As a dark horse in the previous bull market, the public chain Fantom has been making continuous moves in this round of bull market. On May 23rd, Fantom provided an update on the progress of its brand upgrade program, Sonic. The Fantom Foundation announced that the community had voted in favor of the first proposal for the upcoming Sonic chain. The proposal stated that Sonic will launch a new token, $S, which will be exchanged at a 1:1 ratio with FTM upon release. In addition, Fantom will establish a new Sonic Foundation and has already raised $10 million in funding for the foundation. Perhaps in preparation for the launch of the Sonic chain, Fantom also announced a MEME competition on May 21st, offering a total of 10 million FTM in prizes. With these recent actions, can Fantom’s dual strategy of token swap and MEME competition activate the highly anticipated Sonic chain?
The resurgence of public chains and the entry into the MEME market
After witnessing the success of Solana and Base in activating on-chain activity through MEME, Fantom also launched its own MEME season. On May 21st, the Fantom Foundation introduced the Meme Season competition, with a prize pool of 10 million FTM. Based on the current FTM price of approximately $0.8, the total value of this prize pool will reach $8 million.
According to official sources, this competition aims to focus on top memecoins on the Opera and upcoming Sonic chains. It is also an important strategic move to complement the upgrade to Sonic. The competition will be held in multiple rounds, with the first round taking place from June 1st to June 30th, with a prize pool of 1 million sFTMx (FTM staked through Beethoven X).
The competition will measure market capitalization, gas usage, and trading volume to determine scores, with market capitalization accounting for 50%, gas fees accounting for 35%, and trading volume accounting for 15%. It is worth noting that trading volume on centralized exchanges or other networks outside of Opera will not be considered in this competition. At the end of each round, the top 3 memecoins will be declared winners.
In each round, 80% of the prize pool will be awarded to the top 3 winning memecoin projects’ holders, weighted based on their holdings. The remaining 20% will be allocated to the teams behind these 3 memecoins. The prize distribution for the first round is as follows:
Winner 1 = 600k sFTMx (480k for holders, 120k for the team)
Winner 2 = 300k sFTMx (240k for holders, 60k for the team)
Winner 3 = 100k sFTMx (80k for holders, 20k for the team)
However, Fantom has not specified that the MEME projects participating in the competition must be newly issued tokens. Therefore, several existing MEME coins on Fantom may have an advantage. Additionally, with only 3 winning spots available in each round, new projects may face challenges due to limited opportunities.
The heat of MEME has yet to be activated
To facilitate widespread user participation, the Fantom Foundation recommended four one-click token issuance platforms on Twitter: Degen Express, Super Pump, fTails, and Bedrock Finance. Based on PANews research, these platforms are similar to the popular one-click token issuance platform Pump.fun on Solana, but they differ significantly in terms of activity. Degen Express has higher activity, but the highest market capitalization token on the platform is only around $27,000. The other platforms are relatively inactive. Super Pump has a total of 11 MEME coins listed (as of May 26th), but they are all in a non-trading state with a market capitalization of 0.
As of May 26th, it seems that the MEME competition has not yet shown its full effect. There were only 20 new Fantom trading pairs listed in the past 24 hours, compared to 1,252 on Solana and 2,088 on Base. The highest number of transactions for a new listing on Fantom was only 24. Perhaps with the official start of the MEME season on June 1st, the impact of these efforts will become more apparent.
Token swap is possible, but community resistance to token issuance
In addition to launching the MEME competition to increase excitement for the Sonic chain, Fantom introduced a new token, $S, to complete its brand upgrade. The proposal for the Sonic Network provides a detailed description of the governance plan for the new token, $S. The proposal suggests that when the Sonic chain is launched, the supply of $S will match the supply of $FTM to achieve a seamless 1:1 migration process. Regarding the possible governance plans for the future of $S, Proposal 2 and Proposal 3 suggest minting additional $S tokens for operations, airdrops, and incentivizing ecosystem projects.
As of now, the specific details of Proposal 2 and Proposal 3 have not been officially announced, but many community members have expressed concerns about these proposals. User Paintball l26 commented, “Do Proposal 2 and Proposal 3 have any specific numbers? Strongly oppose a blank check for dilution without knowing the multiple, allocating billions of FTM for specific purposes and then requesting further dilution.” Another user, STACHE, stated, “I don’t think Proposal 2 or Proposal 3 is necessary. I dare say that 5-10% of FTM will be unable to migrate due to loss, burned LP, and other reasons. If the initial supply is the same, then 5-10% is definitely enough to cover Proposal 2 and Proposal 3, right? Many people’s biggest concern is further dilution.”
Overall, the Sonic upgrade is the most important narrative for Fantom, starting from the introduction of Sonic and parallel EVM in March, followed by the performance narrative of 2,000 TPS, and now the MEME season and new token plans. These efforts demonstrate Fantom’s determination to revive. However, the market reaction to the FTM token has not shown significant fluctuations due to these narratives (the current price is hovering around $0.8, similar to before the Sonic announcement in March). The new Sonic chain will further enhance Fantom’s performance and brand influence, but true on-chain activity and a more reasonable token economic model may be the key to attracting more users, and these aspects are still in the validation stage.
