Aiming to scale the Solana blockchain to game-quality speed and efficiency, Sonic SVM plans to sell $12.8 million worth of validator nodes in its decentralized framework called HyperGrid. This framework was designed to support new application private networks.

The sale will take place the week of September 16 and will be the first node sale in the Solana blockchain ecosystem. The team stated that the sale will include 50,000 “Hyperfuse nodes” in 20 price tiers.

The income generated will be transferred to the project’s treasury for general purposes; This will cover expenses such as supporting the development team and grants. Sonic SVM CEO and co-founder Chris Zhu shared this information in an interview.

Node sales have become a popular way for blockchain projects to raise funds and at the same time decentralize their networks. In May, Aethir announced that it had raised approximately $126 million in Ethereum’s ether (ETH) token by distributing more than 73,000 node licenses. Other projects such as Sophon, CARV, XAI Games and Powerloom have also used this method to raise new funds.

The sale comes after Sonic SVM raised $12 million two months ago in a Series A funding round led by Bitkraft and joined by investors including Galaxy Interactive and Big Brain Holdings.

Those who purchase nodes will earn token rewards and contribute to the security of the HyperGrid network. Nodes can be set up to run on a laptop or cloud servers.

“Being a node operator provides the ability to monitor HyperGrid status, which allows them to participate in the verification process,” Zhu said. Under the architecture of the project, Sonic SVM itself is considered a “grid”, which is built on top of a blockchain apparatus called HyperGrid to ultimately place transactions in Solana.

Other grids could also be created for more playing fields or even an AI network, according to Zhu. He likened Sonic SVM’s HyperGrid to Optimism’s OP Stack, which builds a new layer-2 network on top of the Ethereum blockchain. Base, the layer-2 project of the US crypto exchange Coinbase, is also built on this framework.

Layer-2 networks are designed to scale blockchains by enabling faster and cheaper transactions than main layer-1 blockchains. These structures have historically been less emphasized for Solana because Solana is already considered faster and cheaper than the Ethereum blockchain.

Sonic SVM stated in the press release that the deal “offers the opportunity for individuals to acquire Sonic Tokens at a lower valuation than the valuation offered to top tier venture capital firms in the recent Series A funding.”

It was also stated that there may be “possible future airdrops for node operators, although not officially confirmed.”