. Its token model ties product revenue directly to buybacks and permanent burns instead of emissions or holder distributions [0][3][5][6].

Technology

The original Sophon network was a ZK-powered Layer 2 built on the zkSync stack, with chain ID 50104, SOPH as the gas currency, and its own RPC endpoints and block explorer; it is no longer connected to LayerZero, and SOPH withdrawals to Ethereum use the canonical route. Claims and withdrawals are handled through claim.sophon.com. The studio's new products are built on Base, and Sophon describes the mechanics powering Pyre as agentic and onchain [0][2][3][5][6].

Go-to-market

The studio operates fully remote and is hiring for consumer-facing marketing and product design roles, including a social-media-led role focused on building TikTok and Instagram presence from zero and running paid campaigns with external creators, indicating a creator- and attention-driven distribution approach for Pyre [0][3].

Mainstream consumer users of payments and savings products, approached beyond the existing crypto-native audience; hiring materials emphasize consumer, fintech and AI backgrounds and social-first distribution [0][3][6].

Geography

Sophon operates as a fully remote organization; job listings reference candidates in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, Miami or other major cities [0][3].

History

Sophon launched in 2024 as a zkSync-based Layer 2/Layer 3 chain positioned for gaming and consumer applications, raising $60 million through node sales that year and helping applications launch on the network. After roughly nine months of running the network, and with annual chain operating costs reported at $3 million to $3.4 million, the team announced on June 25, 2026 that it would wind down the chain, blocking new deposits from that date while keeping the network live at least through the end of 2026 for migration. The project rebuilt itself as a consumer product studio ("Soph+") building on Base, with the Pyre app slated to launch in early July 2026 and a token model shifted from gas and staking to revenue-funded buyback and burn [0][3][5][6].

Risks & controversies

The chain raised $60 million through node sales before demonstrating sustained user demand, and usage never matched capitalization: about $30 in daily fees and 100 to 200 daily active users at wind-down. SOPH traded roughly 90% below its token generation event price, leaving 2024 node buyers with significant losses. The zkSync ecosystem lost its primary corporate backer for consumer chains when Matter Labs cut staff and pivoted to its Prividium institutional privacy platform in June 2026. The pivot's success depends on whether the Pyre app achieves product-market fit [5][6].