Binance Alpha launches the "King-level Project" SOON. Can 22 million yuan financing withstand the valuation bubble?

Author: Lawrence, Mars Finance

On May 19, 2025, Binance Alpha platform officially announced that it will launch SOON tokens ($SOON) on May 23, becoming the first trading platform to integrate the project. This action not only marks a key breakthrough in the Solana virtual machine (SVM) ecosystem in the Layer2 track, but also means that modular blockchain technology has entered a new stage of large-scale application. As a star project with a financing of more than US$22 million in 2025, SOON attempts to solve the performance bottlenecks and cross-chain interoperability problems of public chains such as Ethereum. The community-led allocation mechanism and potential value capture capabilities in token economics have attracted much attention from the market.

1. Team background: From Aleo to SVM infrastructure, gather top industry

resources

SOON 's core team can be called the "all-star lineup" in the blockchain field.

CEO Joanna Zeng has served as vice president of Aleo, a private public chain, leading the commercialization of zero-crossing knowledge proof technology. Earlier, he has accumulated a lot of Layer2 development experience in institutions such as Coinbase and OP Labs.

Chief Marketing Officer Ruki Hu is born in JDI Global, a top investment bank in Hong Kong. He has led investment in SVM ecological projects such as Sonic SVM. His strategic management background at the HSBC Business School of Peking University provides methodological support for SOON's market expansion.

Technical leader AndrewZ is a Rust language expert. He has participated in Solana's core client development and has profound experience in optimizing SVM architecture.

It is worth noting that SOON's consulting team includes heavyweights such as Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko and Celestia core developer Mustafa Al-Bassam. This triple resource integration of "technology + capital + ecology" has enabled it to quickly stand out in the highly competitive Rollup track.

2. Financing process: Innovation in community-based fundraising

paradigm, building a moat with US$22 million

Image from @_FORAB

SOON's financing path breaks the traditional venture capital-led model and creates an innovative fundraising mechanism of "NFT offering + community co-construction".

In January 2025, the project raised $22 million through stratified NFT sales, of which 51% of the tokens were distributed fairly through three categories of NFTs: the $900 gear provides 3-month linear unlocked short-term liquidity, the $2,850 gear is designed for a 12-month lock-up period to screen long-term holders, while the $22,500 high threshold gear is locked for 36 months, attracting strategic investors to deeply participate in ecological construction. This design not only avoids the selling pressure of VC shares on the secondary market, but also distinguishes user risk preferences through time dimensions.

The investment lineup also reflects the industry recognition - led by top institutions such as Hack VC and ABCDE Capital, supported by strategic parties such as Solana Ecological Fund and Celestia Labs, and even traditional capital IDG and PAKA are rarely made. The funds are mainly invested in three major directions: 40% is used for the research and development of main network and cross-chain protocols, 30% is invested in the developer ecological incentive plan, and the remaining 30% is reserved for responding to market volatility and security audits.

3. Technical architecture: Decouple SVM to reconstruct performance

boundaries, and modular design defines industry standards

SOON's technological innovation revolves around three core components:

​​1. SOON mainnet: Ethereum’s first SVM Rollup execution layer

By decoupling the Solana virtual machine (SVM) from the native consensus, the SOON mainnet achieves 50 millisecond block time and 30,000 TPS throughput on Ethereum, which is more than 5 times higher than OP Rollup such as Optimism. Its key technological breakthroughs are:

• Merklization optimization: Use Merkle root compressed state verification data to increase cross-chain transaction verification efficiency by 80%;
• Horizontal scaling architecture: distributed nodes process transactions in parallel, combined with data availability solutions such as EigenDA, can be elastically expanded to 650,000 TPS;
• Native cross-chain settlement: Use Ethereum as the final settlement layer, and is compatible with modular DA solutions such as Celestia and Avail to reduce Gas costs to 1/10 of Arbitrum.

​​2. SOON Stack: Multi-chain Rollup Deployment Framework​​

Developers can deploy customized SVM Layer2 in one-click public chains such as BNB Chain and Ton through SOON Stack. Test network data shows that the svmBNB chain built on this framework has achieved 15,000 TPS and supports high-performance scenarios such as AI proxy transactions and real-time game engines. This "Lego" architecture makes SOON the first universal Rollup solution across the EVM and non-EVM ecosystems.

​​3. InterSOON protocol: No intermediary cross-chain communication layer

Based on Hyperlane's improved messaging protocol, it allows assets to interact directly with smart contracts between multiple chains, eliminating the risk of custody of cross-chain bridges. In Solana and Ethereum test cases, the USDC cross-chain transfer time was reduced from an average of 8 minutes to 22 seconds, and the handling fee was reduced by 95%.

SOON Token Investment Value Assessment: Unlocking the Dual Risk of

Selling Pressure and Valuation Bubble

Although SOON has attracted market attention with its technological architecture innovation and community-based token allocation mechanism, its investment risks are significantly amplified under the dual pressure of the token unlocking cycle and the imbalance of the valuation model. The following analyzes the potential risks from the dimensions of structural defects in token economics, market supply and demand imbalances, and comparison of similar projects.

