Co-founder Fantom and Sonic
Joined July 2016
- Tweets2.7K
- Following237
- Followers46.5K
- Likes2.5K
Recently @soniclabs published a notice stating that my relationship with the company had been “terminated with immediate effect”. They published this while on the same day asking for my help and saying they hoped I was well.
The notice gives no reason. However, the impression it creates — that I was removed for possible wrongdoing — is false.
My departure was not voluntary. After eight years, a severance and release agreement was negotiated and signed between myself and Sonic Labs and its affiliates. For over two and a half months, Sonic Labs repeatedly promised to honour that agreement. They now refuse. My existing contractor agreement was also not honoured.
That release agreement provides that neither party would publicly disparage the other. What should have remained an internal matter was instead made public by Sonic Labs, causing damage. I am therefore responding.
I worked over eight years at Fantom / Sonic. Very few projects in this industry last that long. I took the project from a scam and made it into something. I almost single-handedly won a $150 million lawsuit in Korea for the company, described at the time as Korea’s largest cryptocurrency dispute. David Richardson, the owner of Fantom and Sonic, wrote: “We really do [owe] much of this to you Michael - you have been tireless and dogged - exceeding even current counsel's efforts. The Foundation owes you much gratitude.” Yet this is how that work is treated in the end. Zero respect.
I reserve all rights with respect to any claims against Sonic Labs and its affiliates.
I'm proud of my eight years with Fantom and Sonic. When I joined Fantom in 2018, there was no team, no leadership, and no technology. We built a team from the ground up, launched the first mainnet in December 2019, and guided the project through its many highs and lows.
These facts were confirmed by the Seoul High Court: blog.fantom.foundation/seoul…
Fantom and Sonic remains the oldest smart contract platform still running after Ethereum.
@Soniclabs has chosen a new board with a new ceo and coo. Although I did not know about this post in advance nor participate in its authorship at all, I wish the new leadership all the best. I remain available to offer advice or support if the team wishes to reach out.
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Michael Kong retweeted
Not sustainable, but cool while it is nonetheless.
.@flyingtulip_ ftUSD yield on Sonic is now touching 40%. 🤯
Zero incentives.
Bids are also live on the updated Flying Tulip PUT dashboard. You can now select PUTs based on backing capital, collateral, and timeframe before placing your bid.
ftUSD: flyingtulip.com/ftusd/
Marketplace: flyingtulip.com/marketplace/
Michael Kong retweeted
Step 2: Buy & stake ftUSD on @flyingtulip_
Use USSD to buy and stake ftUSD in one step. You do not need to buy ftUSD first and stake it separately.
No incentives. Pure yield.
🔗 flyingtulip.com/ftusd/
Michael Kong retweeted
I combined sonic/eth metrics and added @DefiLlama reconciliation panel to my @flyingtulip_ dash.
flyingtulip-dash.vercel.app/
also updated the url and cleaned up the theme.
made with love, -discochuck
Thanks @Schebesta for the interview!
Talking about @soniclabs and Australia’s latest and terrible budget.
Here's a great example of Australian entrepreneur @michaelfkong of @SonicLabs, who built a business in Australia then moved it overseas to a far more supportive environment.
Check out our latest interview with @Schebesta:
Part 1: lnkd.in/ggtkxVMv
Part 2: lnkd.in/gtfsUGBs
Thanks for sharing your story!
Michael Kong retweeted
so @flyingtulip_ has started
all this with one signature on @SonicLabs it less than 2 seconds
how?
read the documentation!
Michael Kong retweeted
.@flyingtulip_'s Global Margin Lending has now crossed $4M in total deposits with $2.7M on Sonic.
You can now earn 6% APY on your stable by minting and staking ftUSD on Sonic.
One click minting & redemption with no unstaking period and no exit que. Pure yield with 0 incentives!
🔗flyingtulip.com/ftusd/dashbo…
Michael Kong retweeted
ftUSD caps have been increased again.
On Sonic Lend:
USDC: 1M -> 10M
wS: 30M -> 100M
Earn 5.63% on Sonic by depositing into ftUSD.
Michael Kong retweeted
Margin Lending, @flyingtulip_ second product after $ftUSD, is now above 1m USD TVL.
Lend is a core building block of the Flying Tulip stack: it lets users supply assets to earn yield or borrow against collateral, while enabling delta-neutral strategies for ftUSD and the margin infrastructure for spot and leveraged trading.
