Turn the tables against the wind and seek the real storm under the Web3 sea.

In his 26 years of life, he has crossed multiple fields and calls himself an “explorer”, yet always seeks real storms beneath the calm sea. He is best known for leading the Sonic project, which, together with the team, has won a story of securing 16 million US dollars in financing. He is Chris Zhu, founder and CEO of Mirror World. Sonic, under Mirror World, is the first atomically interconnected SVM Layer 2 project in the Solana ecosystem, still leading technological innovation, aiming to ultimately settle the sovereign game economy on Solana. Today, let’s talk about Chris’s story - from initial exploration to current achievements, and understand how this young founder is pioneering new routes in the ever-changing Web3 field.Chris Zhu

Entering the Circle: A ‘Turning Point’

Prior to his Web3 career, Chris was passionate about culture and fashion, and as a student, he interned at a number of top fashion companies, laying the first cornerstone for his future career. After returning to China, he worked for Bilibili, Deloitte, and USD Ventures for a while, however, it was the ByteDance experience that really made Chris re-examine his career path. After joining ByteDance’s strategic investment team, he quickly noticed that he lacked passion for projects that were repeatedly packaged and redefined. A lot of things seem trendy, but in essence they are just renovations of past theories. He admits that the technologies that were originally exciting can actually be boiled down to “known repetitions”. He gradually realized that what he really longed for was an exploration without boundaries, rather than relying on path dependence to wander left and right. This reflection prompted him to set his sights on Web3 and AI. In 2021, he joined rct AI, a company exploring the combination of AI and Block chains. That year, in the midst of the Non-fungible Token craze, he led the team to create a unique collection of Non-fungible Tokens, Mirror World, which generated $1.3 million in revenue in just 45 days, and later became the name of their company.

The success of the Non-fungible Token project inspired him to explore a wider range of possibilities, and he began to think about how to use blockchain technology to create a truly connected world. This thinking led him to the Solana chain, where he chose to further expand the ecological territory of Mirror World. At first, they went in many directions, including Polygon, StarkWare, Arbitrum, etc., but in the end he chose Solana, because in his opinion, Solana is not only a public chain with excellent technical performance, but also a digital city-state that can support the explosion of large-scale financial applications. In early 2022, Chris’s team decided to seek a seed round of funding for the project. With the outstanding performance of the early products and the forward-looking team of the team, they quickly attracted the attention of capital, and some well-known investment institutions have thrown olive branches to them. Subsequently, in the Pre-A round of funding, Chris and his team successfully raised $4 million, which injected significant impetus into the development of the project. The company almost collapsedI thought it would be a good start,**but the collapse of FTX that year had a cascading effect on them. "We raised about $4 million at the time, of which about $1.2 million was deposited in FTX, plus some money paid to partners. At the time, we didn’t anticipate that the collapse of FTX would trigger a ripple effect. Because by the second half of 2022, the Mirror World team had rapidly expanded to 29 people, and the sudden collapse of FTX almost caught the team off guard, and the funds could not be withdrawn. After the FTX incident, the number of Mirror World’s customers dropped dramatically. In the past, their clients were mainly gaming projects on Solana to help them issue assets, but the impact of FTX has put the team at an unprecedented low. In the absence of an external energy injection, the industry has become increasingly difficult to function, and the pressure of entropy has nearly suffocated the Mirror World team. **"At the beginning of 2024, our working capital has almost bottomed out, with less than two months left to survive. The options we faced at this point included looking for the possibility of a merger or sale of the team, but the negotiations did not go well. **We finally decided to go all-in on Sonic. **”

Chris ZhuTeam: Leveraging the Challenges and Breakthroughs of Eastern and Western Cultures on SolanaIn March 2024, Mirror World announced the launch of Sonic, a game chain based on SVM HyperGrid on Solana. According to Mirror World, Sonic is the first Gaming Chain on Solana and introduces the first scalability architecture, HyperGrid, which enables game developers to efficiently handle and manage game states, logic, and events. In this conversation, Chris shared the team’s development process on Solana, the complex situation they faced, and how he views the collaboration among team members. ‘By building a game chain on Solana, we see opportunities to bring users and diversity to the ecosystem. Although certain types of blockchain games have been proven unsuccessful, games that focus on users and traffic can still bring new user increments and drive industry development,’ he explained. The team persists in the Web3 gaming track, and as they see fewer and fewer peers survive, it becomes the driving force for Chris’s team to continue moving forward. Coupled with the acceptance of RON and IMX by retail investors in the ETH ecosystem, Sonic’s popularity has multiplied, making them one of the fastest-growing teams in the Solana ecosystem.