1. Token unlocking mechanism burys the hidden danger of large-scale selling pressure

According to the token allocation plan announced by SOON, 51% of tokens are distributed through the community (including NFT pre-sale), while the team and co-builders hold 10% of the shares, and the foundation and ecological incentives account for 31%. Although the project party emphasizes the "linear unlocking" design, the actual unlocking rhythm may still trigger a wave of selling in the market:

The short-term arbitrage motivation for NFT holders: Among the 510 million tokens allocated by the community, the 3,200 tokens corresponding to the first level (900 USD NFT) are only locked for 3 months. The costs of such investors are concentrated in the range of USD 0.28-0.31. If the initial price of the listing exceeds USD 0.5, the pressure to take profit settlement will be released quickly 68. Historical data shows that the proportion of retail investors selling up to 65%-80% within 30 days after unlocking, which may lead to a surge in circulation by more than 50%.

​​The delay impact of team and institutions unlocking: Although the 100 million tokens held by the team are set to a 12-month lock-up period, combined with the experience of similar projects, the average reduction ratio of core members after the lock-up period expires is more than 40%. According to the current FDV (full diluted valuation), the potential selling pressure is US$400 million35. In addition, the off-market shares held by strategic investors (such as Hack VC, ABCDE Capital) may be transferred in advance through the OTC market, indirectly increasing the supply of the secondary market.

Eco-incentive token dumping risk: Eco-development funds (250 million) that account for 25% of the total amount adopt the "on-demand release" mechanism, but the project party often sends over-issues rewards to attract developers. Referring to the operational data of projects such as Optimism, the actual circulation speed of ecological incentive tokens is 2-3 times faster than planned, and an additional 50 million tokens may be released every year.

2. Valuation bubble: The FDV/TVL ratio seriously deviates from the industry benchmark

Based on the analysis of the SOON main network's complete dilution valuation (FDV) before the SOON main network is online, if the preset total amount of 1 billion tokens is calculated based on the lowest NFT pre-sale valuation (USD 90 million FDV), the FDV/TVL (total locked value) ratio is as high as 18.7 (assuming TVL is USD 5 million), far exceeding mature Layer2 projects such as Optimism (2.3), Arbitrum (1.8). Even compared with Sonic SVM (FDV US$220 million, TVL US$110 million), which is also a SVM ecosystem, SOON's valuation still has a significant premium, but technological differentiation has not yet formed a moat.

What is more worthy of attention is that market sentiment has overdrawn technical expectations in advance. Although the SOON mainnet TPS (30,000) is higher than the mainstream Rollup, the Celestia DA layer it relies on has not undergone large-scale stress testing, and the actual performance may be discounted by 30%-50%. Once the main network is launched, the support logic of FDV will collapse quickly.

3. The competitive landscape deteriorates: the window period for technology first-mover advantage shortens

SOON's core narrative - decoupling SVM and modular architecture - is facing direct impact from projects such as Eclipse and Movement. Eclipse has received a $50 million financing led by Polychain Capital and announced the deployment of SVM-based universal Rollup on Solana, with its developer tool compatibility and ecological resource integration capabilities better than SOON. In addition, the cost advantage of Celestia's native DA layer (60% lower than SOON) further undermines the persuasiveness of its modular story.

From the perspective of market share, the SOON test network only attracted more than 80 DApps to migrate, while the number of developers in Arbitrum and zkSync exceeded 3,000 during the same period. The lag of ecological cold start may lead to it becoming a "technical laboratory" rather than a practical application layer.

4. Investment advice: Risk avoidance in high volatility cycles

In summary, SOON tokens will enter a concentrated release period of risk from May to August 2025:

• ​​Short term (1-3 months)​​: The liquidity premium in the early stages of Binance Alpha's launch may push the price to $0.4-0.5, but as the first round of NFT unlocking (August) approaches, market panic will trigger a pullback, with support at $0.22 below.
• ​​Medium term (6-12 months)​​​: Team and institutional token unlocking (Q1 2026) may form secondary selling pressure. If TVL does not exceed US$200 million during the same period, the FDV/TVL ratio will return to the industry average, and the token price may be halved to the range of US$0.1-0.15.
• ​​​Long-term (more than 1 year)​​: Competition in modular tracks is getting fierce. If SOON fails to achieve a breakthrough in cross-chain interoperability, tokens may become "governance tools" and lose their value capture capabilities.

For investors with low risk preference, it is recommended to wait and see the on-chain data (TVL, cross-chain asset scale, developer activity) after the main network is online for 3 months, and then layout it at the right time after the technology is verified and the supply and demand of tokens is rebalanced.

Conclusion: Valuation Trap under Innovation Narrative

Although SOON's modular vision is in line with the industry's evolution trend, its token model design and market competition pattern have not yet formed a safety margin. When the technical halo fades, the resonance between unlocking the selling pressure and the valuation bubble may trigger a double kill from Davis. At the moment when the Layer2 war has entered the decisive stage of "application implementation", investors should pay more attention to the creation of ecological real value rather than the inverter game with technical parameters.