Binance Alpha to launch soon—why did we invest in Sophon?
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Binance Alpha to launch soon—why did we invest in Sophon?
Sophon is building a Web3 entertainment ecosystem covering gaming, social, ticketing, and AI, striving to achieve the mainstream vision of "invisible technology, visible value."
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Inception Capital
Sophon is a Validium Layer 2 network built on zkSync Elastic Chain, dedicated to building a Web3 consumer application ecosystem for mainstream users, covering gaming, social, artificial intelligence, and prediction markets.
Binance Alpha will list and open trading for Sophon (SOPH) on May 28, 2025, at 21:00 (UTC+8). Additionally, Binance Futures will launch the SOPHUSDT perpetual contract on May 28, 2025, at 21:30 (UTC+8).
Inception had the privilege of participating in Sophon’s early-stage investment in 2024. While congratulating Sophon on its upcoming Binance listing, we would also like to share the rationale behind Inception’s decision to invest in this project during 2023–2024.
1. The Origins Between Inception and Sophon:
Inception Capital, as an early-stage blockchain and frontier technology investment firm, has consistently focused on the composability and user growth potential of on-chain gaming and virtual worlds. Inception Capital previously invested early in Beam (formerly Merit Circle), a decentralized DAO gaming guild built on Ethereum and BSC. Its founder, Mark Borsten, is an experienced gamer with years of background in crypto investments.
Through our conversations with Mark, we deeply appreciated his unique understanding of gaming experiences and on-chain architecture. Therefore, when we learned in 2023 that Beam was incubating Sophon—a high-performance public chain specifically designed for gaming and AI use cases—we began engaging with Sophon. At the time, the product was still in its earliest stages, the token mechanism unproven, and the user base yet to form. As such, our investment decision hinged largely on our assessment of the team. Especially in gaming, successful teams are often deeply embedded within gaming communities, possessing profound insights into user behavior and cultural dynamics.
2. Why Do We Still Need a Public Chain Dedicated to Gaming/Entertainment?
Sophon is not a theoretical new blockchain, but rather evolved from Beam’s internal infrastructure upgrade initiative—Beam already hosts over 100+ gaming projects. However, long-term, it's impractical for “every game to run its own chain.” What they truly need is a single chain serving the entire gaming ecosystem, offering a unified entry point and foundational protocols.
Yet, most mainstream blockchains face inherent limitations in addressing specific needs of gaming and entertainment communities, such as:
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Ethereum mainnet: While secure, its high gas fees and low TPS make it unsuitable for real-time gaming
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Solana: Despite strong performance, its ecosystem leans toward trading and memecoins, lacking incentive structures tailored for gamers
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Generic L2s like OP or Arbitrum: Solid infrastructure, but gaming remains just a small segment of their ecosystems
This explains why, despite massive industry investment and continuous technological innovation, cryptocurrency remains confined to niche markets. Sophon directly addresses these adoption barriers by focusing on the real needs of gaming and broader entertainment consumers.
As Sophon founder Seb (former DeFi lead at zkSync) stated, “We should stop forcing users to adapt to blockchain complexity. Instead, we must deliver blockchain value through familiar user scenarios—like gaming, ticketing, and social interactions—so users benefit from on-chain technology without even realizing it.” This vision strongly aligns with Inception’s long-standing mission of driving mass blockchain adoption. We believe that in the future, as users immerse themselves in entertainment, socializing, or AI interactions, blockchain’s complex technology will already be seamlessly operating in the background.
3. Technical Foresight in Architecture
Sophon has achieved significant technical breakthroughs aimed at redefining the blockchain user experience. By leveraging ZK Stack combined with a Validium architecture, it offloads most transaction processing off-chain, eliminating nearly all user-perceived gas costs and dramatically lowering the barrier to entry. Moreover, Sophon supports native account abstraction, enabling users to log in directly via Google accounts, with private keys automatically managed by smart contracts—effectively removing the friction caused by seed phrases. Additionally, the platform employs zero-knowledge proof-based batch verification, drastically reducing transaction confirmation times to levels comparable with traditional Web2 payments. These technical innovations focus not only on performance optimization but also on creating a blockchain experience that is more seamless and intuitive than Web2.
4. Current Progress
In May this year, Sophon launched its latest zkTLS "Social Oracle" system, allowing users to bring achievements and social data from Web2 platforms like Spotify and Steam onto the blockchain while preserving privacy, thereby creating a more personalized on-chain identity system. As of May 2025, Sophon’s native token SOPH has a market cap of $32.39 million, with a circulating supply of 328.9 billion tokens. It is already listed on exchanges including MEXC, KuCoin, and Bitget, and will be listed on Binance spot and perpetual futures on May 28. Sophon is building a Web3 entertainment ecosystem spanning gaming, social, ticketing, and AI, striving toward its mainstream vision of “invisible technology, visible value.”
We greatly admire Sophon’s team for their commitment to long-termism and their innovative exploration of integrating Web2 and Web3. We believe Sophon will work hand-in-hand with its community to build a thriving, sustainable innovation ecosystem that benefits creators and users alike. As one of the few Asian funds actively investing even during bear markets, we look forward to collaborating with more founders who share this vision.
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