Ethereum-Based Project SOON Nets $22M From NFT Sales

Solana Optimistic Network (SOON) has raised $22 million from selling non-fungible tokens (NFTs), dubbed COMMing SOON, to 3,015 participants in its latest funding round. The project also launched its much-anticipated general-purpose Ethereum-based layer-2 mainnet.

SOON is an Ethereum-based project that uses the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) as its execution layer. This enables the integration of smart contracts and decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols. SOON’s adoption of SVM enables the parallel processing of transactions, unlike the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which uses a sequential processing model.

The SOON mainnet, built on Ethereum, claims to surpass Solana in speed and efficiency. Its average block time is 50 milliseconds, compared to Solana’s 400 milliseconds.

SOON Raises $22M from NFTs

Among the participants in the NFT sale were Hack VC, Hypersphere, SNZ Capital, ABCDE, Web3Port Labs, MH Ventures, and Anagram.

While most projects raise cash through conventional methods like initial coin offerings (ICOs), initial public offerings (IPOs), and other funding mechanisms, SOON takes a different route by employing NFTs to aid crowdfunding. The project’s co-founder and CEO, Joanna Zeng, echoed this in a statement, saying:

“While many founders chose a traditional route and raised exclusively from VC, we chose to offer equal deal terms for VCs and our community, ensuring a fair launch token distribution and allowing both to participate on an equal footing.”

The Ethereum-based project commenced the COMMing SOON NFTs minting process on January 14th, the first among three rounds to launch before the end of February. The protocol also promises that 51% of its SOON token supply will be airdropped to NFT holders.

Three sets of NFTs were offered in the COMMing SOON round — SOON-PILLED, SOON Squad, and SOONers. After the sale completion, 545 SOON Squad collectibles and 179 SOONers remain, which have now been earmarked for the community and other existing NFT holders.

SOON’s massive engagement shows that investors are still interested in the NFT market despite claims of it being dead.