Sonic Labs announced a shift from a gas-fee–centric Layer 1 value-capture model to a vertically integrated strategy, building or acquiring core applications and financial primitives to internalize key economic activity and direct trading fees, protocol income, and application revenues to the S token. Against a backdrop of blockspace oversupply and ongoing fee compression, the team stated that transaction fees alone are insufficient for sustainable value capture. Sonic plans to deploy integrated products across trading, lending, payments, and settlement, leveraging Fee Monetization to recycle gas fees for user onboarding and micro-CAC, while phasing out airdrops and low-efficiency incentives. Future S token buybacks will be funded by protocol-generated revenue rather than treasury drawdowns. x.com/SonicLabs/status/2021617...…