Sonic Labs Splits with Wintermute, Searching for a New Market Maker

Sonic Labs announced the end of its relationship with Wintermute. The platform is searching for a new market maker that can reflect the growth of on-chain activity and DeFi.

Sonic Labs, the blockchain platform, announced the end of its relationship with Wintermute. The platform is searching for a new market maker that can reflect the growth of on-chain activity and DeFi.

As part of the news, the S token slid from $0.61 down to $0.53 on strong selling pressure. The Sonic Labs team explained that the selling happened after Wintermute was informed that the five-year relationship with the project would end. One of the reasons for Wintermute selling was to cover a liquidity loan from Sonic Labs.

24 hours ago, we informed @wintermute_t that we will not be renewing our MM contract. We have been using WM exclusively for 5 years of service.

We have engaged with other MM firms who are willing to provide MM++, they get involved in our DeFi ecosystem, engage with applications…

— assistant.sonic (@SonicAssistant) May 15, 2025

The sales were tracked to the Wintermute wallets as the market maker divested 3M S, shifting holdings down to 10M tokens. After the sale, Wintermute holds $5.9M of S based on current prices.

The team’s explanation was met with some skepticism, as the exact terms of the token loan were unknown, as well as the need for Wintermute to sell the token and crash the price.

The Sonic community speculated that the partnership was ended on bad terms, leading to the selling pressure. There are also suggestions Wintermute may actually have to re-buy S tokens to return the loan in kind. Wintermute has not given the rationale for depositing the tokens to exchanges.

The end of the Wintermute contract is also expected to lead to more volatility for the native S token. The asset mostly trades on Binance and Bybit, where market makers often boost volumes and help generate demand for the asset.

Sonic grows a decentralized ecosystem

Sonic has grown its decentralized ecosystem and seeks market makers to support teams, apps, and liquidity events. The chain recently posted a record in its total value locked at over $1B, becoming one of the fastest-growing chains in 2025.

The Sonic ecosystem includes a native version of Aave lending, the Shadow DEX, as well as a version of the Pendle yield protocol. Sonic was mostly supplied by the Ethereum ecosystem, with $2.3B in inflows and $555M in net inflows. Sonic remains connected to the L1 ecosystem with constant bridging and active turnover. The chain also has small inflows from Base and Solana.

In the past months, Sonic also saw constantly expanding transactions, active wallets, and fees. However, Sonic still produces under $15K in daily fees, lagging behind more established networks.

The chain carries more than $484M in bridged USDC, supporting between $100M and $150M in daily DEX activity. The Shadow exchange carries over $55M of the daily DEX activity, trading some of the most prominent tokens in the Sonic ecosystem.

The chain regularly carries over 50K daily active users, rivaling similar networks. Sonic also retains a large social media community, aiming to build an ecosystem similar to Solana based on cheap transactions and available liquidity.