• Sony announced its new L2 blockchain atop Ethereum called Soneium.

  • Soneium will use the optimistic rollup technology and Optimism’s OP Stack.

  • Soneium plans to onboard Sony products like Sony Music in the next two years.

Sony, the Japanese tech giant, is launching a new blockchain called Soneium. The testnet is set to go live soon, as interest in blockchain technology grows and companies look to build decentralized products.

Sony Block Solutions Labs, a partnership between Sony Group and Singapore-based Startale Labs, confirmed Friday on launching Soneium, the new layer 2 network on the Ethereum network. According to reports, this new L2 network will utilize optimistic rollup technology.

Optimistic rollups are basically networks that bank on the security and stability of their parent blockchains (in this case Ethereum). This means they use the parent chain’s consensus mechanism instead of creating their own. However, these L2 scaling solutions boost a blockchain’s scalability by processing transactions off-chain. As a result, Soneium will allow its users to transact on Ethereum, at lower costs.

The report states that Soneium will use the Optimism network’s OP stack, which lets developers build their own networks using Optimism’s technology. Other entities using the OP Stack include Coinbase’s Base blockchain and Worldcoin’s World Chain.

Startale Labs CEO Sota Watanabe, also the co-founder of Astar Network, confirmed that he will be focusing solely on Soneium and stepping back from other projects like Astar zkEVM. Sony Block Solutions Labs stated:

“Astar zkEVM will be integrating its assets and underlying infrastructure with Soneium.”

Watanabe explained that Soneium’s first-year goal is to onboard new people to Web3, “because the technology and the community aren’t quite ready for mainstream users yet.” Within the next two years, the Startale CEO aims to bring Sony products like Sony Bank, Sony Music, and Sony Pictures onto Soneium.

Looking further ahead, Watanabe plans to onboard not just Sony but other enterprises and all major decentralized applications onto the blockchain within three years. However, this timeline is flexible, and Sony will actively work on onboarding as many enterprises as possible from the start.

The post Sony’s Soneium: A New Layer-2 Solution for Ethereum appeared first on Coin Edition.