Fake collaboration, real traffic diversion? Can Sony Chain Soneium successfully launch mini games on the LINE platform?

Author: Zen, PANews

In the Web3 field, rumors about cooperation between giant companies always attract special attention. Recently, the "strong alliance" between Soneium and LINE in Web3 business has become a hot topic in the industry and has triggered widespread discussion. However, with the official clarification of LINE's Web3 platform Dapp Portal, this seemingly vigorous cooperation has been confirmed to be a misunderstanding.

At the same time, LINE's Mini Dapp ecosystem has begun to take shape, and Soneium is also actively deploying blockchain games. Whether the development paths of the two will truly intersect remains a focus worthy of attention.

Entertainment and social giants’ “strong cooperation” in the Web3 field is a misunderstanding

"Recently, there have been reports that LY Corporation and another company announced a "partnership" for LINE's Web3 business. However, LY Corporation has confirmed to LINE NEXT that no such transaction or relationship exists." On March 14, Dapp Portal, a platform that provides Web3 services for LINE, issued a statement on social media to clarify that the rumored "giant partnership" between Sony's blockchain Soneium and LINE in the Web3 field does not actually exist. LY Corporation in the statement is LINE's parent company, and LINE NEXT is a subsidiary of LINE that focuses on the Web3 field, that is, the company that launched the Dapp Portal service.

Dapp Portal also mentioned that even in the announcement of another company, the word "partnership" has never been used. This is indeed the case. The official announcement released by Soneium on the X platform is: "LINE Mini-App is coming to Soneium", which claims to introduce LINE Mini-App to the chain and establish connections with LINE's 200 million active users, and related developers will also benefit from Soneium's support.

However, in the official blog released by Soneium, it stated that "it is working with LINE to introduce four successful mini-programs to the chain in the next few months", and the accompanying pictures are similar to those in most official cooperation statements, which inevitably led a number of media and KOLs to mistakenly believe that the two parties have established a partnership. In addition, Sota Watanabe, founder and CEO of Astar Network, which is "deeply bound" to Soneium, also commented when forwarding media reports on the X platform: "This cooperation has opened a new chapter for Web3 and is one step closer to becoming mainstream!"

1kx partner Peter (@pet3rpan_) expressed his dissatisfaction with the incident after Dapp Portal’s clarification. He quoted the Soneium statement and said: “This statement is completely wrong and seriously distorts the facts. There is no official cooperation relationship between the two parties.” He also questioned Sota Watanabe’s explanation for this.

Although Soneium has not yet reached an official cooperation with LINE, its strategic intention to rely on the 200 million active users of the LINE platform and expand the ecological influence through social games is self-evident. Especially in the context of LINE's own Web3 business having achieved impressive results, the platform has become an important testing ground for Soneium's "GM with Soneium" plan.

LINE platform effect is beginning to show results: Mini Dapp acquires 35 million users in the first month

In January this year, LINE officially launched Mini Dapp, and the official said that it has accumulated more than 35 million users in just one month, mainly from Japan, Taiwan, Thailand and South Korea, which are regions with high LINE penetration rates. Mini Dapp is exclusively supported by Kaia blockchain, and users can access it directly through the official account of LINE Messenger's Dapp Portal without having to download the application separately.

According to Dapp Portal data, as of March 14, LINE has launched 52 Mini Dapps, among which Elderglade, Frog Defense, Web3.0 PvZ, and Slime Miner have more than two million players. When LINE NEXT officially launched Mini Dapp, it also stated that the goal is to launch more than 1,000 projects by 2025.

With the platform effect of LINE, within one month of its launch, the number of new wallets created in the Dapp Portal ecosystem exceeded 3 million, driving the overall number of wallets in the Kaia network to grow by about 1,168%. The monthly transaction volume of the Kaia ecosystem increased by 124% to 27.38 million. The number of active users on the chain also increased by 252% to 8.1 million. LINE said that the average consumption per buyer was about US$39, and about 32% of Dapp goods were paid by non-virtual assets such as credit cards, indicating that some users who are not familiar with virtual assets are also actively entering the Web3 field.

