Written by: Heimi, Bai Ze Research Institute

By laying out the metaverse, adopting NFTs, and investing in high-quality projects, Web2 giant Sony has been continuously expanding the boundaries of its exploration of Web3 since 2021.

Now, Sony has officially entered the public chain track and cooperated with Startale, the developer of the Japanese public chain Astar, to develop a new Ethereum L2 - Soneium, based on OP Stack, which can be regarded as adding another powerful member to the OP Stack L2 ecosystem.

For convenience, let’s call it Sony L2.

In addition to being compatible with existing dapps in the future, Sony L2's ecosystem will also develop new services related to Sony's business and introduce blockchain into Sony's products. The official has made it clear that it will work hard to support creators in expanding their creativity and strengthening their interaction with the fan community.

Sony's most powerful businesses now include games, music, and film and television, which belong to the entertainment industry.

Therefore, it is a bold guess that Sony's L2 ecosystem will tend to be entertainment and consumption. After the mainnet is launched in the future, it will focus on supporting and independently developing the following categories of projects:

Category 1: GameFi

In the GameFi wave of 2021, Web2 game giants such as Ubisoft, EA, and Sega have joined the game. Sony actually expressed its affirmation of GameFi at the time.

In March this year, Sony proposed the concept of Super-Fungible Token, which is actually just the concept of NFT in the game owned by players. Game equipment is NFT. Even if the game goes bankrupt, players still own these NFT. (Now it seems that these announcements are planned)

Holding the IPs of blockbuster games such as "Elden Ring", "The Elder Scrolls", and "Horizon", although Sony may not spend a lot of money to develop Web3 3A masterpieces in the early stage, after all, other major companies have confirmed that Web3 players will not play without Earn, and Web2 players will sneer at NFT, but it is estimated that it will also focus on small games of these IPs, such as card games.

I hope Sony can learn a lesson from the bloodbath of Web3 3A game pioneers: If Web3 games want to penetrate Web2 and cater to mainstream players, they must achieve "chain abstraction" and "concept abstraction" so that players don't feel that they are playing games on the blockchain. Not to mention concepts such as in-game transactions and currency exchange, which do not need to be done on the front end. Players want to play games peacefully.

Category 2: NFT

In addition to in-game NFTs, Sony will integrate film and television IPs into NFTs and issue music NFTs more frequently. Creating its own IP NFT market can attract other IP companies to cooperate while issuing at a lower cost.

Before and now, due to compliance reasons, all Web2 giants are so hesitant to explore Web3, and it seems to be only in the "ambiguous" stage. Let's see if Sony can find a new way.

Example of Sony exploring NFTs:

In 2021, on the eve of the release of the Holland version of "Spider-Man: No Homecoming", Sony partnered with AMC Theaters to distribute NFTs to Spider-Man fans.

In 2022, Sony partnered with Universal Music Group to release digital collectibles of legendary musicians such as Miles Davis on the Snowcrash NFT marketplace.

Category 3: Consumer Applications

This is an earlier narrative and an earlier innovation. When everyone was tired of exchanging price information in the bear market, various pragmatic Web3 alternatives to Web2 platforms such as SocialFi and X2Earn came into being.

Remember the various "Web3 versions of Youtube"? Even if they paid viewers directly, they still died out. No users = no creators = no good content = no demand = no use, so there is no need for tokens to exist in the market.

Currently, Solana has the best consumer application ecosystem, but it is not very popular.

Original words from the official website: One of Soneium's main goals is to create new services using Sony Group's various businesses and IPs, transforming Soneium into an infrastructure that everyone can use on a daily basis.

Sony's advantage is that it is a Web2 giant with unlimited traffic/energy. It should be easy for it to promote its own Web3 products or its own chain's high-quality products (which must have undergone strict team review) to Web2 users.

And as cryptocurrencies become more and more popular, it’s interesting to show Web2 users chat apps like Unlonely, which can predict token prices in a dialog box (Unlonely), and social platforms like Farcaster Frames, where tokens can be exchanged directly in posts, the intersection of Web2 and Web3.

For now, we can think of these three points, each of which can actually bring a large number of new users to Web3.

I'm just a Web2 player, and this is my first time to play Sony's Web3 game. The quality is good and it's fun. There are enough online players, so it might not be a bad idea to speculate on NFT equipment.

Maybe I’m just an ordinary movie fan. When I watch the next Spider-Man movie, I can buy an NFT ticket. With the NFT, I can unlock Easter eggs online, enter the gated community, and talk to the creators and leading actors.

Maybe I am just an ordinary person. I accidentally downloaded the Web3 social platform promoted by Sony, and finally came into contact with the cryptocurrency that I have always heard people around me talk about. It is troublesome to buy it. It’s not troublesome. I can buy it directly from other people’s posts!

Perhaps what Web2 users really hate is just the endless buzz about Crypto hype and the low-quality products that come with it.

Sony's Soneium, as long as it does not fail, does not make trouble, makes high-quality products, and supports a good ecosystem, it will be the next Web3 Mass Adoption moment!

Note: The above content is not intended as investment advice, but for reference only. As of the time of writing, Sony’s official Twitter account has not mentioned Soneium. Hopefully, Soneium’s mention of developing new services for Sony’s business is not just a gimmick to attract testnet users and get good data!

Finally, I heard that Soneium will be on the testnet soon, and the Discord community has just been opened. You can start by brushing up on the activities to get OG characters. It’s respectful to work hard first!