➡️ Deposit & Borrow: flyingtulip.com/lend
Our tech team would be happy to sit down with yours and find a way to optimize the Sonic tech stack for exactly what you need at scale.
Respect for the transparency. You’re hitting on challenges we’ve seen businesses at your scale run into when real-world traffic meets the blockchain.
Our team has been heads-down with leaders across the space on how an L1 can fine-tune the execution environment around what serious apps actually need: settlement certainty, predictable costs, and business-specific tooling. Polymarket is the clearest example of a system that needs web2 reliability on web3 rails.
Quick thoughts from the chain side:
Latency: Sonic finalizes in ~500ms, deterministically. No probabilistic confirms, no reorgs. Your “near-instant” target is already reality on an L1 stack. ~10k TPS sustained, sub-second single-slot finality, ~$0.0001 average fees.
Chain migration: Doors are open, and we’re actively making bespoke improvements for serious teams. Most chains slow down as throughput climbs; Sonic is designed to get faster under high load.
Cancelled transactions: At your scale, this is a throughput and execution problem. Sonic’s headroom removes the congestion vector. Deterministic finality removes the reorg vector. Your CLOB shouldn’t be dropping orders because the chain can’t keep up.
Cheap gas, instant finality, battle-tested uptime, and native USDC are default. Prediction markets need reserved capacity for market makers, gasless user flows, protocol-native atomic batching, and app-critical transactions that still land when volume spikes.
Would love to compare notes with your tech team on what Polymarket’s real-world throughput has taught you, and where we can build to support it.
DMs open 🫡
Michael Kong retweeted
Onchain delta-neutral yield just went live via @flyingtulip_ on Sonic.
A novel DeFi primitive from @andrecronjetech, currently live in a capped phase with plenty of room to scale stablecoin yield over time.
So many new building blocks required to get here onchain. You can do this strategy with active management (in a limited fashion onchain), but no passive options, so we had to first rebuild an issuance / settlement layer (ftUSD), that can then feed into a margin based lending system (LTV based doesn't work here), with onchain RFQ for fillers, all just to enable a passive way to scale this trade. Bit more hardening and we can scale up leverage and caps. At scale this does ~8%-12% on USDC/USDT.
Michael Kong retweeted
Maintenance based lending is the first true defi evolution after LTV based lending. Enables an entirely new suite of hedged strategies that can move from active management to passive management. Less stress for borrowers, better yield for depositors.
Many new features in this system that we will highlight as they go live. Very strict maintenance requirements and caps currently. This is largely just for us to leverage for ftUSD currently.
First step to scaling ftUSD.
With ftUSD & Margin accounts we are finally ready to step towards Total Return Swaps.
Margin lending has launched.
Guarded, capped launch. No active incentives.
Margin lending is the next component to unlocking ftUSD yield opportunities.
Maintenance Margin | Caps [collateral / debt]
USDC 1.5% | 1.5m / 0.75m
S 17% | 20m / 6m
stS 21% | 8m / 0
FT 0% | 0 / 0
ftUSD 0% | 1m / 0
ETH 19% | 1k / 100
BTC 22% | 10 / 1
Networks: Sonic
Next: Spot, Leverage trading, Total Return Swaps.
Lend: flyingtulip.com/lend/dashboa…
Support: discord.gg/flyingtulip
Docs: docs.flyingtulip.com/product…
Michael Kong retweeted
Shifting Capital Flows: The New Risk Environment: Are Markets Ready for What’s Coming?
Our featuring speakers: @michaelfkong,@MBRichardson87, @joshuacheong, @awstian, @amanda_goodall
Set your reminder 👇teapaw.org/i/spaces/1nJOLEePOWrxR…
Michael Kong retweeted
The Chainlink data standard powers the majority of DeFi with highly secure market data.
Integrate the USSD/USD Price Feed on Sonic to build advanced DeFi markets around our network-integrated stablecoin.
📃 data.chain.link/feeds/sonic/…
Michael Kong retweeted
The UX difference between Ethereum and Sonic never ceases to amaze me. Sonic feels like web2.
Flying Tulip’s stablecoin ftUSD is now live on Sonic.
ftUSD lets users earn yield on USDC (and soon USSD).
Incentives / points are not live.
Deposit and Earn: flyingtulip.com/ftusd/dashbo…
Current parameters:
• ~6% yield
• Capped launch: 1M ftUSD
• Mint & redeem fees: 0.1%
• CircuitBreaker: deposits >50k are queued
Next targeted product: Margin Lending
