Sony's Soneium Brings Entertainment IP On-Chain: Tokenized IP, IP Vaults and the $SONEIUM Token

Sony has just made one of the biggest entertainment companies in the world a blockchain story. Soneium, the Ethereum Layer 2 network backed by Sony, unveiled its Tokenized IP economy on October 26, 2026 — a plan to turn characters, music, films and concert royalties into programmable on-chain assets, with a native $SONEIUM token on the way.

The catch, and the part every reader needs to hear first: no $SONEIUM token has been issued yet. Soneium says so plainly. There is no launch date, no supply figure, no vesting schedule and no listing plan. Any $SONEIUM ticker trading anywhere today is fake.

What Soneium actually is

Soneium is an Ethereum Layer 2 built on Optimism's OP Stack, developed by Sony Block Solutions Labs together with Startale. Its mainnet went live on January 14, 2025, with chain ID 1868 and transaction fees paid in ETH. By the end of 2025 the network reported 455 million transactions processed, 5.3 million active wallet addresses, more than 3.4 million smart contracts deployed and over 250 ecosystem applications.

The honest context is that activity has cooled since then. On October 26 the network was running about 160,000 transactions and just over 4,000 active addresses a day, and DeFi TVL on Soneium had fallen to roughly $9.4 million — down more than 95% from its May 2025 high of about $203 million. That is exactly why the Tokenized IP pivot matters: Soneium is searching for a new engine, and entertainment IP is the bet.

How Tokenized IP works

The model has three products sitting on three layers of infrastructure. IP Tokens represent individual works — a character, a song, a film — and can be fungible or collectible. IP Vaults give access to royalty-backed assets. Tokenized IP Bonds are backed by entertainment businesses and their revenue streams.

Underneath, an IP Registry records ownership and licensing on-chain, an IP Graph maps how original and derivative works connect, and an Execution Layer uses smart contracts to automate royalties, revenue splits and licensing payments. The whole framework is being built around ERC-8432, a draft Ethereum standard for an on-chain IP asset and license registry.

The first IP Token is Moriusa, a purple-rabbit character from Super State Holdings, a Tokyo-based entertainment group. Moriusa's page on the Soneium Portal already lists an NFT bridge, with more details promised for Thursday, November 5. On October 27 Soneium also announced it would launch the IP Vault and a stablecoin called ipUSD, opening access to a $549 million royalty fund managed by Partners Group with tokenized infrastructure provided by Asseto.

Why K-pop royalties are the test case

The second act is already lined up. Soneium is working with DayOneDream, the K-pop IP holder managing artists including BTOB and LEE CHAE YEON, to put concert business royalties on-chain as Tokenized IP Bonds. If that works, the model stops being a whitepaper idea: real concert revenue, flowing through smart contracts, split automatically between rights holders.

That is the promise that separates this from the 2021 NFT wave. The old model sold a collectible and hoped for a resale. This model tries to turn the underlying revenue — royalties, concert income, licensing fees — into something fans and investors can hold, fund and trade.

What to watch — and what to be careful about

• The Moriusa announcement due November 5 is the first real milestone: it will show whether the IP Token launch is a working product or just a portal page.
• The first Tokenized IP Bond will be the real stress test — a bond needs real terms, real yields and real legal standing, none of which has been published yet.
• $SONEIUM token details — supply, allocation, vesting, listings — remain completely unpublished. Soneium says the token is meant to align creators, IP owners, builders, fans and investors, but until the token generation event is announced, any talk about its value is guesswork.
• The legal layer is off-chain. Tokenized IP does not yet settle the legal rights themselves on-chain, and ERC-8432 is still a draft standard. Parts of this model could look different by launch, and Soneium's own announcement says its plans may change.
• Fake tokens are already circulating. With no official token in existence, any $SONEIUM contract on another chain is a scam by definition. Check Soneium's official channels before trusting any contract address.

Soneium's pivot is part of a wider Layer 2 story this year. Networks that launched as general-purpose scaling chains are hunting for a reason to exist — Scroll, for example, has proposed turning itself into a privacy-focused AI network and moving its SCR token back to Ethereum mainnet, as covered in our earlier report on the Scroll proposal (https://zimbuck.com/blogs/1226/Scroll-Proposes-a-Privacy-AI-Network-Why-the-Layer-2). Soneium's answer is entertainment: Sony's catalogue, on-chain. Another recent L2 launch, the UK Financial MAYA CHAIN network (https://zimbuck.com/blogs/520/MAYA-CHAIN-Goes-Live-UK-Financial-s-New-Ethereum-Layer), shows the same pattern — purpose-built chains replacing the general-purpose model.

Whether Tokenized IP becomes a real funding rail for creators or another overpromised crypto narrative will be decided by the next few launches: Moriusa today, the first IP Bond, and eventually the $SONEIUM token itself. For now, the facts are clear — the vision is ambitious, the token does not exist yet, and the first products are only just arriving. Follow the developing story on the Zimbuck News page (https://zimbuck.com/pages/zimbucknews) and in the Zimbuck Market News group (https://zimbuck.com/groups/zimbuckmarketnews), and join the conversation on Zimbuck (https://zimbuck.com) — the finance social platform for traders and investors.

FAQ

What is Soneium?

An Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain backed by Sony, built on Optimism's OP Stack, with mainnet live since January 14, 2025. It is now pivoting to an on-chain entertainment economy built on Tokenized IP.

Has the $SONEIUM token launched?

No. Soneium has confirmed plans to issue it, but no token has been issued, and there is no launch date or tokenomics yet. Any $SONEIUM token trading today is fake.

What is Tokenized IP?

Turning creative works — characters, music, films, concert royalties — into programmable on-chain assets through IP Tokens, IP Vaults and IP Bonds, with royalties and revenue splits automated by smart contracts.

What is the first IP Token?

Moriusa, a character IP from Tokyo-based Super State Holdings, with more details promised for November 5, 2026.

What is ERC-8432?

A draft Ethereum standard for an on-chain IP asset and license registry that underpins Soneium's Tokenized IP model.

This article is market news and general information only, not financial advice. Always do your own research before making any investment decision.