Sonic (S)

$S | @SonicLabs has pumped 17% after the cancellation of this year's token unlock.

Sounds bullish until:

> $S is down 97% from its all-time high. ❌
> Founders - gone, CTO - gone, CEO - gone. ❌
> TVL is down 80%. ❌

But the new team is in and looking to change things. ⌛

We researched everything about $S and this is what you need to know 🧵

2/ Shipping: the lights stayed on.

Through a full leadership collapse, the code didn't stop.

In 2026:
→ ~282 commits to the main client, 11 contributors (Sonic claims 400+ PRs merged)
→ v2.1.5 (Feb) + v2.1.6 (Mar): validator throttling, RPC upgrades, CVE patches
→ v2.2.0 in active dev: 6 release candidates plus a private testnet
→ Last commit: Jun 24

The catch: last tagged release was Mar 12. No new user-facing product shipped in H1. Engineering is steady, but output is thin.

Shipping read: alive and building, not flashy.

Grade: B+

3/ The Halted Mint

On June 23, Sonic halted its scheduled 2026 mint, 47.6M $S that was about to hit the supply. Inflation, stopped.

It is the exact move $ONDO holders wish their project had made. Sonic did it after the crash instead of before, but it did it. That is the whole bull case in one decision.

That is the reason of it's pomp right now.

But let us also tell you this - Sonic separately got governance approval to issue $200M in S for its TradFi push (ETF, Nasdaq PIPE, Sonic USA), and the first issuance of 472 million S already went out on September 4.

So they cancelled ~47M tokens of programmatic inflation while a discretionary issuance lever ten times that size stays live. Approved by the community though 🤷‍♂️

4/ Community: not dead, rebuilding.

→ Good posting, bursty around real updates, not engagement bait
→ Discord ~38k, Telegram ~24k, both still active
→ The June 23 no-mint thread pulled ~494 likes / 124k views; the tokenomics post hit ~641 likes

Sentiment flipped positive the moment the founders left. A real holder quote:

"More communication in the last 2 days than this whole year combined."

Community read: cautiously optimistic, not checked out.

Grade: B+

5/ Treasury and funding: the soft spot.

→ Total raised: $22M ($12M Bitkraft 2024, $10M Galaxy 2025). No new raise in 2026, 13+ months dry.
→ Treasury is not auditable. Known reserves (~92M $S earmarked for airdrops) are denominated in $S, not stables.

Translation: the runway is tied to the token price. When $S falls, the runway falls with it. That is the quiet risk nobody prices in until it matters.

The fees generated are discussed in the next tweet.

Grade: C

6/ Team: the entire top is new.

OUT (Jun 19): Andre Cronje (CTO), Michael Kong, David Richardson. The Fantom-era core, off the board.
OUT (Feb): Mitchell Demeter (CEO), Evan Owens.
IN: Matt Visser (CEO, product and AI-legaltech background) and Kosta Kourkoumelis (COO, 20yr finance, early Fantom ecosystem).

The people who drove it to −97% are gone. The replacements are unproven at this scale.

New CEO's pitch: "1% better every day." No roadmap hype, no instant-turnaround promise.

Tbh, this could be a huge blessing but until unproven - this is a huge test too.

Grade: C (clean slate, untested hands)

7/ Metrics: Boy these are bad

Dec 31 2025 → Jun 28 2026:

🔴 TVL: $75.4M → $15.0M, ▼ −80%
🔴 Market cap: −97.7% from ATH, −69.7% since Dec
🔴 App fees (annualized): $36.2M → $4.4M, ▼ −88%
🔴 App revenue (annualized): $6.4M → $1.9M, ▼ −71%
🔴 DEX volume (daily): ▼ −61%

🟢 The one green line: protocols deployed 203 → 219, +8%. Builders still show up. It just has not converted into fees or TVL yet.

Grade: C

8/ Tokenomics

$0.0233 today. $1.029 at the Jan 2025 ATH.

A $10k buy at the top is worth about $230 now.

The structural fix (no more 2026 mint) is real and it matters. But it does not undo the supply already circulating, the −88% fee collapse, or a treasury denominated in its own token.

What changed is the path of NEW dilution, not the damage already done.

Grade: F on performance so far.
Grade: B+ on the latest action taken.

9/ Verdict.

$S is a Cope story with one genuine catalyst.

The bear case wrote itself: −97%, revenue gone, founders out, treasury in its own token.

The bull case is five days old: inflation halted, dead weight cleared, comms back on, sentiment turning.

This is not "back." It is "alive." We do not know what to make of the latest changes. This might be the best thing that has happened for the project, could take it to more darkness.

Final grade: C / "Rebuilding, Super Cautious"

This is not financial advice. Always do your own research.

We'll keep reviewing projects that are building in 2026 (and some that aren't) - data first, verdict at the end. Drop us a follow @ourcryptotalk

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