Shalini Nagarajan

Sony Group’s internet services division is offering a Web3 incubation program in partnership with multi-chain decentralized app (dapp) hub Astar Network.&nbsp;



The program will be jointly hosted by Singapore-based Startale Labs, a company led by Astar’s CEO Sota Watanabe, and will run from mid-March to mid-June. Startale Labs is a developer of dapps and other infrastructure like wallets.&nbsp;



In April last year, Sony Network Communications launched a Singapore-based business to explore NFT-related development outsourcing and consulting.



The three-month <a href="https://astar.network/incubation/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">incubation program</a> will begin accepting applications on Feb. 17 and close on March 6. Most of the program will be conducted online, with communication about mentoring and Web3 sessions on Slack. The demo day will be in person at Sony Group’s headquarters in Tokyo during Japan Blockchain Week in mid-June.



Watanabe <a href="https://twitter.com/WatanabeSota/status/1626402571673034753" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a> 10 to 15 Web3 projects from around the world will be selected for the program, which coincides with <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/toyota-tests-developer-skills-with-hackathon">an effort to attract developers</a> in partnership with Toyota.



Global VC firms and Web3 companies will participate in the business and technology strategy sessions. Participants will also have access to making direct contacts and getting feedback from companies like Web3 Foundation and Alchemy.



Sony will consider projects that show promise for investment opportunities.



The Japanese conglomerate was already actively exploring opportunities in the Web3 space. In November, its subsidiary Sony Interactive Entertainment published a <a href="https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=US378324956" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">patent</a> that suggested NFTs could soon be integrated into the company’s line of video game consoles, PlayStation.



The Sony patent, &#8220;Tracking Unique In-Game Digital Assets Using Tokens on a Distributed Ledger,&#8221; covers a system for tracking digital assets associated with video games.&nbsp;



The digital assets may be in-game digital assets like in-game items or characters, assets representing moments of gameplay like video clips or images, the patent says.



&#8220;Individuals often find it meaningful to own or use unique physical items related to respected celebrities or activities,&#8221; a background note of the patent says, citing baseball memorabilia as an example. <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/gaming-giant-square-enix-sells-major-franchises-to-fund-blockchain-initiatives">Square Enix</a>, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ubisoft-nft-efforts-are-off-to-a-rocky-start">Ubisoft</a>, <a href="https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/konami-announces-plans-to-launch-a-platform-for-trading-in-game-nfts/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Konami</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/Blockworks_/status/1575818971470856193" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Sega</a> are among other gaming companies that have launched NFT projects.



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Sony Eyes Investment in Web3 Projects From Around The World

Macauley Peterson

Little known outside of Japan, Astar Network, a blockchain in the Polkadot (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/dot" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">DOT</a>) ecosystem, has gotten noticed by one of the world’s largest private enterprises: Toyota Motor Corporation.



A developer hackathon, which starts on Feb. 25, will be held in a metaverse environment on the Astar Network with Toyota as its main sponsor and one of the judges evaluating participating teams.



The amount of Toyota’s sponsorship was not disclosed, but the Astar Foundation and the Polkadot-focused Web3 Foundation are kicking in $75,000 and $25,000, respectively.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Making it in Japan</h2>



Shun Ishikawa, chief operating officer at Astar Network, told Blockworks that the Japanese market is “unique” on account of “its inherent language and cultural differences.”



“Entering and doing business in the Japanese market is very different from doing it in other countries,” he said.



Astar’s founder Sota Watanabe hails from the country, and Isikawa said the team works closely with top Japanese brands and Japanese politicians, helping Astar to become a leader in the Japanese blockchain market.



A non-scientific <a href="https://twitter.com/J_Blockchain/status/1472831730348601345" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Twitter poll</a> by the Japan Blockchain Association (JBA) in December found that, of 332 respondents, a plurality chose Astar as the chain they would most like to use over alternatives Polygon, Solana and Avalanche.



It was also <a href="https://medium.com/astar-network/astar-network-sota-watanabe-receive-prestigious-awards-for-2022-d1d0cdbc63aa" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">chosen</a> as “product of the year” for 2022 by the JBA. Watanabe was the JBA’s “person of the year.”



He <a href="https://medium.com/astar-network/astar-network-sota-watanabe-receive-prestigious-awards-for-2022-d1d0cdbc63aa" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">appeared</a> on a recent cover of Forbes Japan, and regularly touts his political connections on Twitter.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Fortunately, I had the opportunity to speak directly with the Minister of Finance, Government of Japan today in person. As a result, I am now more bullish on this year&#39;s Web3 in Japan.&mdash; Sota Watanabe (@WatanabeSota) <a href="https://twitter.com/WatanabeSota/status/1613596682587107330?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 12, 2023</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Wantanabe’s efforts have grown the smart contract platform’s brand recognition in Japan, even as the growth in Polkadot as a whole has stagnated.



