Soneium starts banning meme tokens for copyright infringement

Soneium, the newly launched chain by Sony, immediately encountered meme token culture. This time, Soneium responded immediately, freezing the trading of two new tokens for copyright infringement. 

Sony’s newly launched Soneium L2 chain brought a new set of rules for launching meme tokens. The network issued a message that it would protect intellectual property, which translated into banning the trading of two new assets. 

Meme token issuers have no qualms about crossing the boundaries of intellectual property. Soneium, however, controls its chain and tokens, so any infringement on brands and protected intellectual property may translate into token bans. 

Soneium is committed to protecting creators’ IPs and rights onchain while maintaining the spirit of decentralization!

Our documentation outlines how we safeguard IP rights and combat malicious activities – all while keeping web3's core values of openness and innovation intact.… pic.twitter.com/RHGvNIDXHE

— Soneium 💿 (@soneium) January 14, 2025

Within the first hours of the chain’s history, users noticed the new L2 had practically unlimited rights to freeze tokens, both for IP infringements and for other reasons. The frozen tokens were immediately noted by the Soneium Discord community, with the discussion spilling over to top Ethereum influencers. 

For some analysts, the fact that a large corporation chose Ethereum’s L2 optimistic roll-up technology is a positive sign. The crash of two tokens was a minor glitch compared to the technology’s exposure. Soneium brings a more stringent culture to the otherwise free crypto space and opens the discussion of corporate values versus meme token culture, where any idea or brand can be copied.

The chains still show that corporations may prefer the well-established Ethereum technology instead of running a corporate chain. Since Ethereum is well-adopted, Soneium immediately found traders and users who were ready to test the risks and opportunities of the new platform. Soneium uses optimistic roll-up technology, making it compatible with existing DEX infrastructure.

Soneium is also tokenless and is considered a chain with a potential airdrop. This opportunity means early users will be highly active, with expectations of future rewards. 

Meme token creators immediately use SONY’s brand images

Soneium offered a new high-profile marketplace, immediately opening up new opportunities for token creation. Two of the new tokens were named AIBO and TORO, infringing on SONY’s own portfolio of intellectual property. The AIBO token was named after Sony’s robotic dog, while TORO used the Toro Inoue gaming character, both copyrighted. 

While AIBO tokens have been created freely on Pump.fun, Soneium refused to carry those assets and froze all trading. Unfortunately, buyers had already poured in their ETH, so they accused Soneium of performing the closest thing to a rug pull. 

AIBO started trading on DYORSwap, one of the native DEX on Soneium. In the first hours of trading, the token easily expanded by a factor of 20, later crashing again to its initial level. AIBO trading continues, though Soneium users complain about seeing the asset as frozen. 

TORO also continued trading for a while before orders finally stalled, and the asset lost 90% of its value. Orders are still continuing for TORO, and a Solana version has been launched, which remains censorship-free. The two tokens were illiquid and caused limited losses, which only affected early risk-takers. 

Based on its initial promises, Soneium was indeed permissionless in that it would allow the free creation of tokens with no prior restrictions. However, the chain’s creators did not let the tokens move freely after their initial trading success. Some trades are also seen as suspicious due to earlier or prioritized access to the Soneium main net. 

If you look at all the recent sells on this token now, it's people who had access to mainnet before the chain went live to public. So no matter what Soneium does at this point, barring a refund, users got rugged.

— Kawz (@0xKawz) January 14, 2025

Since Soneium is a Stage 0 chain, it still relies on a centralized sequencer mechanism to approve transactions. This means Soneium is not truly decentralized and has an instrument to block token activities at the sequencer level. For blacklisted tokens, Soneium bans write operations, making the asset unmovable. 

For some, the ban against IP infringements is intuitively understandable. However, the presence of a centralized sequencer is still an issue with L2 chains. Even when advertised as permissionless and decentralized, some chains can decide to censor tokens or content. 

Despite copyright infringements, no other chain has stopped tokens so far. Even the Chill Guy meme tokens continued trading after the cartoon creator Phillip Banks threatened to launch lawsuits.

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