What Is Sonic (S)? The Ex-Fantom Chain Explained

Sonic (S) is the EVM layer-1 chain that replaced Fantom, and its S token rose 70 percent between the 15 and 22 September 2026 closes on CoinGecko. What is Sonic crypto in September 2026? It's a fast base chain that announced the end of every manual S mint and switched on its V2.2 upgrade on 22 September.

The calendar matters more than the headline number. By the 21 September close, before either event, S was already up 55.0 percent on CoinGecko and 68.1 percent on CoinPaprika from the 15 September close. The mint letter went up at 00:45 UTC on 22 September and the V2.2 fork activated at 11:36 UTC that same day, so the rally came first on both feeds.

What Is Sonic Crypto, and What Happened to Fantom?

Sonic is the chain that took over from Fantom Opera on 18 December 2024, and FTM holders move into S through an upgrade portal. The Sonic migration overview set a two-way swap for the first 90 days and a one-way route from FTM to S after that, so the old token still converts but the road back is closed.

Opera keeps running, but the migration page says all future development shifts to Sonic. The token docs add that Opera's reward rate dropped to zero at Sonic's launch, with the saved block rewards redirected to Sonic validators. Our guide to blockchain validators explains what those nodes do.

The Sonic S token is the chain's native coin, so it pays for gas and for staking. There's no ERC-20 contract with a mint function to inspect, which means new supply comes from the network's own issuance and from decisions Sonic Labs takes about it. That's why a letter about minting moved from housekeeping to headline in the move from Fantom to Sonic.

What Changed in Sonic V2.2 on 22 September?

Sonic V2.2 is the upgrade Sonic Labs set to go live on Tuesday 22 September 2026, and the chain's own node confirms it did.

Method: on 23 September 2026 a public Sonic RPC node was asked for its fork schedule through the eth_config call. It reported the current fork active from 11:36 UTC on 22 September at block 79,703,388, and that fork lists the gas subsidy registry among its system contracts. The node software behind it shipped earlier, with version 2.2.0 published on GitHub on 3 July 2026. So 22 September is the date the network switched the features on, while the code had been public for more than eleven weeks.

The V2.2 release notes list gas subsidies, which let an app pay its users' fees so they never need to hold S. Bundled transactions arrive alongside them, where a group of transactions either all goes through or all rolls back with nothing interleaved in between. The per-contract code limit doubles from 24 KiB to 48 KiB. The release also pulls in Ethereum's Osaka features, including native support for the secp256r1 curve that passkey-style signing relies on.

Sonic pitches itself on speed against Ethereum layer-2 networks and other base chains, and the letter frames V2.2 as the next step up from that. "Fast was the floor, and V2.2 is what we're building on top of it," it says.

Our older NEAR, Solana and Fantom comparison covers the chain Sonic grew out of, back when FTM was the ticker traders searched.

What Did Sonic Labs Cancel, and What Keeps Minting S?

The mint change came in a quarterly letter from Sonic Labs that its own page dates 21 September and its metadata stamps at 00:45 UTC on 22 September. The letter says every manual mint is being cancelled and that the only one continuing is "the automated emissions mint that pays validators."

The letter doesn't list the programmes one by one, so the S token documentation is the place to see what was on the books. It describes an ongoing funding issue of 47,625,000 S a year for six years, first minted on 18 June 2025, with any unused tokens burned at year end. It also sets out 190.5 million S for the airdrop in phases and 472,372,662.8 S issued on 4 September 2025 for a US institutional push, with a further $50 million in S allowed for an ETF effort. The letter doesn't say which of those still had mints pending on 22 September. Treat the cancellation as a statement about future issuance, because nothing on the page claws back tokens already minted.

Validator issuance is what stays, so S still has token inflation built in. The docs target a 3.5 percent annual reward when half of all S is staked, falling to 1.75 percent if every token is staked and rising to 7 percent at a quarter staked. They also say Sonic's first four years pay validators from block rewards moved over from Opera, with fresh issuance of 1.75 percent a year starting after that. The letter's wording and that four-year schedule don't line up neatly, and it's one more reason the supply audit matters.

