Sonic Labs has announced significant changes in its leadership. Following the news, the S token of the blockchain project dropped by over 6%.
— Sonic (@SonicLabs) June 19, 2026
The board of directors of the EVM-layer one developer has seen the departure of:
- former CEO and director Michael Kong;
- executive chairman David Richardson;
- co-founder and CTO Andre Kronje.
The company referred to them as the "architects of the current Sonic" and emphasized that they laid the groundwork for the project's future development.
New CEO and COO
Matt Visser has taken over as CEO, while Costa Kourkoumelis has been appointed COO.
The new leadership stated that their top priority will not be to present a new roadmap but to streamline operations and rebuild community trust.
"I’m not going to promise an instant turnaround. My goal is to make Sonic better by 1% every day and let that effect accumulate," Visser said.
Team Acknowledges Issues
In a message to the community, Sonic Labs openly acknowledged the decline in market performance and investor sentiment.
Source: CoinMarketCap."The token is falling. Community sentiment is worsening. We see it and we’re not going to pretend the problems don’t exist," the statement read.
In January 2025, S reached an all-time high of $1.03. At the time of writing, the asset is trading at $0.028, down 97.2% from its peak.
The management suggested viewing the current moment as the "first day" of a new phase in the project’s development. Instead of making short-term promises, the team committed to focusing on gradual improvements over the next 100 days.
Focus on Transparency and Risk Management
Among the key changes, Sonic highlighted increased management transparency, the establishment of a dedicated risk and compliance committee, and more open communication with S token holders.
The company pledged to provide more specific information about decisions made and to avoid formal announcements lacking practical content.
Development Continues
Despite the leadership changes, Sonic emphasized that the technical team has continued to work without interruption. Since the beginning of 2026, developers have merged around 400 significant pull requests into the main branch on GitHub, released two network updates, and are currently testing version 2.2.0 in a closed testnet.
The company noted that technology remains the main asset of the ecosystem and has continued to evolve independently of organizational changes.
As a reminder, in March, the Sonic team introduced the "institutional" stablecoin USSD.