Sonic SVM has built its own framework, HyperGrid, which can be used to build new networks called “grids” that will eventually settle on the Solana blockchain.
The sale is scheduled for the week of September 16 and will include 50,000 ‘HyperFuse nodes’ in 20 price tiers.
The nodes come with token rewards and allow holders to check the network status.
“While not officially confirmed, there are possible future airdrops for node operators,” a press release said.
Sonic SVM, a project to scale the Solana blockchain to gaming-grade speed and throughput, plans to sell as much as $12.8 million worth of validator nodes in its HyperGrida decentralized framework designed to support new application-specific networks.
The sale, scheduled for the week of September 16, will be the first in the Solana blockchain ecosystem and will include 50,000 “Hyperfuse nodes” in 20 price tiers, according to the team. Proceeds will go to the project’s coffers for general purposes, including support for the development team and grants, CEO and co-founder Chris Zhu said in an interview.
The sale of nodes has become increasingly popular as way for blockchain projects to raise money while decentralizing their networks. Aethir, a decentralized GPU cloud infrastructure provider, announced in May that it had raised approximately $126 million in Ethereum ether (ETH) token by distributing over 73,000 node licenses. Other projects incl Sofon, CARV, XAI games and Powerloom has used the method to raise new money.
The sale comes just a few months after Sonic SVM has raised $12 million in a Series A fundraising led by Bitkraft and joined by investors including Galaxy Interactive and Big Brain Holdings.
Buyers of the nodes will be eligible for token rewards while contributing to the security of the HyperGrid network, according to a wire on X. The nodes can be set up to run on a laptop or on cloud servers.
“As a node operator, they can actually monitor the HyperGrid status, which means they participate in the validation,” Zhu said.
Solana’s OP pile
According to the project’s architecture, Sonic SVM itself is considered a ‘grid’ built on top of a blockchain device known as the HyperGrid. This in turn provides the interface for ultimately settling transactions on Solana. According to Zhu, other grids can also be set up, for more gaming domains or even for an AI network.
Zhu compared Sonic SVM’s HyperGrid to Solana’s version of Optimism’s OP Stack – a popular template for setting up new layer 2 networks on top of the Ethereum blockchain. The layer 2 project of the American crypto exchange Coinbase, Base, is built on that framework.
Layer 2 networks are designed to scale blockchains by providing an alternative venue for faster and cheaper transactions than main Layer 1 blockchains. Such structures have historically been de-emphasized for the Solana, as it is already considered faster and cheaper than the much more expansive Ethereum blockchain.
An added appeal is that the deal “provides a rare opportunity for individuals to acquire Sonic Tokens at a lower valuation than those offered to top venture capital firms in the recent Series A fundraising,” Sonic SVM said in a press release.
“While not officially confirmed, there are possible future airdrops for node operators,” the statement said.