If you have a “GM” It doesn’t matter if Sota watanabe is the one who says it. “good morning.”
Watanabe wants the term to be used in a different way. “go mainstream.”
That’s the slogan — and ambition — of Sony Block Solutions Labs in launching Soneium, a joint venture with Watanabe’s company.
It’s a network. “Minato” The public testnet will be launched following Wednesday’s WebX 2024 Conference in Japan.
Watanabe reiterated the mantra that Soneium, the latest iteration in blockchain technology, will attract the next billion users to crypto.
“What the industry does not have is a distribution channel,” Watanabe tells Blockworks. “We would like to develop a blockchain based on real customer feedback, so we are making the chain not only for tech people but also for general people who are going to use blockchain in the coming 10 years.”
Soneium is Startale’s third deployment of blockchain. The Astar Network Layer-1 was followed by a Polkadot Parachain, and then the Ethereum layer-2 Astar ZkEVM (based upon the Polygon CDK).
Soneium will be the new Astar. “evolve” Once again, use the optimistic rollup based upon the OP Stack.
It is possible that Sony engineers have concluded the OP Stack to be a superior option. “proven” solution, particularly in the wake of blockchain reorganizations — or “reorgs” — encountered by Astar, Watanabe said. Polygon’s zkEVM, which is a Polygon-owned product, has also experienced problems.
OP Mainnet had its odd issues with stability. It has been conspicuously lacking permissionless faultproofs for most of its life, and recently reversed its last attempt. L2Beat reports that the network should re-enable this feature in two weeks.
Until a system that is fault proof and works on all OP Stack chains becomes available, any claims about inheriting Ethereum’s security will be at best speculative.
Watanabe seems unconcerned for now.
“The customer does not care which tech stack to use, the customer just wants a stable and robust network,” Watanabe said. “To onboard Sony onchain to a Web3 ecosystem, the tech stack needed to be ready for production.”
Astar zkEVM, he claimed, could only manage three or four transactions per seconds. The OP Stack should be able to handle more.
A source familiar with the transaction told Blockworks that the technical assessment was only a small factor. “The reality is Astar’s decision was driven entirely by their joint venture with Sony, who is being compensated by Optimism for this deal,” The source stated.
Blockworks contacted Optimism to clarify, but they refused to comment.
Soneium’s backers also plan for the network to join the Superchain — which would put them alongside Base, the OP Stack rollup leading the Ethereum layer-2 space in active users in recent weeks.
Watanabe played down the competition among rollups.
“A lot of the people asked me about the competition between Soneium and Base because the concept is similar, though not the same,” Watanable said. “But I don’t want to compete with Base — rather, we would like to make the ecosystem bigger together, through the Superchain.”
The testnet launch also kicks off an incubation program called Spark, which aims to create a fertile environment for developers to build and test their applications, alongside mentorship, technical support and funding opportunities — such as investments of up to $100,000 for eligible projects.
Watanabe noted that Sony was committed to the venture for the long term. The entertainment and electronics company has also allocated infrastructure resources, as well as its 30-50 Web3 software engineers, as part of its initial funding.
Project follows about a one-and-a-half year of discussion, which began long before Astar zkEVM launched.
“We would like to show our respect to the open source technology. We have been speaking with Optimism executives and I strongly respect them because they are literally trying to change the existing society — and Sony would like to work with them,” Watanabe said.
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