Sony’s Soneium accused of blacklisting ‘undesirable’ tokens

Users have accused the developers of Soneium, Sony’s L2, of blocking several tokens and, they say, wiping investors’ balances on launch day.

What happened to this token?https://t.co/zCGmgf0LF6

Are you blocking it?

Its page is not accessible on the explorer and transactions that involve the token are getting rejected by the rpc.

We bought this token and now no one can buy/sell anymore.

Care to explain why?

— Kiryoko-chan (@0xKiryoko) January 14, 2025

“What happened to this token? Are you blocking it? Its page is not accessible on the explorer, and transactions with the asset are being rejected by the RPC. We bought this token, but now no one can either buy or sell. Explain?” one commentator on X wrote.

The project said it acted over breaches of its copyright-protection terms. Within hours of the debate spilling onto social media, the team posted a message linking to rules under which certain assets may be blocked.

Soneium’s developers reserve the right to freeze offending smart contracts and remove the corresponding assets from wallets.

One affected token was Aibo, dedicated to Sony’s eponymous robotic dog. Its creators said they believed they fully complied with the platform’s rules, but accept the company’s concerns and have begun working with Soneium to address the issues.

By the estimate of Time.fun’s founder, known as Kawz, the incident caused Soneium users more than $100,000 in losses.

.@soneium rugged users >$100k in ETH on launch day

I've never seen anything like it

Want to be a permissioned chain? fine. Instead of whitelisting developers, they chose to instead freeze contracts (effectively rugging users)

Amazing launch! pic.twitter.com/OYWEb7Wiwg

— Kawz (@0xKawz) January 14, 2025

“I’ve never seen anything like it. Want to be a permissioned chain? Fine. Instead of whitelisting developers, they chose to freeze contracts (effectively rugging users). Amazing launch!” he said.

Kawz also provided a screenshot of a chat on Soneium’s Discord server, where irate users criticise the project’s policy and suggest blocking the PS2 token under the platform’s rules.

The founder of Pump.fun, using the pseudonym Alon, weighed in and suggested such censorship is to be expected from centralised L2 projects.

Sony’s new Ethereum L2 is actively blacklisting memecoins they don’t like, instantly nuking everyone’s position to 0

what makes you think that other centralized L2s won’t do the same if push comes to shove?

don’t take your freedoms for granted

— alon (@a1lon9) January 14, 2025

“What makes you think that other centralized L2s won’t do the same if push comes to shove? Don’t take your freedoms for granted,” the developer emphasised.

At the time of writing, community members cited at least two tokens as blocked, though confirmation had come only from Aibo’s developers.

In October 2024, experts concluded that Ethereum L2s undermine ether’s monetary appeal.