Exclusive interview with Astar founder: Blowing the horn of Japan's Web3, "Sony Chain" is about to usher in a major update

Interview | Zen, PANews

Written by | Zen, PANews

In the "lost thirty years", Japan missed the entrepreneurial boom of the Internet era. Such a large country has not even produced a local Internet giant. The country's GDP in 2023 was also surpassed by Germany, slipping to the world's fourth largest economy. After fully realizing its past mistakes, the Japanese government began to relax its cryptocurrency policy last year in an attempt to catch up with Web3.0, a new wave of Internet development.

Thanks to the loosening of regulatory policies and the reduction of regulatory uncertainty, many large Japanese companies have begun to actively participate in the Web3 field. The large amount of capital and R&D capabilities they bring will also play an important role in the development of the Web3 ecosystem to promote the development and popularization of Web3 technology. In the process of many traditional Japanese companies entering Web3, Astar Network, Japan's largest public chain, often appears. Recently, Astar has even thrown out a "king bomb" by establishing a joint venture with Sony and announcing plans to launch a "Sony Chain" that is benchmarked against Base.

Recently, when Astar Network founder Sota Watanabe came to China, PANews met with him and conducted an exclusive interview. During the conversation, Sota shared his personal experience and the development history of the Astar project. He also revealed some details about the recent developments of the "Sony Chain" that the outside world is concerned about.

Sota Watanabe: Entrepreneurial journey and traveling thousands of miles

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Sota, who had just founded Astar Network (then named Plasm Network), had visited China many times and left his footprints in many cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Hangzhou. After many years, when he came to China again this time, Sota and his Astar were no longer fledgling newcomers and new projects. Today, Astar is the largest public blockchain in Japan, and Sota himself has become a well-known entrepreneur in the Web3 industry and serves as a director of the Japan Blockchain Association. In addition, on the day of the interview, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan announced that it had begun recruiting companies for the "2025 Demonstration Project of Building Digital Public Products Using Web3 and Blockchain", and Sota, as a member of the advisory committee, will participate in its institutional and system design.

"As an entrepreneur, it is very important to see the world with your own eyes. In deciding long-term strategies, especially about cryptocurrency, because it is decentralized, we need to work with many people from different countries." Sota said that before this trip to China, he had just returned from Mexico and transited in Japan for a few days.

In fact, as early as college, Sota began to travel around the world and witnessed many social problems such as poverty and discrimination. After feeling the disparity in the world, he also joined a non-profit organization. "I can bring happiness to the ten people in front of me, but there are more people who are out of my reach. However, through Internet technology, we can bring power to people. When I started my business, I considered whether to choose artificial intelligence or blockchain, but I finally chose the latter because it can empower people."

What is Astar’s secret to having supporters such as Sony and Samsung?

In early 2022, Astar Network released its mainnet and was launched on major exchanges such as Binance, OKX, and Upbit, entering the business expansion stage. Since then, Astar has focused on its development in Japan and has gradually gained support from many traditional industries and Web3 giants.

Astar has signed cooperation agreements with Japanese telecom operator NTT Docomo and obtained sponsorship from auto giant Toyota for the Astar Network Hackathon. After gaining a foothold in the Japanese market, Astar has expanded overseas, not only obtaining investments from Samsung and UOB, but also launching the Ethereum-based Layer 2 solution Astar zkEVM as the first user of Polygon's new "AggLayer" technology. =Astar zkEVM has currently attracted many well-known companies or entrepreneurs, including Deloitte Japan (Deloitte Tohmatsu) will develop a baseball-themed NFT game based on it, and Yoake, a new entertainment company cooperating with AKB48, one of the founders of Nogizaka46, Yasushi Akimoto, will also create entertainment content and idol economy in this ecosystem.

The business giant that has the deepest cooperation with Astar Network is Sony, a comprehensive group with businesses such as electronics, semiconductors, entertainment and finance. In February 2023, Sony Network Communications, a business unit of the Sony Group, cooperated with Astar Network to launch the Web3 incubation program. Since then, the cooperation between the two parties has continued to deepen. First, a few months later, Astar development company Startale Labs received a $3.5 million investment from Sony Network Communications, and then the two parties established a joint venture subsidiary "Sony Network Communiations Labs Pte. Ltd." in September 2023. According to BizFile, the Sony Network Communications portion of Startale Labs' equity has been transferred to the group company, which shows that the strategic position of "Sony Chain" has been further enhanced, and the project may enjoy more budget and be able to use more resources from Sony.

During the interview, Sota also shared Astar's secrets in business development. "Many people pay too much attention to technology, starting from technology and then considering user experience. We believe that we should start from user experience and then develop technology." He believes that almost all computer hardware and software technology inventions were born in the United States, while Asia, represented by the three East Asian countries of "China, Japan and South Korea", is good at commercializing after introducing technology. This commercial thinking is an advantage of Asians. "Another strategy is narrative," Sota added. Japan's economy has been in a downturn for the past three decades, and Web3, which has become the next wave of IT, has become the next major trend that the government must invest in. "The Japanese government and the Japanese people have this narrative, so I can talk to many government officials, people from large companies, and entrepreneurs because we share this narrative."

