The blockchain industry in 2026 can no longer be explained by speed and transaction fees alone. As user experience becomes increasingly abstracted, the distinction between Layer 1 and Layer 2 networks is fading, shifting the basis of competition toward how reliably a platform can support applications that people actually use.
Sonic Labs operates as a globally distributed blockchain infrastructure project, focusing on both post-quantum readiness and AI-driven developer environments. In an interview with Korea IT Times, Samuel Harcourt, a core contributor at Sonic Labs, outlines the next phase of the industry through three lenses: the redefinition of the L1–L2 relationship, the shift toward value capture and developer experience, and protocol architecture designed for a post-quantum era. He emphasizes that the question of whether a protocol is “prepared” is no longer a technical detail, but a condition for survival.
What follows is a Q&A with Samuel Harcourt.
How do you see the relationship between L1s and L2s evolving in 2026, especially as users expect seamless experiences without caring what chain they’re on?
End-user abstraction is already here and as it grows, more users won’t even know if they are using an L1 or L2. The more interesting question is what that abstraction means for the economics and design choices underneath it. The L1-L2 relationship was previously framed as a division of labour where L1s provided security and L2s provided throughput. That framing is increasingly difficult to sustain in 2026, where modern L1s, Sonic included, are now delivering finality and throughput that removes the original scaling argument for rollups on that particular chain. Once a base layer can handle an application load directly, the rationale for a dedicated L2 on top of it narrows to specific use cases rather than general-purpose scaling.
This means that L1s and L2s are converging on the same product question: can you support applications that people actually use, with fees, latency, and tooling that let developers build competitive products? Chains that answer yes will capture value regardless of their place in the stack. Chains that do not will find that seamless user experience becomes a liability, because users who do not care which chain they are on also will not stay on a chain that offers nothing distinctive.
How is the basis of competition between Layer 1s changing in 2026, as the market looks beyond speed and fees alone? What, according to you, will separate the next generation of successful L1s from chains that are still competing on older benchmarks?
Speed and fees have compressed to the point where they are no longer a defensible position. Most L1s now offer sub-second finality and fractional-cent transactions, which has stopped being a sufficient differentiator. The real basis of competition is shifting to three areas. The first is value capture. The pure gas-fee model is breaking down under fee compression, and chains that have not rethought how the network, builders, and token holders share in application success are heading toward a structural revenue problem. Sonic's Fee Monetization model, which returns up to 90% of network fees generated by an application to its builders, is one approach to this. There will be others, but what matters is that the chains still relying on fees alone to sustain ecosystem health are working with a model the market is outgrowing.
The second is tooling and developer experience. The gap between Web2 and Web3 development has been the industry's most persistent adoption barrier, and AI-assisted workflows are starting to close it. Spawn, which we previewed at ETHDenver, lets builders go from a natural-language prompt to a deployed full-stack application in minutes, quoting Seg, our head of AI at Sonic Labs, “Gemini models are core to Sonic’s AI stack, powering Spawn and other agentic commerce tools for developers building onchain payments, applications, and autonomous workflows.”
The L1s that invest in making development genuinely accessible will build larger, more diverse ecosystems than those that continue to optimise for cryptonative developers alone. The third is architectural resilience. Post-quantum readiness, state database efficiency, and the ability to migrate cryptographic primitives without redesigning consensus are not marketing stories, but they will determine which chains are still operable in five years. These are the decisions being made at the protocol level, and they are not easily reversed.
Google’s recent quantum research, and the wider discussion it sparked around a possible “Q-Day” timeline, has put fresh pressure on blockchain infrastructure to think more seriously about post-quantum readiness. Do you think the industry is still treating this as a distant theoretical issue rather than a real architectural challenge?
The industry has treated quantum resistance as a future problem, but that framing is becoming harder to justify. Google's quantum research and the Q-Day conversation it has reignited force a more honest accounting of where blockchain infrastructure actually stands. For many chains, the answer is not comfortable. The architectural decisions that determine quantum readiness are being made in the consensus protocols being built and deployed today. Several proof-of-stake chains are already locked into cryptographic primitives that may be difficult to replace cleanly in a post-quantum environment. BLS aggregation is the clearest example. There is no NIST-standardised post-quantum analog of it, and chains that depend on it could face a far more complex migration when the time comes.
Sonic is in a different position. SonicCS was designed around per-event signatures and hash functions only, with no aggregate certificates and no threshold signatures. When post-quantum standards become mandatory, Sonic's migration path is a signature swap, leaving the rest of the protocol intact. The Q-Day timeline is uncertain, but the migration cost for chains built around BLS aggregation is fixed regardless of when the threat materialises. The industry would be better served by examining whether its infrastructure can absorb the change, rather than debating when it will need to.