The airdrop carries its own burn. Holders who claim before a 270-day maturation period lose part of the 75 percent share that vests over that period, and those tokens are burned, which is how Sonic's version of a crypto airdrop trims supply over time.

When Did the S Token Rally Start?

Method: every figure below is a daily close taken as the 00:00 UTC point on the following date, from CoinGecko and CoinPaprika. Each is measured against the 15 September close of $0.025480 on CoinGecko and $0.025477 on CoinPaprika.

The move was well under way three days before either event. By the 18 September close S was up 27.0 percent on CoinGecko and 28.2 percent on CoinPaprika, the one checkpoint where the two feeds nearly agree. By the 20 September close the gain had reached 56.8 percent on CoinGecko and 53.4 percent on CoinPaprika.

The 21 September close is the last one before the letter and the fork, and it shows S up 55.0 percent on CoinGecko and 68.1 percent on CoinPaprika. Both events then landed inside the 22 September session, the letter at 00:45 UTC and the fork at 11:36 UTC. By that session's close the week read 70.0 percent on CoinGecko, from $0.025480 to $0.043309. Put the dates side by side and most of the rally sits before both headlines on either feed.

CoinPaprika was still revising its point for the 22 September close through 23 September as the next day traded. So, the headline's 70 percent comes from CoinGecko, and CoinPaprika's week stops at its settled 21 September close.

For scale, CoinGecko records the all-time low at $0.01906602 on 25 June 2026, and the 22 September close stands at 2.27 times that level.

Why Do Two Feeds Report a Different S Token Supply?

CoinGecko's 23 September read lists 3,885,497,663 S in circulation, the same figure it shows as total supply. CoinPaprika lists 3,175,000,000 S as both total and maximum supply, a gap of 710,497,663 S between two trackers pricing the same coin.

That gap is the question the letter's audit exists to answer. Sonic Labs says it has commissioned "an independent third-party audit of the S token supply and related reporting" and expects the final report "within the next few weeks" of the letter. It says it will publish the findings and discuss what has to change after that.

Until that report lands, a market cap built on either number is a guess, and I wouldn't print one. The two feeds' settled closes from 15 to 21 September sit anywhere from under 0.1 percent to 13.2 percent apart on price, and that gap moves from day to day. The 710 million coin gap in supply stays put, so the count of coins is the disagreement that matters here.

Can You Trade Sonic on Phemex?

Its perpetual is delisted. Phemex's product list pulled on 23 September 2026 carries the S/USDT perpetual that opened on 17 January 2025 with a delisted status. The S/USDT spot pair that opened on 16 January 2025 shows the same. There is no live perpetual for S, so the futures links on this page are general ones and aren't tied to Sonic.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Sonic the same project as Sonic SVM, the one trading as SONIC?

No. CoinGecko tracks Sonic SVM as a separate asset under the ticker SONIC, while Sonic's ticker is S. The same search also returns USSD, which the Sonic Labs letter describes as Frax's frxUSD white-labelled for Sonic.

How long does it take to unstake S tokens on the Sonic chain?

The S token docs set a 14-day waiting period on withdrawals from staking. A validator penalised for misconduct or a faulty setup can also cut into the stake delegated to it, so the choice of validator carries real risk.

Where does Sonic Labs appear next on the event calendar after the letter?

The letter lists Hack Seasons events in Seoul on Thursday 1 October and in Singapore on Thursday 8 October. It also names an Open Board session at Token2049 on Tuesday 6 October.

Bottom Line

The calendar says the market bought the Sonic story before Sonic Labs told it. Both feeds had S up more than half on the week by the 20 September close, and the supply letter and the V2.2 fork both arrived in the 22 September session.

What the week didn't settle is how much S exists, and the audit will be the first document to put a number on it. Until then, the cancelled mints are a promise about the future and the validator mint is a fact about the present.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice. Cryptocurrency trading involves substantial risk. Always do your own research before making investment decisions.