Cobie’s ICO platform Sonar goes live with Plasma seeking $50 million at $500 million token valuation

Echo — the angel investing platform founded by popular crypto trader Jordan Fish, better known as Cobie — has launched a new initial coin offering (ICO) platform it first hinted at in February. Called Sonar, the platform goes live with Plasma’s fundraise as its debut sale.

Plasma, a blockchain purpose-built for stablecoins, will offer 10% of its total XPL token supply in the Sonar sale, aiming to raise $50 million, co-founder Paul Faecks told The Block. The 10% amounts to 1 billion tokens out of a 10 billion total supply, at a price of $0.05 per XPL, Faecks said.

The XPL token sale begins today and will run for two weeks, Faecks said. Users around the world can participate, except UK residents and individuals in sanctioned jurisdictions. U.S. participants will face a 12-month lockup period, while most others will be subject to a 40-day lockup, Faecks said.

The XPL token sale is priced at a $500 million fully diluted valuation — the same valuation used in Founders Fund’s recent equity-plus-token warrant investment in Plasma, Faecks said. Last week, Founders Fund invested an undisclosed amount in the project. Prior to that, Plasma raised $24 million across its seed and Series A rounds from backers including Peter Thiel, Cobie, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino, Bitfinex, USDT0 and Bybit.

Faecks said that to participate in the XPL sale on Sonar, users must deposit stablecoins — USDT, USDC, and USDS (formerly DAI) — into a Plasma vault on Ethereum. Allocations will be determined by each participant’s time-weighted share of total vault deposits. Once deposits close, positions are locked until Plasma’s mainnet beta goes live, after which XPL tokens will be distributed.

Cobie did not immediately respond to The Block’s request for comment.

What is Plasma?

Plasma is a new blockchain being built for stablecoins. It is being designed as a sidechain to Bitcoin — meaning it will run alongside the Bitcoin network but operate independently — and will be fully compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), allowing developers to easily build Ethereum-style apps on Plasma.

“The XPL token plays a central role in the system. It secures the PlasmaBFT consensus mechanism, powers execution through the Reth-based EVM, and underpins the trust-minimized Bitcoin bridge,” Plasma said. “This sale marks the beginning of XPL distribution to those who want to help scale the network from the ground up.”

The Plasma blockchain is currently in private testnet, Faecks said, with a public testnet expected to launch in the coming weeks and mainnet targeted for late summer.

When asked how Plasma plans to use the $50 million if raised, Faecks said, “We’re aggressively expanding the team and building out local infrastructure in key regions.” The project currently has 25 team members and is hiring across both tech and business functions, he added.

Overall, Plasma’s vision is to “power the stablecoin economy at scale,” including enabling zero-fee USDT transfers, Faecks said.

“Our ecosystem is taking shape. We’re securing integrations with key DeFi protocols, including Ethena, Aave, Morpho, Curve, and Maker, as well as global infrastructure providers focused on payments,” Faecks said. “We’ve also started deeper regional work with institutional partners and physical peer-to-peer networks in our target regions.”

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