Bernhard Scholz, Sonic Lab’s Chief Research Officer, has said the industry must be prepared regardless of when sufficiently powerful quantum computers arrive. What does "being prepared" actually mean at the protocol level?
"Being prepared" at the protocol level means having a migration plan that does not require you to redesign your consensus mechanism from scratch, which is a higher bar than most chains meet. The core issue is cryptographic dependency. Protocols that rely on BLS aggregation to compress quorum certificates, or on threshold signatures to generate global randomness beacons, have inbuilt this into their consensus logic in ways that are difficult to unpick. Post-quantum alternatives like Dilithium and Falcon do not aggregate cheaply, and SPHINCS+ produces large signatures. Swapping in any of these schemes without rethinking the broader protocol architecture would cause an order-of-magnitude increase in certificate size, verification cost, and bandwidth.
Quantum preparation means designing your protocol so that the cryptographic layer is separable from the consensus logic. In SonicCS, each event carries a single signature from its creator and a hash reference to parent events. That is the full extent of the cryptographic surface. There are no aggregate certificates, threshold signatures, or global randomness beacon to rethink. When post-quantum standards are finalised, the migration is a matter of swapping the signature scheme and updating the hash output size. Preparedness is an architectural property that either exists in your protocol today or it does not.
Sonic has said that many PoS systems could face a much harder transition because post-quantum replacements do not offer a clean equivalent to BLS-style aggregation. Why does that matter so much, and what does it reveal about which blockchain designs are actually future-resilient?
The transition to a post-quantum world will ultimately be a test of cryptographic agility. Most PoS chains face a painful migration because they have over-optimized for the current era, hard-coding specific elliptic-curve properties into their certificate structures. Owning our consensus protocol end-to-end has allowed us to make forward-looking architectural decisions at Sonic, enabling a smooth transition that requires minimal changes to the SonicCS protocol. When the industry moves to post-quantum standards, we will not need to rework our bandwidth models or liveness assumptions. In comparison, many leader-based protocols within the PoS consensus space could face an order-of-magnitude blow-up in certificate size, verification cost, and bandwidth; or worse, they may be forced to abandon aggregation entirely and redesign the protocol around a different trust model. Future-resilient blockchains are those whose security layers can be upgraded independently of their consensus logic, even against the threat of a powerful quantum computer.
Sonic recently launched Spawn - the first AI platform for building Web3 apps from natural language. As natural-language interfaces become more capable, how do you think they will change what developers expect from blockchain infrastructure? Does this mark a real shift in how onchain apps get built?
Spawn reflects a broader shift in how on-chain applications may be built. Rather than expecting every developer to understand blockchain infrastructure, the goal is to abstract much of that complexity so they can move from idea to application faster. By decoupling the intent of the developer from the complexity of the infrastructure, natural-language platforms like Spawn have changed how on-chain apps are built. This has radically transformed the expectations of Web3 developers, allowing them to move their focus away from low-level cryptographic hurdles toward pure logic and intent. Our sub-second finality is designed to match the iteration speed of AI-assisted development, empowering developers to embrace "vibe-coding", replacing weeks of manual auditing and fragmented end-to-end integration with conversational execution. Just as vibe-coding catalyzed a wave of innovation in Web2, Spawn removes the traditional barriers to Web3 development, inviting a similar innovation boom on-chain.
Through natural language interfaces such as Spawn, we are moving away from an era where developers serve the blockchain’s limitations, into an era where the blockchain serves the developer’s creativity. In this new landscape, the most successful ecosystems will be those that offer the shortest path from an idea to a secure, post-quantum-ready deployment.
Looking at the rest of 2026, what's the single development you think will matter most for how this industry evolves?
AI-assisted development has moved beyond novelty. The question for 2026 is whether it reaches mainstream production scale. As natural-language tools become more capable, developers will increasingly expect a shorter path from idea to application. That could open the door to a broader wave of Web3 development, but only if the underlying blockchain can operate as an invisible yet high-performance, safe and secure foundation.
At the same time, resilience will matter just as much as ease of use. Quantum readiness is becoming a more serious architectural priority, and many PoS systems still depend on cryptographic assumptions that do not have a straightforward post-quantum replacement. The chains best positioned for the next phase will be those designed with enough flexibility to evolve their security layers without reworking their core consensus logic.
Ultimately, the most successful ecosystems will be those that offer the shortest path from an idea to future-ready deployment, ensuring that the AI-led applications being built today are built on infrastructure that can adapt to the challenges and risks ahead.
