Cronje, Kong, Richardson Ghost-Sit Sonic Board While $S Logs Another 5% Dip 🪦

Andre Cronje, Michael Kong and David Richardson have resigned from the board of Sonic Labs, the research and development organization behind the Sonic layer-1 blockchain, formerly known as the Fantom Foundation. The exits were announced on Friday alongside the appointment of Matt Visser as CEO and Kosta Kourkoumelis as chief operating officer. The three former executives will retain their stakes in the network but will no longer make business decisions, Sonic Labs said. "These are the people who built what Sonic is today. They remain invested in Sonic's success and are handing off their responsibilities the right way, in full. From here, they will no longer make business decisions for the organization," the organization said.

The S token fell 5% to $0.031 over 24 hours following the announcement, extending a decline that has taken it down roughly 91% from its $1.03 high in January 2025. CoinGecko co-founder Bobby Ong wrote on X: "Woke up today to read about Andre Cronje resigning from Sonic Labs board. Checked CoinGecko and see that token is down 90% in last 1 year. Market cap $116m. So many projects are struggling so much this bear market. Tough year, but probably we haven't bottomed yet unfortunately." S's market capitalization stood at approximately $111 million, ranking the token near 250th globally, with the price hovering just above the record low set on June 6. The drawdown mirrors a deeper collapse on the capital side: DefiLlama data shows Sonic's total value locked has fallen about 98% from a 2025 peak above $1.1 billion to roughly $18 million.

Sonic Labs acknowledged the damage in unusually blunt terms. "We are not going to open with a victory lap. The token is down. Community sentiment is down. We see both clearly, we are not spinning it, and we are not asking anyone to pretend otherwise," the team said. Visser becomes the second chief executive in nine months, following Mitchell Demeter's departure in February, four months after his September appointment to court institutional capital. The leadership change comes with commitments to more transparent governance, clearer project communications and the creation of a dedicated risk and compliance committee, while Sonic Labs said it carries no venture capital unlocks and funds development from a diversified treasury.

Cronje, a co-founder of the Fantom Foundation and a central figure in early decentralized finance, left his prior projects abruptly in 2022 and has since turned his attention to Flying Tulip, a new exchange he is raising money to build. The Sonic blockchain, which claims to provide 10,000 transactions per second and subsecond finality, completed its rebrand from Fantom to Sonic in January 2025, replacing the legacy Fantom Opera network. The leadership shuffle follows a series of departures from the Ethereum Foundation, including co-executive director Hsiao-Wei Wang's Thursday exit and 19 other layoffs and resignations recorded this year, underscoring a wider contraction across major development organizations.