Sony Pushes Web3 Adoption in Asia With Launch of Soneium Layer-2 Network

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• IRC will use Soneium’s IPFi infrastructure to measure and reward fan exercise, issuing “IRC Scores” with its cellular app.
• It should convert these scores into membership tiers that present real-world advantages.

Tech large Sony is shifting forward with Web3 adoption in Asia as its Layer-2 blockchain platform Soneium lately partnered with IRC APP, the most important idol and vogue competition app in Japan. Thus, IRC will now be part of Soneium’s AI-powered IPFi infrastructure, which is able to increase international fan engagement.

Idol Runway Assortment (IRC), the most important idol and vogue hybrid competition of Japan, partnered with Sony’s Soneium blockchain for an on-chain fan engagement mannequin. By way of this collaboration, IRC needs to remodel the way in which manufacturers have interaction with international audiences.

In addition to, the platform will leverage Sony’s IPFi infrastructure, which is able to enable it to measure and reward followers for his or her participation. IRC has efficiently examined this strategy inside Asia’s leisure trade. It needs to duplicate the identical success in Western nations as properly!

Throughout its 2025 occasion, IRC drew roughly 11,800 attendees and 107 idol teams. For the success of this initiative, the corporate is utilizing the IRC cellular app, which makes use of AI to judge fan exercise on completely different social media platforms.

Followers earn “IRC Scores” for his or her constructive engagement. The corporate then routinely distributes them to the fan wallets with none fuel price. These scores are then later transformed into membership tiers akin to Common, Bronze, Silver, and Gold. Customers can use these factors on the subsequent IRC occasions to get advantages like early ticket entry, precedence entry, and premium venue invites. The system additionally allows on-chain fan voting to affect elements of the 2026 occasion.

Now, by way of this partnership with Sony’s Soneium, IRC plans to increase this measurable fandom mannequin past idol tradition. The platform mentioned that it’ll discover broader artistic classes like vogue and anime, together with the world’s second-largest music market. The official announcement notes:

“Powered by Soneium’s infrastructure, the IRC APP creates a seamless bridge between on a regular basis fandom exercise and real-world impression at IRC. IRC APP leverages Account Abstraction (AA) to make sure the expertise is straight away accessible to customers unfamiliar with blockchain purposes, whereas providing unprecedented fandom affect”.

Sony launched its Layer-2 blockchain community Soneium earlier this yr, in January 2025, and immediately acquired backing from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. Moreover, Soneium has collaborated with DeFi market gamers like Uniswap for quicker market enlargement.

Asian Leisure Business Seeing Sturdy Transformation

The Asian Leisure Business is seeing a significant change. Outstanding gamers on this area, throughout Japan, South Korea, and China, are actually working with completely different Web3 initiatives.

Sony’s Soneium infrastructure helps high-volume purposes. Its scalable Layer-2 infrastructure helps voting, reward distribution, and group engagement. Market specialists imagine that the success of Soneium will rely upon whether or not leisure firms can construct efficient participation fashions on this infrastructure.