Fake joining forces, really divert traffic? Is it doubtful whether Sony Chain Soneium can successfully launch mini games on LINE platform

Author: Zen, PANews

In the Web3 field, rumors about cooperation between giant companies are always particularly eye-catching. Recently, Soneium and LINE's "strong alliance" in Web3 business once became a hot topic in the industry, causing widespread discussion. However, with the official clarification of LINE's Web3 platform Dapp Portal, this seemingly vigorous cooperation has actually been proven to be a misinformation.

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

Entertainment and social giants have misinformed their "strong

cooperation" in the Web3 field

"Recent reports have been reported that LY Corporation and another company have announced a "partnership" of LINE's Web3 business. However, LY Corporation has confirmed to LINE NEXT that there is no such transaction or relationship." On March 14, Dapp Portal, a platform for LINE's Web3 services, issued a statement on social media to clarify that the recently rumored Sony blockchain Soneium and its "giants" in the Web3 field do not actually exist. The LY Corporation in the statement is LINE's parent company, and LINE NEXT is a subsidiary of LINE focusing on the Web3 field, that is, a company that launches Dapp Portal services.

Dapp Portal also mentioned that the term "partnership" has never been used even in the announcement of another company. This is true. Soneium's official statement released on the X platform is: "LINE applet (MINI-App) will be logged into Soneium soon." It claims to introduce LINE applets to the chain and establish connections with 200 million active users LINE, 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 the accompanying pictures in most official cooperation statements, which will inevitably lead to a number of media and KOLs who mistakenly believe that the two parties have established a partnership. In addition, Sota Watanabe, founder and CEO of Astar Network, who is "deeply bound" with Soneium, also commented on the X platform when forwarding media reports: "This cooperation has opened a new chapter in Web3, one step closer to becoming mainstream!"

1kx partner Peter (@pet3rpan_) expressed dissatisfaction with the incident after the Dapp Portal clarification, citing Soneium statement: "This statement is completely wrong and seriously distorts the facts, and there is no official partnership between the two parties." He also questioned Sota Watanabe what explanation it had.

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

LINE platform effect initially shows results: Mini Dapp acquires 35

million users in the first month

In January this year, LINE officially launched the Mini Dapp, which officially stated that its cumulative users had exceeded 35 million in just one month. These users mainly come from Japan, Taiwan, Thailand and South Korea, which are high-penetration areas. Mini Dapp is exclusively powered by Kaia blockchain, and users can access it directly through LINE Messenger's Dapp Portal official account without having to download the application separately.

According to Dapp Portal data, as of March 14, LINE has launched 52 Mini Dapps, among which the number of players in the games Elderglade, Frog Defense, Web3.0 PvZ, and Slime Miner has exceeded 2 million. LINE NEXT also stated its goal to launch more than 1,000 projects in 2025.

With the platform effect of LINE, the number of new wallets created in the Dapp Portal ecosystem has exceeded 3 million within one month of its launch, driving the overall number of wallets on Kaia's network to grow by about 1168%. The Kaia ecosystem's monthly transaction volume increased by 124% to 27.38 million transactions. The number of active users on the chain also increased by 252%, reaching 8.1 million. LINE said that the average spending per buyer is about $39, and about 32% of Dapp products are paid through 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 for social software, LINE launched the game service " LINE QUICK GAME ", which also allows you to play in LINE applications without installing specific applications. The service started launching in September 2018 and offers a total of 24 easy-to-play games, with the number of users exceeding 3 million in one month. Two years later, LINE QUICK GAME terminated its service due to poor market response, and LINE explained that it needed to concentrate management resources in other areas of the gaming business.

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

Soneium TVL breaks over $80 million and plans to launch 4 mini games on

LINE

In the past month, although the crypto market has fallen into a downturn and the total market value of cryptocurrencies has been shrinking, many projects 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, Soneium, the Layer 2 expansion solution, had reached $80 million, or $83.08 million. Its TVL grew at a rate of 90% in February, and it also grew at nearly 24% in the past week. In addition, as an important indicator of ecological prosperity, the decentralized exchanges of Soneium ecosystem have also grown rapidly, with TVL of Sonex, Kyo Finance and Velodrome respectively achieving significant growth of 1504%, 429% and 125% respectively in the past month.

Based on Sony's influence in the traditional electronic entertainment industry, it may not be unexpected that Soneium can achieve the above. However, if you want to achieve the goal of "GM with Soneium", a game-oriented entertainment business may be the most effective way. According to Soneium, the first batch of four mini games integrating Soneium and planning to launch 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 creator of the NFT gaming protocol Aavegotchi. The game provides a relaxed 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 apps.

• Farm Frens: Farm theme game developed by Amihan Entertainment. The game development company has raised $10.5 million to date and has launched the tower defense game Everseed. Members of its development team have participated in the production of well-known games such as League of Legends, Hearthstone, and Island of Adventure. 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-powered infrastructure, uses a fast-paced gameplay that aims to inspire community interaction and encourage reward-based engagement mechanisms.

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

However, the above four games have not been launched yet, and there are actually questions about whether they can be truly implemented.

In January this year, Telegram announced that TON became the only blockchain infrastructure in its Mini App ecosystem, stopping support for all other blockchains. Although LINE has not mentioned banning blockchains other than Kaia, it is not impossible for Kaia to establish a "platform barrier" to support its own ecological development in the future.

In fact, LINE and Kaia seem to be sending out this signal - on March 14, Dapp Portal released a major update, announcing that it will be launched on the V2 version of Mini Dapp. Kaia quoted the tweet and said: "Didn't the big thing happen? It's LINE's Dapp Portal, powered by Kaia exclusively." Dapp Portal then retweeted Kaia's comments.