Original author: Frank, PANews
As the dark horse of the last bull market, the public chain Fantom has been making continuous moves in this round of bull market. On May 23, Fantom made a new round of updates on the progress of the brand upgrade plan Sonic. The Fantom Foundation issued a statement saying that the community has voted to approve its first proposal for the upcoming Sonic chain. The proposal stated that Sonic will launch a new token $S, which will be exchanged 1:1 with FTM when it is released. In addition, Fantom will also establish a new Sonic Foundation and has completed $10 million in financing for the Sonic Foundation. In addition, perhaps in order to cooperate with the launch of the Sonic chain, on May 21, Fantom released a MEME competition plan for the MEME track with a prize of 10 million FTMs. For Fantom, which has been making frequent moves recently, can the two-pronged approach of currency exchange + MEME activate the vigorously launched Sonic chain?
Public chain recovery, MEME starts
After witnessing Solana and Base triggering on-chain activity through MEME, Fantom also launched the MEME season. On May 21, the Fantom Foundation launched the Meme season competition with a prize of 10 million FTM. Based on the FTM price of about $0.8, the total amount of this prize pool will reach $8 million.
According to the official introduction, this competition aims to focus on the top memecoins on Opera and the upcoming Sonic chain. It is also an important strategic means to cooperate with the upgrade of Sonic. The competition will be held in multiple rounds. The first round will be held from June 1 to June 30, with a prize pool of 1 million sFTMx (FTM with liquid staking through Beethoven X).
The competitions measurement indicators are determined by market capitalization, gas usage, and transaction volume. The market capitalization accounts for 50%, gas fees account for 35%, and transaction volume accounts for 15% when calculating the score. It is worth noting that the transaction volume on centralized exchanges or other networks other than Opera is not included in this competition. The top 3 memecoins at the end of each round are the winners.
In each round, 80% of the prize money will be awarded to the holders of the top 3 winning memecoin projects, weighted according to their holdings. The remaining 20% is distributed to the teams behind the 3 memecoins. The first round prize distribution is as follows:
Winner 1 = 600k sFTMx (480k to holder, 120k to team)
Winner 2 = 300k sFTMx (240k to holder, 60k to team)
Winner 3 = 100k sFTMx (80k to holder, 20k to team)
However, Fantom does not stipulate that MEME projects participating in the competition must be newly issued tokens during the competition. Therefore, several MEME coins that have already scaled on Fantom may have a first-mover advantage. And since there are only 3 winners in each round, the slim chances for new projects may hinder their motivation.
MEME heat is not activated yet
Perhaps to facilitate widespread user participation, the Fantom Foundation also recommended four one-click coin issuance platforms on Twitter: Degen Express, Super Pump, fTails, and Bedrock Finance. According to PANews research, these platforms are similar in function to Pump.fun, a one-click coin issuance platform that has recently become popular on Solana, but there is a world of difference in activity. The activity on Degen Express is high, but the token with the highest market value is about $27,000. The other platforms are all in an extremely deserted state. There are a total of 11 MEME coins issued on Super Pump (data from May 26), and all of them are in a state of no trading, with a market value of 0.
As of May 26, the MEME competition does not seem to have really started to show results. On May 26, there were only 20 new Fantom trading pairs launched in the past 24 hours. In comparison, the data for the Solana chain on that day was 1,252 and the Base chain was 2,088. And the highest number of new transactions on Fantom was only 24 transactions. Perhaps with the official start of the MEME season on June 1, the change in this data will be more effective.
Token exchange is OK, but the community doesn’t buy into the additional issuance
In addition to launching the MEME competition to increase the popularity of the Sonic chain, Fantom also launched a new token $S to completely complete the new brand upgrade. In the proposal for Sonic Network, the governance plan for the new token $S is described in detail. The proposal proposes that when the Sonic chain is launched, the supply of $S will match the supply of $FTM to achieve a 1: 1 seamless migration process. In the possible governance plan for the future governance of $S tokens, Proposals 2 and 3 propose to mint additional $S for operations, airdrops, and incentives for ecological projects.
As of now, the specific content of Proposals 2 and 3 has not been officially announced, but many community members have expressed doubts about the two proposals. User Paintbal l2 6 left a message: Are there any numbers for Proposals 2 and 3? I strongly oppose blank checks with unknown dilution multiples, earmarking hundreds of millions of FTMs for specific purposes and then requiring further dilution. Another user STACHE said: I dont think Proposals 2 or 3 are needed. I dare say that 5-10% of FTMs will not be able to migrate due to loss, burning LPs, etc. If the supply is the same at the beginning, then 5-10% will definitely be enough to cover Proposals 2 and 3, right? Many peoples biggest concern is further dilution.
Overall, this Sonic upgrade is the most important narrative for Fantom. From the performance narrative around the introduction of Sonic parallel EVM and the processing speed of 2000 TPS in March to the current MEME season and new token plan, Fantoms determination to revive has been revealed. However, the market reaction of FTM tokens does not seem to have fluctuated much due to these narratives (the current price is hovering around $0.8, similar to the price before the release of Sonic in March). The new Sonic chain will further enhance Fantoms performance and brand influence, but the more effective attraction may still be the real activity on the chain and a more reasonable token economic model, which are currently in the stage of being verified.