Chris, the Sonic official website page, believes that the team’s diverse background has also added a lot of points to the project. The team not only has deep Asian resources but also has an international perspective. Whether it is the market leader with American blood but born in Korea, or the CTO who grew up in Uganda, they are adept at integrating resources across regions. Ultimately, this diverse background and the team’s deep understanding and firm belief in the blockchain ecosystem have contributed to the current trajectory of the project. Talking about the division of labor of the core team, Chris used the following metaphor: “My role is like a net that can capture all kinds of information and contacts in the industry. I am responsible for breadth, ensuring that we understand every important direction.” Then he said: “For example, our product partner Jialin is like a sword. When I capture enough information, Jialin can help us quickly find a breakthrough and focus on a clear solution. When we cooperate, I spread out first, capture valuable information, and then quickly close the net. Jialin then breaks through in the form of a ‘sword’.” Another core member of the team, Jonathan, is described by Chris as a “guardian.” “He is like a city wall, strong and resilient. Jonathan is from Uganda, studied in the United States and China, and has not returned home for four or five years during the epidemic, and has been persistently in Beijing alone.” Chris described. Jonathan is responsible for tackling the most difficult technical problems, is the backbone of the team, and is a firm force to protect the team’s progress.Team member introduction, picture from: RootdataChris revealed that they experienced a life-or-death test in March this year. Every morning, he asks himself, ‘Should I give up?’ The answer is always no because he doesn’t want to lose. So, Chris and the team decided to face the challenges and seek a new round of financing. However, the road was not smooth. They were constantly rejected, and almost every meeting made them anxious and uneasy. Later, they met Mr. Cao Darong from Sky9 Capital (former general manager of Lightspeed China Partners), who not only became the main supporter of this round of financing but also brought more high-quality investors to the team. The injection of this funding relieved the team’s burden, not only affirming their early efforts but also giving them confidence in future development. On June 18, 2024, Sonic announced the completion of a $12 million Series A financing round, with Bitkraft Ventures leading the investment and participation from OKX Ventures, Mirana Ventures, Big Brain Holdings, Sanctor Capital, Sky9 Capital, Matt Sorg, and others. The valuation of this round of financing reached $100 million. In this round of financing, Galaxy Interactive, as one of the largest compliant service providers in the Solana ecosystem, participated again after the previous investment. Galaxy Interactive also acted as an important intermediary for FTX OTC. This support has given the team stronger market endorsement. The participating parties also include several important angel investors within the Solana ecosystem, further demonstrating trust and recognition in Sonic.

The completion of this round of financing by Rootdata marks a new stage in Sonic’s growth and gives Chris and his team more confidence in the future. Chris said. The team will use this capital to further improve Sonic’s technical architecture and accelerate its application expansion in the Web3 and Solana ecosystems. At the same time, Chris also emphasized Sonic’s goal - to become an important part of promoting the development of SVM Layer 2, achieving blockchain Interoperability, and empowering more developers and users. Chris mentioned that their team is opening up new paths, such as using TikTok as a traffic base, and through this innovative way, guiding more users into the world of Cryptocurrency.

On the road of entrepreneurship, everyone will encounter some key figures, whose influence often invisibly changes the trajectory of our lives. For this young entrepreneur, it was two special figures who first introduced him to the blockchain industry.

The first was his freshman college roommate, a very creative fren. The fren made a bold move in mid-2021 by buying a painting by street artist Banksy, burning it himself, and subsequently converting the act into a Non-fungible Token for marketing. This was not only a collision of art and technology, but also brought him into contact with the world of the Block Chain. The second figure who had a profound influence on him was another confidant, fren, who was one of the founders of Injective Protocol. The success of Injective Protocol opened his eyes to the huge potential of the blockchain industry and inspired him to explore and participate in the industry. **Looking back at his student days, mining with fren in the dormitory, the overheated power supply caused the temperature of the whole room to rise sharply, and this seemingly casual experience laid the groundwork for him to embark on the road of entrepreneurship later. Today, as a young entrepreneur, his pace of work can be described as “busy”. “In the last two years, I hardly lived in one place for more than three or four weeks,” he recalls. Whether it is at home or abroad, almost all of my time is spent on attending conferences, exchanges, business trips, etc. Although this hectic lifestyle has allowed him to accumulate a lot of business experience, it has also made him realize that such a rush is not only a drain on physical strength and energy, but also an invisible challenge to time and quality of life, so in the next stage, he wants to stay awake and focused. **

At the age of 26, standing in the wave of Web3, staying awake and focusedLooking forward to the future, he is full of confidence in the development of the company and the industry. “We are now at a very important turning point. In the next 3 to 5 years, we hope to compete with top projects in the world and achieve truly world-class achievements that belong to us.”

His goals for the future are very clear, especially in the scaling solution and Layer 2 fields, where he hopes to promote more efficient and innovative technological solutions. He does not fear future competition; instead, he values how to gain market share through product user experience and innovative business models. “Our current advantage lies in our deep cultivation of the Solana ecosystem, and there is still a lack of leading projects in the Layer 2 field, which provides us with enormous room for development.”

“My father is actually not a particularly supportive person for me to start a business, especially after leaving the financial industry and the big companies. His attitude has always put a lot of pressure on me. For him, traditional industries are stable and reliable, while entrepreneurship is full of uncertainty and may even encounter failure.” But in this conflicting emotion, Chris gradually understands that his concerns are not without reason. After all, his worldview is different from the innovative spirit I pursue. He represents stability and tradition, while I aspire to break through these fixed mindsets and create a whole new world. Although I understand him, this contradiction and struggle have made me more determined to break through my own limitations.

**Chris knows well that in this noisy industry, staying clear-headed and focused is crucial.**In the encryption industry, a rapidly developing track, apart from innovation and passion, calm judgment and clear strategy are also key to success.

In the current encryption industry, the values of assets, payments, and transactions coexist, and in the future, we will see that finance can bring tremendous value to any industry. This requires us to innovate constantly while also being clear about the problems we need to solve, rather than just pursuing short-term market trends.

Standing at the forefront of Web3, Chris deeply understands that the path of innovation is not easy. There are many difficulties and challenges ahead, but he firmly believes that only by staying awake, focused, and innovative can he find his own direction in the turbulent industry waves.