CEO of Mirror World discusses development of Solana game engine following 12 million funding round

Despite the growing popularity of blockchain technology, developers face a significant challenge when it comes to building games on Solana, according to Mirror World CEO Chris Zhu. In an interview with Cointelegraph, Zhu explained that Solana lacks the necessary infrastructure for decentralized finance features, such as cross-chain swaps and crypto on- and off-ramps, making it difficult for gaming developers. He noted that the current Solana layer is not designed to internalize value for specific applications like games, which may require custom features such as privacy, instant settlements, and asset transfer rules.
To address these challenges, Solana gaming studio Mirror World Labs recently secured $12 million in its inaugural Series A funding to further develop its gaming rollup, Sonic, which was launched in March. Zhu mentioned that developers have been receptive to Sonic’s technical capacity, but some of their feedback indicated a desire for main token liquidity on Solana mainnet. To achieve this, Mirror World enabled atomic interoperability using the HyperGrid Framework, which allows games to utilize liquidity on the mainnet while processing game logic on Sonic.
Mirror World is aiming to support a controlled aggregated transaction settlement of 12,000,000 transactions per second on Sonic and HyperGrid, which would facilitate multiplayer real-time gaming transactions. To make this possible, the company has been working closely with Solana validators, with Galaxy Interactive playing a significant role as the largest validator on Solana.
Currently, Sonic is the only software development kit (SDK) available on Solana, with its closest competitor Eclipse focusing on building a Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) layer 2 on Ethereum. Mirror World aims to attract gaming assets and developers interested in building on the Solana Virtual Machine. The company believes that the novel Sonic protocol could support other developers in deploying SVM chains for their GameFi projects.
Mirror World previously stated that while Solana has experienced growth in the memecoin and decentralized application market, its gaming aspect has not seen similar levels of success. However, the company is optimistic that its Sonic protocol could help change this narrative for developers looking to explore gaming opportunities on Solana.