It is worth mentioning that when HTML5 games became a fashionable item in social software, LINE launched a game service called " LINE QUICK GAME ", which can also be played in the LINE application without installing a specific application. The service was launched in September 2018, providing a total of 24 easy-to-play games. One month later, the number of users exceeded 3 million. Two years later, due to poor market response, "LINE QUICK GAME" terminated the service, and LINE explained that it needed to focus management resources on other areas of the game business.

With the development of blockchain technology and the demonstration effect of Telegram last year, LINE, which has now found a new direction, has made a good start with Dapp Portal, and its subsequent development is worth looking forward to. This is also the reason why Soneium will target LINE as a way to expand its ecosystem.

Soneium TVL exceeds $80 million, plans to launch 4 mini games on LINE

In the past month, although the crypto market has been in a downturn and the total market value of cryptocurrencies has continued to shrink, there are still many projects that have performed well - in addition to LINE's Dapp Portal, Sony's Soneium is also developing rapidly.

According to DefiLlama data , as of March 15, the TVL of Layer 2 expansion solution Soneium has reached 80 million US dollars, or 83.08 million US dollars. Its TVL grew by 90% in February and nearly 24% in the past week. In addition, as an important indicator of ecological prosperity, the decentralized exchanges of the Soneium ecosystem have also grown rapidly, among which Sonex, Kyo Finance and Velodrome's TVL have achieved significant growth of 1504%, 429% and 125% respectively in the past month.

Given Sony's influence in the traditional electronic entertainment industry, it may not be surprising that Soneium has achieved the above. However, if you want to achieve the goal of "going mainstream (GM with Soneium), the entertainment business based on games may be the most effective way. According to Soneium, the first four mini games that integrate Soneium and plan to be launched on LINE will be officially launched in the next few months:

• Sleepagotchi LITE: A simplified version of the Sleepagotchi Sleep Rewards app designed for iOS and Android, developed by the creators of the NFT game protocol Aavegotchi. The game provides a relaxing and casual gaming experience without the need for users to track sleep data. Since its launch, Sleepagotchi LITE has gained a lot of attention on the Telegram platform, attracting 1 million users in just one month and becoming one of the most profitable applications.

• Farm Frens: Farm-themed game developed by Amihan Entertainment, which has raised $10.5 million to date and has launched the tower defense game Everseed. Its development team members have participated in the production of well-known games such as League of Legends, Hearthstone, and MapleStory. Farm Frens first became popular on Telegram in 2024 and once became the number one game on the platform.

• Moonveil – Puffy Match: A mini-game developed by Moonveil.gg, a Web3 gaming platform focused on AI-driven infrastructure. The game features fast-paced gameplay designed to inspire community interaction and encourage reward-based participation.

• Pocket Mob: A social strategy role-playing game developed by Sonzai Labs. The game offers highly interactive gameplay where players compete for respect points in mafia-style combat and have a chance to win NFT rewards.

However, the above four games have not yet been launched, and there are actually doubts as to whether they can actually be launched.

In January this year, Telegram announced that TON would become the only blockchain infrastructure for its Mini App ecosystem and stopped supporting all other blockchains. Although LINE has not yet mentioned banning blockchains other than Kaia, as a Layer 1 blockchain jointly built by Kaia and Kakao, it is not impossible for Kaia to establish a "platform barrier" to support the development of its own ecosystem in the future.

In fact, LINE and Kaia seem to have been sending such a signal. On March 14, Dapp Portal released a major update, announcing the upcoming launch of Mini Dapp V2. Kaia quoted this tweet and said: "Hasn't the big thing happened? It is LINE's Dapp Portal, exclusively supported by Kaia." Subsequently, Dapp Portal forwarded Kaia's comment.