Although Astar has grown to become the largest <a href="https://www.blockworksresearch.com/glossary#parachain-polkadot-and-kusama" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">parachain</a> by total-value locked (TVL), at around $42 million, that figure is about a tenth of its peak TVL in April 2022, <a href="https://defillama.com/chain/Astar" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">data</a> from DefiLlama shows.



Only 34 <a href="https://parachains.info/#" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">parachain auctions</a> have actually taken place on Polkadot, far fewer than the 100 initially envisioned.



Polkadot itself has averaged 30 active monthly developers over the past year, according to GitHub activity data of main branch repositories, collected by The Tie, about half that of Cosmos, and a small fraction of Ethereum’s active devs.



Momentum in 2021, fueled by the March <a href="https://medium.com/compound-finance/gateway-623f6f48d2b6" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">announcement</a> from Compound Labs of a multi-chain initiative using Polkadot’s <a href="https://www.blockworksresearch.com/glossary#substrate-polkadot-development-framework" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Substrate</a>, stalled in 2022, alongside <a href="https://www.comp.xyz/t/multi-chain-strategy/2903" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">backpedaling</a> from Compound.



Polkadot governance forums have little activity, and founder Gavin Wood <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/polkadot-co-founder-gavin-wood-offloads-ceo-title">stepped down in October</a> from the CEO role at Parity Technologies, the ecosystem&#8217;s leading development shop.



Still, Astar’s native token ASTR has performed well in 2023, up more than 50% since the turn of the new year, beating the performance of both DOT and bitcoin.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-flourish wp-block-embed-flourish"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<iframe loading="lazy" class="wp-embedded-content" sandbox="allow-scripts" security="restricted" title="Interactive or visual content" src="https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/12608010/embed#?secret=iKSaYK2tdx" data-secret="iKSaYK2tdx" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" height="575" width="700"></iframe>
</div><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">ASTR has held its own against bitcoin and ether over the past year | Chart by David Canellis</figcaption></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Is WASM the future?</h2>



In the realm of smart contract coding, the Ethereum Virtual Machine, and its programming language, Solidity, dominates.



Astar instead uses WebAssembly (WASM), as do smart contract chains in the Cosmos ecosystem. WASM has some key advantages, chief among them, the ability to write smart contracts in a variety of popular programming languages such as C/C++, GO, TypeScript and RUST, which potentially opens Web3 to a larger developer community.



WASM proponents like <a href="https://medium.com/astar-network/why-wasm-smart-contract-are-the-future-b37e4f4e6d41" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Astar network</a> also tout its potential to be faster and more secure than Solidity, although the verdict <a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/2012.01032.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">is far from in</a> on that score.



Polkadot’s own EVM-compatible chain, Moonbeam, recently <a href="https://twitter.com/MoonbeamNetwork/status/1613196662322728964" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">celebrated</a> its one-year anniversary, but in a crowded EVM landscape (even wholly unrelated projects like <a href="https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2022/07/06/introducing-the-cardano-evm-sidechain/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cardano</a> and <a href="https://www.algorand.foundation/news/10-million-evm-compatibility-grant" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Algorand</a> have EVM-based projects), it’s hard to be a standout.



Polkadot’s answer to Cosmos’ IBC protocol, XCM, is a pale shadow of <a href="https://medium.com/the-interchain-foundation/ibc-and-xcmp-a-comparison-of-interoperability-protocols-3d1700e30015" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">its rival</a> in terms of economic value moving around. The top 10 parachains across both Polkadot and its sister network Kusama registered about $2.3 million in inbound transfer volume over the past 7 days, according to <a href="https://polkaholic.io/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">polkaholic.io</a>. IBC&#8217;s <a href="https://www.mapofzones.com/home?columnKey=ibcVolume&amp;period=7d" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">top 10, in the same span</a>, collectively are more than 20x greater.



Astar hopes its <a href="https://medium.com/astar-network/cross-virtual-machine-creating-a-portal-to-the-future-of-smart-contracts-a96c6d2f79b8" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">latest</a> tech novelty, called Cross-Virtual Machine (XVM) will catch on, letting developers build dapps that are interoperable between the EVM and WASM smart contracts.&nbsp;



But for now, the future of Astar Network looks very much linked to the personal networking of its charismatic founder.



The winners of the Web3 hackathon will be announced following a “pitch event” on March 25.



Spencer Hughes and Ryan West contributed reporting.



This story was updated on Feb. 1, 2023 at 12:00 pm ET with additional <a href="https://moonbeam.subscan.io/xcm_dashboard" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">data on XCM</a> and IBC transfers, provided by Moonbeam, and Feb. 2, 2023 at 1:25 pm ET to clarify developer activity.



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