Andre Cronje, the CTO of Sonic Labs (formerly Fantom), unveiled plans for Sonic blockchain to introduce credit scoring for digital wallets, according to a September 9 blog post.
The goal is to gain access to the global unsecured lending market, which amounts to more than $11 trillion.
Credit scores
Cronje explained that the integration of credit scores is a major advancement in blockchain technology. He stated that this would allow several traditional lending products, such as payday loans and payday loans, to gain access to DeFi.
Cronje highlighted that Sonic has overcome several technological hurdles, making credit scoring feasible within blockchain systems. He stated:
“Credit scores are quite simple in design; it is a rich ETL (extract, transform, loan) process that cleanses financial data and provides detailed analysis that is ultimately summarized in a credit score.”
Sonic Labs reportedly started building this system in 2021, with a focus on extracting, transforming, and loading transaction, loan, and trading data across multiple blockchains. This effort processed more than 54 billion transactions, covered nearly a petabyte of data, and monitored 500 million wallets, including 15 million loans.
The lab has developed a scoring model for blockchain addresses without the need for KYC or personal data.
Taking this into consideration, Cronje stated that Sonic would be the first to provide direct on-chain access to wallet scores, unlocking the $11 trillion market. He stated:
“Sonic will be the first native integration to enable direct access to wallet scores on-chain, making it the first chain to give developers access to a potential $11 trillion market. An important shift in both technological and social evolution.”
Finality of blockchain
The credit score increase comes as Sonic’s testnet reached transaction finality in just 720 milliseconds (ms), which represents significant progress.
On September 8, Cronje revealed this milestone on X, stating:
“400 ms responsiveness (perfect for synchronous events) 720 ms finality (true, not probabilistic – no ‘please wait 30 blocks’).”
In blockchain, finality ensures that once a transaction is confirmed and added to the blockchain, it becomes irreversible. No further changes can be made after a transaction has become final.
This breakthrough positions Sonic as the fastest blockchain network in terms of transaction finality, surpassing Aptos, which has a finality of 900 ms according to Chainspect data.