After a 95% Drop in TVL, Sony's L2 Soneium is Finally Launching Its Token

Once focused on IP on-chain, Story has shifted to AI data, while Soneium announces its token launch betting on IP.

Written by: Sanqing, Foresight News

Sony, a well-known Japanese company, has made new progress in its Web3 business.

On October 26, Sony and Startale jointly developed the Ethereum Layer 2 network Soneium based on OP Stack, releasing a vision document that repositions itself as a "chain-based entertainment economy," focusing on tokenized IP as its core business and planning to issue the ecological token SONEIUM.

This is a clear departure from Soneium's initial positioning. When it debuted in August 2024, its goal was to leverage Sony's global user channels to "go mainstream," implementing Web3 applications across various fields such as entertainment, gaming, and finance, with creator rights protection being just one of the envisioned use cases.

Soneium states that SONEIUM will serve as an economic layer connecting creators, IP owners, developers, fans, and investors. However, the section regarding the token in the vision document is only a paragraph long, with the token economic model, distribution plan, and TGE timing all marked as "to be announced later."

Transitioning from General L2 to IP Asset Platform

Soneium categorizes tokenized IP into three asset forms.

The first is the IP Token representing individual creators, studios, or works. The first project to launch is Moriusa, a character IP introduced by the Tokyo entertainment company STPR.

STPR operates the official YouTube channel for the virtual idol group Strawberry Prince (すとぷり), which has over 3.66 million subscribers, and is controlled by Super State Holdings. The total number of Moriusa NFTs is 2222, with OpenSea data showing a cumulative trading volume of approximately 2202 ETH, a floor price of about 0.48 ETH, and a 24-hour increase of about 43%.

The second is the IP Bond, with the first partner, South Korean entertainment company DayOneDream, planning to turn concert revenues of its artists into on-chain bonds. The third type, IP Vault, is aimed at assets like music royalties, with specific projects yet to be announced.

In terms of technical architecture, Soneium has established a three-layer design consisting of IP Registry, IP Graph, and IP Execution, to record the origins of works, clarify the relationships between original and derivative works, and automatically allocate royalties according to rules set by IP owners. Additionally, the network supports the ERC-8432 standard, allowing AI Agents to directly query authorization terms on-chain.

The underlying operations are managed by Optimism. As a member chain of the Optimism Superchain built on OP Stack, Soneium announced on September 30 that it would adopt OP Enterprise's fully managed services. The deployment, upgrades, ordering, node infrastructure, monitoring, and incident response of the chain are all handled by the Optimism Foundation and OP Labs, while Soneium retains ownership of the chain and control over its roadmap, allowing the team to focus on developing tokenized IP and on-chain entertainment products.

The first two partners are not subsidiaries of the Sony Group, and the new token plan has rewritten Soneium's initial token narrative.

When Soneium was announced in August 2024, it positioned the native token ASTR of Astar Network as a core ecological asset. Astar Network was founded by Startale CEO Kenta Watanabe in 2019, and its zkEVM chain was integrated into Soneium, developed by the joint venture Sony Block Solutions Labs in 2024. In April 2025, Startale also announced that part of the income from the ordering would be used to buy ASTR on the open market.

However, ASTR was not mentioned in the token section of the recently released blog and vision document. According to Bitget data, ASTR is currently priced at about $0.0064, down about 93% from its peak of around $0.095 in December 2024, with a market capitalization of approximately $56.21 million; the current circulation is about 8.79 billion, while Astar's long-term supply target is set at about 10 billion, with an FDV of about $64 million.

On-chain TVL Has Dropped by 95%

Data from DefiLlama shows that Soneium's on-chain TVL peaked at about $203 million on May 23, 2025, and has since fallen to about $9.39 million as of October 27, a decrease of about 95.4%. Trading activity has also declined, with L2Beat data indicating that Soneium's daily trading volume exceeded 3.4 million transactions in January 2026, while the average daily trading volume from October 1 to 26 was about 240,000 transactions.

L2 networks that launched alongside Soneium are generally facing capital outflows. From May 23, 2025, Unichain's TVL has dropped from about $532 million to about $25.69 million, a decline of about 95.2%; Abstract's TVL has fallen from about $28.07 million to about $3.51 million, a drop of about 87.5%, with its developer (Pudgy Penguins' parent company Igloo Inc.) announcing in early October that it would shut down Abstract on December 15. In contrast, Kraken's Ink has seen growth during the same period, with its TVL increasing from about $7.05 million to about $199 million.

Despite the decline in on-chain data, Sony continues to increase its investment. In January 2026, the Sony Innovation Fund invested approximately $13 million (about 2 billion yen) in Startale. According to L2Beat statistics, Soneium has processed approximately 757 million transactions, but the block explorer Blockscout shows that its weekly active addresses have dropped from about 835,000 in early May 2025 to about 22,000 in the week of October 19.

Pioneers of IP on-chain Have Already Shifted

Before Soneium, Story, which launched its mainnet in February 2025, was a representative project in the IP on-chain field. According to Bitget data, its native token IP (now DATA) once approached $15 in September 2025, but is currently priced at about $0.14, a drop of about 99%. According to DefiLlama statistics, Story's on-chain TVL fell from a peak of about $45.12 million on September 23, 2025, to about $115,000 on October 20.

Story has now abandoned this direction. In June 2026, Story announced its rebranding to DATA Foundation, with the network renamed to DATA Network, shifting its business from IP tokenization to the verification, authorization, and payment of AI training data sources, with the original IP token migrated to DATA at a 1:1 ratio.

The customer bases of the two chains have begun to overlap. The tokenized platform WAVIST under DayOneDream previously operated on Story. According to Nasdaq-listed IP Strategy, which primarily holds IP (now DATA) as its reserve asset, WAVIST's first asset sale raised about $3.22 million. Now, WAVIST has become the first partner of Soneium's IP Bond.

According to Soneium's structure, royalties and revenues generated from IP will be directly distributed to holders of the corresponding IP Token and IP Bond. However, how the SONEIUM token captures value and what specific rights holders enjoy are not specified in the existing documents.

Currently, the only clear adjustment to Soneium's network economy is the planned adjustment of the base Gas fee, while specific plans regarding the SONEIUM token and TGE are still pending further disclosure.

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