Aspiring to become a global project, the focus is on itself

However, Sota does not want to focus only on Japan. The main reason for coming to China this time is to discuss cooperation with several well-known domestic Internet companies. "We are not satisfied yet. Japan is an important market, but we would like to do a global project and go to the whole of Asia, especially to enter the US market."

"My mission is to popularize Web3." Sota said that the penetration rate of cryptocurrency and Web3 is only 3% of the world's population. This is an incremental game, so what should be done is to bring the remaining 97% of people into this ecosystem. Astar will use Sony and other companies to bring a large number of people into the blockchain. "We want to promote the Japanese economy and lead the development of the Web3 industry. This is what Astar and Sony are going to do." But even if the goal is to become a global blockchain, being based in the local area and succeeding is still the top priority. Sota admitted that the Japanese government is very supportive of them, and as Japanese entrepreneurs, they need to achieve achievements such as becoming the top five or top ten projects, otherwise they cannot form a narrative even with government support. "So it depends on us."

Backed by Sony’s entertainment empire, how much expectations can “Sony Chain” give us?

Nowadays, the competition in the public chain ecosystem has become fierce, and it is not easy for each to retain its own "one acre and three points of land". "Sony Chain" will undoubtedly face many challenges if it is involved at this point in time. When asked about the core competitiveness of "Sony Chain", Sota pointed out that as a business giant, Sony has a widely influential entertainment ecosystem involving movies, games, music and other fields, while Coinbase is a cryptocurrency company and Telegram is a social networking company. "So, based on Sony's resources and influence, we can really bring hundreds of millions of people who are not familiar with Web3 into this ecosystem. Just like everyone uses the Internet in a coffee shop, but they don't know the TCP/IP and HTTP protocols. We hope to achieve this through cooperation with Sony through blockchain."

Sony's electronic products such as cameras, audio-visual digital products, game consoles and televisions have extremely high recognition and popularity. In China, there is even a widely circulated slogan with the connotation of "faith" such as "Sony Dafa is good", which makes many people's perception of Sony limited to it being just an electronic consumer brand. In fact, Sony has a far-reaching layout in the entertainment fields such as film, television, and games, including the copyright of Spider-Man, the "leader" of super-English IP in the early years. In recent years, the animation "Demon Slayer" produced by its subsidiary Aniplex has also been popular all over the world. According to financial report data, the total sales of Sony's three major entertainment businesses, game and network services, music, and film and television, accounted for nearly 60% of the group's comprehensive sales in fiscal 2023.

This is consistent with Sony's emphasis on cultural IP. Sota said that one of the core strategies of "Sony Chain" is to introduce a large number of intellectual property rights, and then share revenue and explore new ways for Web3 projects and IP to cooperate on the blockchain. "The business model has not yet been fully determined, but on the blockchain we can guarantee authenticity." He said that "Sony Chain" will first start with the deployment of Web 3 projects, and in the long run, it will introduce games, music and other fields.

"But we will focus on user experience, not just minting NFTs and making simple transactions. User experience is very important, they don't need to know whether they are using Web3 or Web2, this is the best user experience we want to achieve." Sota added. Sota is not in a position to disclose more details about "Sony Chain" at the moment. But he told PANews that a major update of the project will be announced in August this year; in addition, Astar will also usher in new brand upgrades and milestones in the coming months.

Leverage extensive touchpoints with established giants to accelerate mass adoption

Today's Web3 industry is full of fraud, asset risks, and excessive speculation. Sota believes that the US government and some Japanese politicians believe that cryptocurrency is just a gambling game based on their judgment of the current market situation. "Through actual use cases, we need to prove ourselves and make political leaders and regulators believe that cryptocurrency is no longer just a speculative tool." He said that industry practitioners need to provide solutions that actually help people improve their lives. Cryptocurrency should not only be the patent of the rich, but also benefit groups without much power.

On the topic of mass adoption, Sota said Web3 technology will not be the only reason for Japanese companies to use it, and Web3 itself is no longer a differentiating factor. "I think the actual benefits and user experience are more important. We are not talking about blockchain, but solutions to improve user experience."

Sota also cited the story of Microsoft's early growth into a giant with the help of IBM and then supporting OpenAI as an example. He pointed out that it is important to leverage existing assets and touchpoints to achieve large-scale adoption, because new companies relying solely on Web3 cannot reach hundreds of millions of users in a short period of time, which takes twenty years. "Therefore, Web3 needs to leverage existing large companies and products to achieve this goal, and they have unique advantages in driving blockchain into the mainstream."