Known Trader Ansem Not Playing Memes, Now Promoting Sonic (formerly Fantom)? AC and Monad Team Members Clash Online
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Ansem is Bullish on Sonic
Ansem, the well-known trader who previously successfully bet on the Solana ecosystem and even propelled the meme coin WIF to fame, seems to have shifted his focus to Sonic (formerly Fantom). Fantom, the blockchain network, officially rebranded to Sonic Labs in early August, announcing the launch of Sonic, an EVM-compatible chain boasting the fastest transaction speed. The new network will also have a brand new native token, S.
Despite the dent in Ansem's reputation due to the "celebrity token" fiasco, he still holds significant influence in the crypto community.
Ansem first claimed in a tweet that Fantom Sonic could be a potential dark horse in the fourth quarter. He then followed up with a tweet outlining a series of Sonic's advantages, including:
- 10,000 TPS
- L2 cross-chain bridge
- 90% of gas fees returned to applications
- Sub-second finality
- Chain-level incentives
- Support for all the best Ethereum tools and integrations
- 5 new DeFi primitives
- Sonic Foundation has a $500 million treasury
Ansem concluded that Sonic would feel and look like an Ethereum L2 but would use its native token "S" for gas, making it faster and more efficient.
$FTM SONIC
10k tps
L2 bridge
90% of gas spent goes back to apps
Subsecond finality
Chain level incentives
All of the best eth tooling and integrations
5 new defi primitives
Sonic foundation 500m treasuryWill look/feel like an eth L2 but "S" gas and much much faster.
— Ansem 🐂🀄️ (@blknoiz06) September 15, 2024
Clash of Titans
Interestingly, Ansem's "bullish" post sparked some questioning. Tunez, a member of the Monad ecosystem marketing team, openly criticized in the comments, claiming Sonic's assertion of 10,000 TPS based on "token transfers" on-chain operations was dishonest.
Responding to Tunez's critique, Andre Cronje, CTO of Sonic, directly addressed the issue in the comments under Tunez's post. Andre Cronje stated that Sonic's blockchain TPS is verifiable by external sources, and the code is publicly accessible, allowing anyone to independently run and verify it. He considered the accusation of "dishonesty" inappropriate.
Furthermore, Andre Cronje retorted that the Monad team had emphasized their improvements focusing on parallel EVM 12 months ago, yet these improvements ultimately only increased performance by about 30%. Now, the Monad team changed their stance, stating that the issue lies with the database. Perhaps in 12 months, the Monad team will claim the problem is actually with the virtual machine.
In response to Andre Cronje's strong retort, Tunez claimed he was trying to convey that a successful blockchain comprises numerous diverse transaction types. The "number of transactions per second" itself is a meaningless metric and promoting it as a feature is unhelpful to anyone. Andre Cronje replied:
"I completely agree, but that begs the question why is your team so fixated on this metric? Sonic has always focused on finality time of transactions and true finality, you'll notice we regard that as the most important metric because it enhances performance, responsiveness, and security. It improves not only the user experience but also the developer experience, so we consider it our guiding principle. TPS is simply a byproduct of pursuing that goal. However, perhaps we can put this discussion on hold until Monad has public results to discuss."
