“We Wanted to Make SVM Proliferation Our Main Goal” - Joanna Zeng Reflects on SOON Network’s Growth

Tribalism is rife in the crypto industry. Tensions between the Ethereum and Solana ecosystems often get in the way of meaningful growth and innovation on both sides of the divide.

SOON Network envisions a different future, combining Ethereum’s security and liquidity with Solana’s performance to expand the capacity of SVM networks.

Fresh off the launch of $SOON token, SolanaFloor sat down with founder Joanna Zeng to unpack SOON Network’s goals and its solution to L2 fragmentation.

Proliferating the SVM

One of the original contributors to Optimism’s OP stack, a framework for creating EVM-based Layer 2s like Base, Joanna Zeng is ideally equipped to lead the development of turnkey SVM deployment. Drawing on her experience in both EVM and SVM ecosystems, Zeng believes that bringing SVM’s powerful execution environment to Ethereum’s deep liquidity and network effect is the key to pushing the onchain experience forward.

“We wanted to make SVM proliferation our main goal and that's why we built out this OP stack for SVM, to make Solana virtual machine extend to every network.”

Dominating its rivals in user activity, Solana’s unrivalled user experience has made it undoubtedly the most popular Layer-1 blockchain across the industry. However, Zeng argues that one of the biggest obstacles to the growth of the sector is the staggering amount of idle capital languishing away in the Ethereum ecosystem. 

“I think that's why you have to meet where the users are, really provide these folks that capital efficiency. So these guys can actually access Solana-level experience on the chain that they already have parked their asset in.”

Acknowledging that blockchain tribalism is holding the industry back, Zeng posits that SOON Network sits at the intersection of Ethereum’s liquidity, Solana’s performance, and the distribution and brand awareness of CEXes like Binance and Coinbase. 

“We're seeing all these crossover ecosystem development benefits. Folks that have been building on Solana can easily deploy their applications and get the benefit from this retail distribution of Coinbase, Binance, and take advantage of the part-idle liquidity of ETH, that's, frankly, previously been super inactive.”

Similar to how the OP Stack simplified EVM L2 deployment, SOON makes it easy for third parties to roll out their own SVM-based chains as part of an interoperable network. 

“The biggest misconception that we face as a project, is people are thinking that we're somewhat like a Solana L2. That was never the intention. We don't think that Solana currently needs scaling at this point… We're trying to solve for how we scale Ethereum better. Because so far the EVM L2s are not really doing the work”

Solving Interoperability Across L2s

Despite its immense expansion, Layer-2s have been something of a shot in the foot for the Ethereum ecosystem. With finite liquidity and user attention, the Ethereum L2 landscape has birthed a cutthroat zero-sum game, resulting in fragmentation issues.

Zeng recognizes the threat that rapid SVM proliferation could pose to liquidity and activity. When pressed on how SOON Network planned to mitigate fragmentation, the founder contended that its interoperability protocol InterSOON, would alleviate these constraints. SOON Network expects that the InterSOON will offer a chain-abstracted experience that will streamline user liquidity flows across various SOON-powered networks.

“We need to make sure when you have multiple SOON chains, there's still that unified experience across the different chains. The InterSOON is only the beginning of that journey… We're using an intense solver-based solution to come up with a chain-abstracted user experience.”

While the InterSOON is currently only operational between Solana and TON chains, users can get an idea of what the finished product could look like by testing CobaltX, SOON Network’s native AMM platform.

“The experience that we're striving for is going to the CobaltX UI. You just open up and then your liquidity on either the Base version or the Binance version can just automatically get aggregated and balanced all at once. You don't have to keep bridging in and out, that's really the main idea, beyond just aggregation or a chain-abstracted aggregation model.”

Similar to the Solana Layer-1, Firedancer is expected to bring dramatically increased performance and throughput to all SVM networks. Zeng claims that early implementation testing has been fruitful for SOON-based chains.

“There's a bunch of performance optimization that we have to do in terms of the hardware. But even with like the basic hardware, we were able to test out to like 80k TPS, which is already about 40 times any EVM L2 out there, and 240 times higher than the ETH L1… We have the security guarantee from the Ethereum mainnet, the L1, using a deprivation pipeline. We can also further modularize the TPU processing unit… We're trying a very different technical approach to optimize, squeeze out every bit of performance out of the SVM.”

The Value of Airdrops

Airdrop farmers and mercenary capital are an oft-maligned subset of the crypto userbase. However, contrary to the cultural zeitgeist among founders, Zeng argues that they’re a valuable part of any emerging network.

“I do think airdrop farmers can be a pretty powerful way to build out your community.”

In the early days of SOON Mainnet, SOON leveled the playing field with first-of-its-kind take on an "ICO like" token fair launch, attracted 7k total community members and investors alike to participate by selecting and minting from three separate NFT tiers: Each NFT tier gave a different valuation level & vesting terms based on their varying risk-reward profiles.

While Zeng admits it's a mercenary strategy, many minters continued to make meaningful contributions and give insightful feedback that helped build out an improved user experience for the network as a whole.

“When we first launched, we asked a bunch of the community to contribute by participating in the NFT mint. They can get token allocation when we TGE. That's a bit mercenary, right? But based on our experience, these guys actually ended up becoming our first beta testers and alpha users.”

Instead of complaining about airdrop farmers, Zeng places the onus on developers to build sticky applications that retain users organically. 

“If we are airdropping to folks that have been participating in the ecosystem for mercenary reasons, it still doesn't prevent them from participating in the ecosystem if you have the right product.”

Simpfor.Fun

Looking to attract users beyond the siloed Web3 echo chamber, Zeng is particularly excited about certain apps within the SOON Network that she believes will appeal to the Web2 user.

Inspired by Twitch and the emerging popularity of livestream-trading, SOON Network has incubated an onchain copytrading platform, simpfor.fun.

“One thing that really excited us is the concept of how we insert the Web3 portal into something that people are already familiar with in Web2… Think of it like watching your friends or your favorite streamer live trading, and then you can just click on the link that he provides and it will automatically give you the one-click ability to deploy copytrading in the same strategy.”

Simpfor.fun allows users to effortlessly copytrade top traders via Hyperliquid. Similar to other SocialFi trading apps like Vector, Simpfor.fun offers several features like streamer’s referral rewards, encouraging them to guide their followers to profitable trades.

“Only when you get to the Web2-like experience, then you can actually onboard new people.”

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