Sony Takes the Baton in Asia’s Entertainment–Web3 Convergence

Soneium, a Layer-2 blockchain platform by Sony Block Solutions Labs, introduced a partnership with IRC APP, the official app for certainly one of Japan’s largest idol and trend festivals, Idol Runway Collection (IRC).

The collaboration will deliver the IRC onto Soneium’s AI-powered IPFi infrastructure to remodel international fan engagement by measurable, rewarding on-chain contributions. Asia’s leisure trade has grow to be a trailblazer in fan participation, a pattern that’s now taking maintain in Western markets.

Sony’s Blockchain Infrastructure for Entertainment

The IRC, Japan’s largest idol and trend hybrid competition, is hosted by YOAKE leisure and has expanded its scale by a collaboration with Tokyo Girls Collection (TGC). IRC has already established itself as a hit, attracting roughly 11,800 attendees and 107 idol teams to its 2025 occasion. 

The core aim of the partnership is redefining fan engagement by valuing and rewarding measurable on-chain contributions throughout the J-Pop fandom. This collaboration will unlock the artistic neighborhood’s financial potential, beginning with the world’s second-largest music market.

The core of fan engagement is inside the IRC cell app. This AI-powered app evaluates constructive, constant, supportive posts made by followers on platforms corresponding to X (previously Twitter). The measured engagement is transformed into “IRC Score,” which is robotically claimed to followers’ on-chain wallets with out gasoline charges.

This amassed rating determines a person’s Membership rank—Regular, Bronze, Silver, or Gold—with every tier providing progressively enhanced real-world advantages for IRC 2026, scheduled for March 15, 2026, in Tokyo, together with early ticket entry, precedence entry, and premium venue invites. It additionally allows the on-chain Fan Vote, which instantly shapes tangible facets of the IRC 2026 occasion. This measurable fandom contribution system will develop past idol tradition into new artistic frontiers corresponding to anime and trend.

Sony launched its Soneium blockchain mainnet on January 14, 2025, setting a brand new customary for production-grade Web3 companies targeted on leisure, gaming, and mental property safety. This public Layer-2 community makes use of Ethereum’s OP Stack, inheriting its safety whereas providing decrease transaction charges and better throughput. Sony Block Solutions Labs designed Soneium to help scalable purposes for digital communities and inventive industries.

Asian Entertainment Companies Pioneer Fan Ownership Models

This is just not the first time Asian leisure corporations have tried Web3-related initiatives. In Korea, woman group tripleS has made blockchain a core source of revenue. Produced by Modhaus and shaped as a 24-member group, tripleS lets followers use NFTs and utility tokens to affect unit composition and tune choice. Fans buy NFT objects to achieve Komos token voting energy in the COSMO app, making a system of clear, participatory governance.

This mannequin enabled tripleS to generate income even earlier than its debut, offering members with compensation similar to that of huge corporations. Production exceeded 10 billion KRW ($6.8 million), and early NFT gross sales helped money circulation, providing a fairer distribution than typical idol group contracts. TripleS stands out as a case the place blockchain drives fan co-creation and clear worth sharing in leisure.

China’s leisure platforms are quickly adopting superfan-driven neighborhood fashions that resemble Web3 economics even with out blockchain. HYBE’s growth by Tencent Music and Alibaba exhibits how direct messaging, authenticated merchandise, and built-in fan companies strengthen ownership-like engagement. This setting naturally helps large-scale Web3-style participation economies.

Tencent Music’s superfan ecosystem illustrates this shift with Bubble surpassing 2.3 million paying subscribers. G-DRAGON’s Macau exhibits drew 36,000 attendees and seven million simultaneous on-line viewers, proving the energy of hybrid fan engagement. Merchandise, tiered subscriptions, and the growth of long-form audio present China constructing a multi-channel superfan financial system aligned with Web3 ideas.

Lessons From Failed Web3 Entertainment Experiments

Failures have existed, too. Momentrica, an NFT platform by Dunamu and HYBE, closed on July 2, 2025, after posting an working lack of 13 billion KRW ($8.88 million USD)and a internet lack of 12.3 billion KRW in the final reported 12 months. Although HYBE artists’ digital collectibles sparked preliminary curiosity, Momentrica struggled attributable to a scarcity of long-term utility or sustained fan participation amid the broader NFT market downturn. Precisely, the platform solely supplied NFTs as static digital items, not as engagement instruments.

The distinction between Momentrica and tripleS highlights a key distinction in Web3 leisure. Momentrica offered digital collectibles with out voting rights, participation, or ongoing utility. In distinction, tripleS used blockchain at its core, granting followers voting rights and engagement choices. The lesson is obvious: profitable Web3 in entertainment requires participation architectures, not simply digital merchandise.

Sony’s Soneium seems poised to keep away from Momentrica’s pitfalls by supporting high-volume, participation-based purposes. Its scalable Layer-2 community is constructed for voting, reward distribution, and neighborhood engagement. Whether leisure corporations create efficient participation fashions on this infrastructure will decide if Sony’s blockchain technique succeeds the place others have failed.

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