Token prices have a way of swallowing every other story because when ether is lurching up or down, the headlines follow the candles like glue. Underneath all of that noise, though, something steadier has been happening: Ethereum’s L2 ecosystem has kept expanding. As of mid-2026, L2BEAT-based reporting tracked 73 active rollups securing more than $48 billion in value, a figure that held up through stretches when sentiment was anything but cheerful.
One of the more telling pieces of that growth has been the entry of a global entertainment and technology company like Sony into the mix. Soneium, an Ethereum L2, is developed by Sony Block Solutions Labs, a joint venture between Sony Group Corporation and Startale Group. Startale, a blockchain infrastructure company with deep Japan ties, contributes blockchain expertise, and the network stands as a useful case study in how value can be added to Ethereum even when prices are not cooperating.
The data tells a different story from the charts
Strip out the price action, and the L2 picture looks like an industry maturing rather than retreating. Activity has consolidated around a handful of large optimistic rollups, with Arbitrum and Base consistently sitting near the top by value secured. Together, they account for a large share of L2 liquidity, even as smaller networks continue to compete around specialized use cases.
Optimistic rollups still represent the largest share of Ethereum L2 value, and Base has become one of the most active consumer-facing networks in the ecosystem. That matters because the busiest L2s are increasingly being measured not only by speculative liquidity, but by repeat usage, applications, and daily activity.
A major reason this has become more viable is that Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade introduced blob space for L2 data, sharply reducing transaction costs for many rollups. That helped make consumer applications more practical, because cheaper transactions allow users to interact with apps more often without every click feeling like a burden.
 
Cheap, fast settlement has allowed the user base to widen, and it is why growth has continued through the kind of choppy market that would once have emptied these networks entirely.
A Fortune Global 500 company quietly compounding
Soneium fits squarely into this narrative. Its mainnet launched in January 2025, after the Minato testnet had already drawn more than 14 million active wallets and 47 million transactions. Since mainnet, figures cited in media reports have put Soneium at over 500 million transactions, 5.4 million wallets, and more than 250 applications. Those numbers should be treated as ecosystem metrics rather than as proof of lasting adoption, but they indicate a network that is doing more than sitting idle.
In January 2026, Sony Innovation Fund committed $13 million to Startale as the first close of its Series A, deepening the relationship roughly a year after Soneium went live. The timing made the move more meaningful than a launch-week endorsement, suggesting that Sony viewed the infrastructure as part of a longer-term strategy rather than a passing experiment.
Entertainment as a core USP wedge
The media-centricity is deliberate. Soneium has been positioned around entertainment, gaming, music, creators, intellectual property, and fan engagement rather than DeFi alone. That plays directly to Sony’s strengths across content and consumer technology. Sota Watanabe, the chief executive of Startale, has described the goal as making Soneium a major onchain hub for entertainment on Ethereum.
Entertainment is also a category where the value of an on-chain record can be explained without much financial jargon. A fan collecting a digital item, a player moving assets between experiences, or a creator building a more direct relationship with an audience are all use cases that can outlast token-price cycles because they are not solely about speculation.
Value versus price
None of this means the market madness is over, or that token prices have stopped mattering to the people watching them. It means the two stories have come apart so that the price of ether on any given day says very little about how many applications are being built on it, how many people are using them, or how much real infrastructure is being added to Ethereum behind the scenes.
And even though the headlines will continue to chase red and green candles, the crypto ecosystem, for now, seems to be busy doing something far less dramatic and far more durable. Interesting times ahead, either way!
Be the first to comment