Sophon is shutting down its own Layer 2 network and moving the project to Base, making a clean break from the idea that it needs to operate its own chain. The team said on June 25, 2026 that it will decommission the ZK-powered network built on the zkSync stack, while keeping the chain live through at least the end of 2026 to support migration. Deposits to the Sophon chain were blocked starting the same day.
A funded L2 project steps away from running its own chain
The project had raised $60 million, but the chain itself was costing between $3 million and $3.4 million per year in infrastructure and tooling. Sophon said that expense was not producing anything meaningfully distinct for users. After operating the network for close to nine months, the team decided that maintaining a chain was less valuable than building products people would actually use.
Base migration starts with the Pyre payments app
The first product at the center of the move is Pyre, which is scheduled to launch in early July. Sophon describes it as an onchain payments app built around what it calls “Onchain Entertainment.” According to the team, Pyre will let users spend, save, send, and earn yield in one app, with transactions designed to feel more interactive than a standard payment flow.
Base was chosen for product reasons as well. Sophon said the network offers broader consumer reach and a more active builder community, traits that fit a payments app aiming to grow beyond the usual crypto-native audience.
Old SOPH utility ends as buybacks and burns take over
With the chain being phased out, SOPH’s previous role as a gas token and staking asset is also being retired. In its place, Sophon plans to use revenue from Pyre to fund an ongoing SOPH buyback program. The revenue sources listed by the team are interchange fees from card transactions, performance fees from vault usage, and yield earned on reserves backing its stablecoin.
A portion of that revenue will be used to buy SOPH on the open market. Those tokens will then be burned permanently, rather than redistributed to holders. The first burn is scheduled for June 28 and will remove more than 46.5 million SOPH, sourced from unused staking rewards and node buyback pools.
At the time cited in the source material, SOPH was trading at $0.0048, down 6.84% over 24 hours. The token had a market capitalization of about $9.53 million, with a circulating supply of 2 billion out of a total supply of 10 billion.
Guardian NFT rewards continue before shifting to Ethereum
Guardian NFT holders do not need to change anything right now to keep receiving their rewards. Reward streams will continue vesting on Sophon for three more months, until September 29, 2026 at 12AM GMT. After that point, rewards will begin accruing on Ethereum mainnet instead.
The move lays out Sophon’s new position clearly: product differentiation, in the team’s view, no longer comes from owning a general-purpose chain. It comes from applications. Pyre will be the first live test of that bet once the migration to Base gets underway.