After announcing plans to develop a public blockchain almost a year ago, today Sony confirmed it has built the new blockchain, Soneium, which will soon launch a testnet. Last year the Japanese giant invested in and partnered with Startale Labs, the founder of the Astar Network. Sony owns 90% of the Singapore joint venture, Sony Block Solution Labs, which built Soneium.
Sony rightly points out that there are many web3 use cases that haven’t gained traction with the public. Sony owns a treasure trove of content across multiple divisions, including Sony Pictures (formerly Columbia Pictures), Sony Music and Sony PlayStation.
The Japanese firm aims to use its content to develop web3 apps in order to “spark the interest of people who have never used Web3 services.” Apart from its own content, it also wants to empower creators and developers.
“We believe that the watershed moment for the entire Web3 industry will be whether we, as companies involved in Web3, can truly provide solutions that billions of people use as a matter of course in their daily lives and make Web3 mainstream in the next few years,” said Sota Watanabe, Director of Sony Block Solution Labs.
“We believe that Soneium has great potential to lead the world and realize this vision, and we would like to collaborate with a variety of developers and companies, transcending the boundaries of countries, regions, and industries.”
From a tech perspective, Startale’s Astar Network is built as a Polkadot parachain. However, instead of a Polkadot chain, Soneium will be a layer 2 (L2) Ethereum blockchain using Optimism technology, the same tech used by Coinbase’s Base blockchain. Startale Labs announced plans to transition the Astar Network to Soneium L2.
Sony’s expansive web3 steps
Meanwhile, based on previous announcements, Sony’s web3 ambitions also encompass the metaverse. In the last wave of metaverse enthusiasm, the Second Life era, Sony Playstation created a virtual world called PlayStation Home. Like Home, the latest batch of metaverse experiences have so far failed to gain mainstream traction. But they surely will eventually.
In early March 2023, Sony partnered with Startale Labs to launch a web3 incubator. The group has an NFT marketplace SNFT. Last year it also acquired a cryptocurrency exchange which is recently rebranded to S.BLOX. In the meantime, Sony Bank has launched a web3 app where it’s using NFTs as incentives. It’s also exploring a stablecoin on the Polygon blockchain. Once Soneium is live, we’re guessing all that will move to Soneium.
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