Execs

The S token, the native utility asset behind the Sonic blockchain, dipped on Friday after Sonic Labs announced the resignation of three former executives from its board.

The S token fell to 0.031, down 5% over 24 hours. The resignations include Michael Kong, a former CEO of the Fantom Foundation and director at Sonic Labs; David Richardson, who served as executive chairman of Sonic Labs; and Andre Cronje, who previously served as its chief technology officer.

Statement from Andre Cronje about his resignation from the board. Source: Andre Cronje

“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,” Sonic Labs said as it announced Matt Visser as its new CEO and Kosta Kourkoumelis as chief operating officer.

Sonic Labs is overhauling its leadership and governance structure as it attempts to address growing community dissatisfaction and a prolonged decline in its S token, which has fallen 97% since launching in January 2025 as part of a network upgrade.

“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,” said Sonic Labs.

Related: Ethereum faces core development funding crisis, former contributor warns

Sonic Labs, the research and development organization behind the Sonic EVM-compatible layer-1 blockchain, is the successor to the Fantom Foundation, which was founded in 2018.

The blockchain is focused on speed, claiming to provide 10,000 transactions per second and subsecond finality. Its rebrand from Fantom to Sonic introduced a major structural and technical upgrade to the network as it replaced its legacy Fantom Opera network.

Sonic Labs said the leadership change will also come with a commitment to more transparent governance, clear communication about project updates, and the creation of a dedicated risk and compliance committee.

The leadership shuffle comes just days after Ethereum Foundation co-executive director Hsiao-Wei Wang announced that she had stepped down on Thursday, adding to a list of 19 layoffs and departures from the foundation this year.

Magazine: The end of anon? AI could unmask crypto’s hidden identities

TapTools, a Cardano-focused real-time analytics platform, has begun winding down after its fifth top-level executive departure, compounding leadership instability and making continued operations unsustainable.

TapTools said in a post to X on Tuesday that it would begin winding down over the next two weeks, and noted the departure of its two co-founders, chief operating officer and chief technology officer earlier this year.

“We worked hard to adapt,” TapTools said, adding that its backend developer had become its CTO as the platform shifted its focus toward shipping products more sustainably; however, they have since departed, and “the technical knowledge required to responsibly operate and maintain TapTools cannot be replaced overnight.”

Source: TapTools

TapTools launched in 2022 and became one of the most widely used tools for Cardano users to track token prices, decentralized finance activity and discover new projects.

The wind-down follows a similar move by Cardano-based nonfungible token marketplace, JPG.Store, which permanently shut down on May 23.

TapTools’ closure comes three days after the Cardano Foundation said its annual conference was cancelled this year after its governance community shot down a revised proposal seeking to fund the event with treasury tokens.

TapTools said the economics of running the platform were another key factor in its decision to wind down.

“Infrastructure costs are real. Development costs are real. Support costs are real. Operating a platform that serves the ecosystem at scale is expensive.”

Related: Cardano can now be used to pay at 137 Spar stores across Switzerland

TapTools said it remains open to acquisition or external funding to sustain operations.

Cardano creator expects more protocol wind-downs

Cardano creator Charles Hoskinson took some of the blame for TapTools’ wind-down, saying in a video shared to X that he expected a lot of protocols to collapse in the current bear market and that he came up with a plan to “bail out” struggling projects.

“I came up with the plan of an index. It did not get executed,” Hoskinson said.

Hoskinson added that Cardano’s governance community could have helped some of these projects, but opted not to.

Magazine: Big Questions: Do we really only need 2–5 cryptocurrencies?

Sonic Token Falls 5% As Long-Standing Execs Resign

Cardano’s TapTools Winds Down After Losing 5 Execs

Cardano creator expects more protocol wind-downs