Soneium Partners with Animoca Brands to Bring Anime Fans to the Sony-backed Layer 2

Sony’s Soneium blockchain announced its second partnership deal this week, this one with Animoca Brands, to bring anime to Web3.

With a total value locked (TVL) of just over $100 million, Soneium is polishing its anime and gaming credentials by making deals aimed at bringing fans of the iconic Japanese animation style and related manga books onchain.

Animoca, best known for its metaverse The Sandbox, is using its digital identity infrastructure platform Moca Network to create Anime ID, a decentralized identifier (DID) and reputation layer focused on engaging anime fans.

Anime ID will be incorporated by San FranTokyo, an anime-themed quasi-metaverse that is a cross-platform cultural layer for anime fans. San FranTokyo will work with Animoca to create cultural campaigns aimed at bringing more anime and manga fans onto Soneium. It will also be portable across DApps on Soneium, the 14th-largest Ethereum Layer-2 rollup by market capitalization, according to L2 Beat.

“Our partnership with Soneium marks a significant step towards an interconnected Web3 future,” said Yat Siu, co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands. “By integrating Moca Network's identity infrastructure, we're not just enhancing entertainment experiences; we're creating a seamless digital ecosystem. The partnership will empower Soneium users with unified digital identities, bridging anime, gaming, and blockchain technologies.”

The move comes as anime fever hits crypto after the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT art generation tool with a feature that allows people to have pictures turned into the art style of top anime producer Studio Ghibli. More than 20 Studio Ghibli memecoins have been launched in the past two days, with Ghiblification reaching a market capitalization of $29 million before falling back to its current $19 million.

Anime NFTs

Another Soneium project launched this week is a collaboration between Japanese pop culture-themed fan engagement protocol YOAKE and NFT marketplace OpenSea.

The partnership begins with an NFT drop on OpenSea on Soneium for a famed anime and manga series, “The Seven Deadly Sins.”

The first in a series of drops from the franchise, YOAKE CBO Sota Moriyama said the firm “is committed to pushing web3 adoption through the power of culture, and there’s no better way to bring this vision to life than by introducing officially licensed anime collectibles onchain.”