Solana layer-2 blockchain Sonic has surpassed a significant staking milestone by announcing a new partnership to fuel the growing restaking industry on the Solana Network.
Sonic, the first gaming-focused Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) L2 network, has partnered with re-staking platform Solayer and liquid re-staking layer Adrastea to enhance Solana delegator rewards.
According to an announcement shared with Cointelegraph, the partnership comes as Sonic SVM surpassed $50 million worth of Solana (SOL) stake mandates in Solayer.
This makes Sonic SVM the largest delegated Actively Validated Service (AVS) on Solayer.
According to Chris Zhu, founder and CEO of Sonic SVM, the $50 million milestone highlights the growth potential of Solana’s staking and re-staking ecosystem. He told Cointelegraph:
“This highlights that Solana’s decentralized services, such as Sonic AVS, are becoming increasingly sophisticated and mature. Liquid staking tokens now go beyond basic staking and improve the security and value of a variety of services, including network expansion.”
Liquid staking has grown to become the largest protocol category on Ethereum, with a cumulative value of $44 billion, while re-staking is the fifth largest protocol category, at $15 billion, according to DefiLlama data.
Ethereum by protocol category. Source: DefiLlama
Some blockchain builders are expecting similar explosive growth from Solana-based restaking and liquid staking solutions.
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Can Solana restore the growth of rival Ethereum?
According to Sonic’s Zhu, Solana-based restaking could potentially achieve significant growth by aligning with Ethereum’s ecosystem.
Zhu added that innovations in other Solana-based protocols, such as Jito, Solayer, and Fragmetric, can significantly contribute to the network’s ecosystem resurgence.
“Solana is setting the stage for a future where the ecosystem is highly distributed and capable of managing more complex and higher-risk applications. This dynamic approach will propel Solana’s staking ecosystem into a key role, potentially surpassing Ethereum in diversity and adoption.”
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Others also see potential in the niche. Bybit Research predicts that Solana-based liquid staking will increase more than 5x due to continued retail adoption.
Bybit Research told Cointelegraph:
“In our view, Solana has tremendous potential for liquid staking thanks to its active staking community. According to Ethereum’s LST market statistics, Solana’s LST market could potentially grow to $18 billion.”
Liquid Staking TVL, Solana. Source: DefiLlama
According to DefiLlama data, the TVL value of Solana-based liquid staking stands at $5.9 billion at public disclosure.
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