Sophon sets November 25 deadline before chain shutdown
Sophon told holders to leave its chain by November 25, 2026, ahead of a November 30 mainnet shutdown. The later date is not a grace period for stranded assets.
Sophon has dated the end of Sophon Chain, and the date that matters comes first. In a thread posted on October 19, 2026, the project's account on X said it is planning the final shutdown of Sophon mainnet for November 30, 2026, and that November 25 is the deadline to withdraw. Key infrastructure and related websites begin shutting down after November 25. Assets left after that deadline risk becoming permanently inaccessible. DeFiLlama's historical chain Total Value Locked (TVL) series, a Decentralised Finance (DeFi) measure, read $14,661 on October 22, less than 0.1% of the $20,099,846 peak on May 30, 2025. It does not count every wallet still holding Sophon (SOPH), Ethereum (ETH) or USD Coin (USDC). A quiet chain is not an empty one.
June told holders there was no rush
The October instruction replaces a softer one. On June 25, 2026 the same account said it was decommissioning Sophon Chain and going all in on apps built on Base, and told holders there was "No rush." There is a rush now. The same series fell from $302,879 on June 25 to the October 22 reading, under 5% of the June figure. That is the pattern in Blast's Layer 2 (L2) wind-down, where cost stopped matching use. Sophon is dating the exit from a chain whose DeFi activity has already collapsed, not from a busy one.
Liquid SOPH, ETH, USDC and other assets are to be withdrawn at claim.sophon.com, the project's claimer, along with outstanding staking and Guardian rewards. Unclaimed farm assets are separate. The post names farm.sophon.xyz, which did not return a usable page when opened for this piece, so it is not linked here. "Nov 25 is the date to act, not Nov 30," the thread says. It tells users not to wait until the last day, to use only official Sophon links, and to watch for fake migration sites. After November 25 the key infrastructure and related websites start to close. November 30, five days later, is the planned end of the mainnet, not a grace period. A balance still showing on November 28 is not proof it can be moved.
"The bet is that the value has never been in who runs the rails, but rather always been in the products built on top," Sebastien (Seb), Sophon's semi-anonymous co-founder, told The Block on June 25. "Sophon is choosing to go deep on those products rather than maintain infrastructure."
Sebastien told The Block the chain cost about $3.4 million a year, across infrastructure, rollup-as-a-service, data, analytics and tooling, and that closing it would cut annual burn by an estimated $3 million. Those are his June figures, not an audited saving. The Block put total funding at $70 million. Cointelegraph on October 20 described a $60 million node sale in 2024 after a separate $10 million round. Sophon’s site states the $60 million and says the chain was built, then set aside. Sebastien also said SOPH had been the gas token, and that the sunset points it at product revenue instead.
The site now calls Sophon a technology studio in finance, entertainment and artificial intelligence, introduces Pyre as a payment card it calls entertainment finance, and says revenue buys SOPH and burns it. The Block described Base as an Ethereum L2 incubated by Coinbase, the network covered here when Base opened DeFi tools to ChatGPT and Claude. That is not a withdrawal path off Sophon Chain. Cointelegraph placed the shutdown next to Abstract, which it said would close on December 15 after an October 6 notice, after Igloo lost tens of millions of dollars supporting that network. Sophon has published no comparable loss. The nearer parallel is Binance Pool's dated close, where missing the timestamp is the story.
From October 22 the window runs to November 25. Holders and custodians have to finish the claimer, the staking and Guardian rewards, and the farm instruction before that infrastructure starts to close. Waiting for November 30 uses the date Sophon told users to ignore. A buyback is not a withdrawal, and an unofficial migration site is not the project's.
This article is informational analysis only and is not financial, investment, or trading advice. Cryptocurrencies are highly volatile and can lose substantial value rapidly. Past performance and historical patterns do not guarantee future results. Do your own research and consult a regulated financial adviser before making any investment decision.
Reporting by Karthik Subramanian. Filed 22 October 2026, 14:01 GMT.
Digital Assets Correspondent
Karthik Subramanian is a founder, writer, and technology consultant with nine years in the crypto ecosystem.
