Michael Kong is an entrepreneur, technologist, and former software engineer best known for his role as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Chief Information Officer (CIO) at Sonic Labs. ^[1][2][3]

Education

Michael Kong graduated from Sydney Grammar School in 2011. He enrolled in the University of Sydney in 2012 and graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Information Technology (Information Systems) and Commerce (First Class honors) in 2017. ^[2]

Career

Michael Kong started his career as a Sponsorship Director at University Network for Investing and Trading (UNIT) from September 2012 - 2013 where he worked on repairing sponsorship documents for potential sponsors in the financial industry, negotiating with sponsors both indirectly (via email) and directly through face-to-face meetings, and liaising with speakers for events. He also worked as a Website Administrator at UNIT in 2014 where he worked on the Joomla Content Management System using a combination of HTML, CSS, and PHP to regularly update the website. ^[2]

Michael got into crypto in March 2016 when he served as the co-founder of Horyzon Pty. Ltd., an equity management platform built on blockchain technology. In April 2016, he was the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Liberté & Co. an Australian cryptocurrency brokerage and the country's first cloud mining provider that specializes in the high volume OTC sale and acquisition of cryptocurrencies, including but not limited to Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin. ^[4][2]

From August 2015 - July 2017, Michael served as the Director of Aiziko Pty. Ltd., a software development company aimed at building and maintaining web and mobile applications. In 2017, Michael worked as the Chief Technology Officer at myStake where he developed an application that allows users to manage their cap table, issue and transfer shares, dividends, options, profit sharing, etc. He also worked as a developer at Block8 to develop blockchain-based applications using Ethereum smart contracts. ^[2]

From 2018 - 2019, he served as an Advisor for Enosi Foundation and also the CTO for Digital Currency Holdings, advising a cryptocurrency hedge fund and ICO projects. From July-September 2020, Michael worked as a Teaching Assistant at the University of Sydney Business School where he taught Cryptocurrencies and Financial Markets. ^[2]

Fantom (now Sonic)

Michael Kong joined Fantom Foundation (now rebranded to Sonic Labs) in March 2018 as the Chief Information Officer (CIO). In September 2018, he became the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the company. ^[2]

Fantom is a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) smart contract platform providing decentralized finance (DeFi) services to developers using its own bespoke consensus algorithm. The Fantom Foundation has experience with blockchain development from developing a consensus algorithm from scratch to middleware and a full-featured software suite. ^[5]

") is one of the so-called layer-1 blockchains or distributed ledgers. We have our own consensus engine and our own network that basically interacts or is integrated with the ) virtual machine or the smart contract stack that is similar to what is on Ethereum. So the way that you would write and deploy smart contracts on Ethereum pretty much works the same way on Fantom. The key difference is that we have an entirely different consensus engine, so what kind of differentiates us is being able to process multiple transactions simultaneously." - Michael Kong on Binance AMA

On what differentiates Fantom from other layer-1 networks, Michael stated:

"The differentiator from us compared to other Layer-1s & 2s out there is that we don't want to sacrifice security for performance. And what that means is sticking really to the base chain security, improving upon it, and basically optimizing in terms of reducing storage or reducing the footprint for validators and nodes on the network while at the same time also increasing network throughput such that all applications deploying on Fantom don't need to worry about creating their own application chain, consensus, the smart contract execution engine. All they need to worry about is building that application, launching it, growing it, and then that's it, we take care of everything else."

Fantom Rebrand to Sonic Labs

In 2024, Fantom rebranded into Sonic Labs. The team, alongside Andre Cronje decided to pivot from a blockchain that was merely fast and cost-effective to a restructured architecture featuring parallel execution, native stablecoin integration, a revamped economic model, and a more developer-friendly ecosystem. The blockchain was reengineered to meet the needs of modern DeFi applications. ^[10]

Publications

• MadMax: Surviving Out-of-Gas Conditions in Ethereum Smart Contracts. ^[6]Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
• Vandal: A Scalable Security Analysis Framework for Smart Contracts. ^[7]arXiv.org · Sep 11, 2018

Honors & Awards

• Microsoft Research Prize for Senior Software Development ProjectsIssued by the University of Sydney · Jan. 2017
• RAP Jackson Scholarship, Commonwealth Bank of AustraliaMar. 2012
• UNSW Co-op Scholarship in Business Information Technology (declined)Issued by University of New South Wales · Jan 2012
• 1st in Modern History HSC Trials - Nov. 2011
• Peter Young Prize - Geographic Research - Nov. 2010Issued by Sydney Grammar School. ^[8]