Soneium: Sony launches its own L2 blockchain for an "open Internet"

It is probably the biggest step in Web3 for a long time: Sony wants to launch its own L2 blockchain on Ethereum, Soneium.

Within the next two years, the company plans to integrate it into many of Sony's products. The L2 is being developed with Startale Labs and is based on Optimism, the popular Layer2 network on Ethereum. This should keep costs as low as possible.

As such, Sony is in good company. Binance, Coinbase and Worldcoin: many major Ethereum projects use Optimism.

The company has presented a three-year plan for its blockchain. In the first year, it wants to attract Web3 users and developers. In the second year, Soneium should be integrated into several products, including Sony Bank, Sony Music and Sony Pictures. In the third year, it wants to allow companies and decentralized applications, called dApps, on the platform.

Soneium will be launched on the test network as early as the next few days. In 2022, the company filed patents for so-called "superfungible" gaming tokens. So far, however, none of that has materialized.

Sony is one of the largest electronics companies in the world. In 2023, it made a net profit of $6.5 billion.