Sophon Shuts Down Its zkSync Chain and Rebuilds as a Consumer App Studio on Base

Sophon is decommissioning its zkSync-based Layer 2 chain and pivoting to "Soph+," a consumer product studio that will build exclusively on Base, Coinbase's Layer 2. The shutdown announcement came Thursday, capping a chain that raised $60 million through node sales but attracted fewer than 200 daily users.

Sophon launched as a zkSync-based L2/L3 in 2024, initially positioning itself as a gaming and consumer-focused chain. The project raised $60 million through node sales that year, a model that gave retail buyers a stake in network infrastructure in exchange for upfront capital. "We raised $60m in 2024 to build a chain. shipped it, helped some apps launch," Sophon posted on its website.

Matter Labs, the company behind zkSync, itself cut staff and pivoted fully to Prividium, its institutional privacy platform, in June 2026, leaving the zkSync ecosystem without its primary corporate backer focused on consumer chains.

The Numbers

The chain's usage never matched its capitalization. At the time of the shutdown announcement, Sophon was generating around $30 in daily fees and serving roughly 100 to 200 daily active users. SOPHON traded around $0.0048 on Thursday, per DefiLlama price data, down roughly 90% from its token generation event price.

Node buyers received infrastructure rights in exchange for upfront capital, meaning the project collected most of its funding before it had to demonstrate sustained user demand. That structure has proved unforgiving: the $60 million raised sits against $30 in daily fee revenue.

The Pivot

Sophon's new direction is described as a "tech studio building novel consumer experiences in crypto and ai," per the project's updated story page. The studio's thesis centers on what it calls "entertainment finance": the idea that money, like fitness and gaming before it, will become entertainment-layer content rather than pure utility.

The first product out of Soph+ is Pyre, a payment card with a gamified billing mechanic. The project describes it as: "every swipe opens a bill: flip it. or let it settle." Soph+ plans to build on Base, Coinbase's Ethereum Layer 2. Sophon's website also lists Soph Earn, Soph USD, and Soph Vaults as in-progress products, with two additional unnamed products in development. Revenue from each product is earmarked to buy back and burn SOPH.

SOPH was trading at approximately $0.0048 as of Thursday, per DefiLlama, down roughly 90% from its TGE. Holders who bought nodes in 2024 at prices that implied a much higher token valuation are sitting on deep losses.

The Broader L2 Shakeout

Sophon is the latest in a string of smaller Layer 2 and Layer 3 projects that have wound down or restructured in 2026. Polychain-backed Botanix Labs shut down its Spiderchain Bitcoin L2 in June, citing insufficient demand for Bitcoin-native DeFi. In April, Scroll moved to dissolve its Security Council and slash contributor roles across its DAO. Across all three, projects raised capital on a vision of demand that did not materialize.

The zkSync ecosystem has taken multiple hits this year. Matter Labs' shift away from consumer ZK-rollups leaves the protocol without a clear flagship chain just as several of its highest-profile ecosystem projects are closing.

Sophon's move to Base is a bet that consumer crypto products scale better on an established, high-liquidity chain than on a proprietary Layer 2 with a small captive audience. Base is one of the highest-volume chains by DEX activity and hosts several of the highest-traffic consumer applications in crypto