Web2 giant launches L2: What kind of storm will Sony and its entertainment empire stir up?

Deploying the metaverse, adopting NFT, 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 player to the OP Stack L2 ecosystem.

For convenience, it is directly called Sony L2

In addition to being compatible with existing dapps in the future, the ecosystem of Sony L2 will also develop new services related to Sony's business and introduce blockchain into Sony's products. The official clearly stated that it will work hard to support creators to expand their creativity and strengthen 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.

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

Category 1: GameFi

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

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

Holding the IPs of popular 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 manufacturers have confirmed that Web3 players will not play without Earn, and Web2 players will sneer at NFT, but it is estimated that they 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: Web3 games want to penetrate Web2 and cater to mainstream players, and must achieve "chain abstraction" and "concept abstraction" so that players do not feel that they are playing games on the blockchain. Not to mention the concepts of in-game transactions and currency exchange, which do not need to be done on the front end. Players want to play games with peace of mind.

Category 2: NFT 

In addition to in-game NFTs, Sony should integrate film and television IPs into NFTs and issue music NFTs more frequently. Create your own IP NFT market, while issuing at a lower cost, and attract other IP companies to cooperate. Before and now, due to compliance reasons, all Web2 giants have been so timid in exploring Web3, and it seems to be only in the "ambiguous" stage. Let's see if Sony can find a new way.

Examples 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 issue digital collectibles of legendary musicians such as Miles Davis on the Snowcrash NFT market.

Category 3: Consumer Applications

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

Remember the various "Web3 versions of Youtube"? Even if the audience is paid directly, it has not been able to avoid gradual demise. No users = no creators = no good content = no demand = no use, and naturally there is no need for the token to exist in the market.

Currently, Solana is still 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 use the various businesses and IPs of the Sony Group to create new services and transform Soneium into an infrastructure that everyone can use on a daily basis.

Sony's advantage is that it is a Web2 giant with endless traffic/energy. It should be easy to promote its own Web3 products or its own chain's high-quality products (which must have been strictly reviewed by the team) to Web2 users.

And as cryptocurrencies become 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, which can exchange tokens directly in posts, the intersection of Web2 and Web3.

For the time being, I can think of these three points, each of which can actually bring a large number of new users to Web3.

I am just a Web2 player. My first contact with Sony’s Web3 game is of good quality and quite fun. There are enough online players, so it’s not 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 buy an NFT ticket, and with the NFT, I can unlock Easter eggs online, enter the gated community, and talk to the creators and the main actors. ?

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

Maybe what Web2 users really hate is the endless buzz of Crypto hype and low-quality products in shells. Sony’s Soneium, as long as it does not waste, as long as it does not make trouble, makes good 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 writing, Sony’s official Twitter 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. The Discord community has just been opened. You can brush up on the activity to get OG characters first. Be diligent!