Layer 2 blockchain Sophon, which has raised a total of $70 million, will shut down its own chain and migrate to Ethereum Layer 2 network Base, incubated by Coinbase, to focus on developing consumer apps.

According to a recent report by The Block, Sophon co-founder Seb said, "Value has always been in the products built on top, not in who operates the rails." He added, "Sophon decided to focus on products rather than maintaining infrastructure." Sophon has spent about $3.4 million a year on maintaining chain infrastructure, and by shutting down the chain it will be able to save about $3 million a year to put into app development.

The role of the SOPH token will also change. It was previously used as the gas token for the Sophon blockchain, but going forward it will be directly linked to product revenue.

Sophon plans to use a large part of revenue from new apps, including Fire, XP, Sophon, SophPlay and SophAI, for SOPH buybacks and burns, linking token value to product performance. SOPH is currently around $0.0048, down about 86 percent over the past year.

The first app, Fire, is a gamified fintech app and is set to launch next month. Fire runs a game every time users make a payment, offering a chance to win money back. Users receive an entry for each transaction of $1 or more. At launch, it will offer two games: a coin-collecting obstacle game called Inferno and a timing game called Splash.

It also supports a feature in which an AI agent plays the games on the user’s behalf.