Sony L2 project Soneium faced community opposition for allegedly blacklisting some Meme coins

PANews reported on January 14 that according to The Block, Sony’s Layer 2 project Soneium blacklisted some Meme coins suspected of infringing intellectual property rights on the mainnet launch day, which triggered community opposition. As a result, some tokens are restricted, cannot be traded, and cannot be supported on the official block explorer. The move triggered strong dissatisfaction among some users, who expressed their disappointment in multiple posts on the X platform that they were suddenly unable to trade or access these meme coins on the Soneium network. The blacklisting operation specifically targets tokens that imitate or use brands that Sony or Soneium considers to be protected. Therefore, it is reported that transactions of these Meme coins have been suspended and cannot be transferred. Users who attempt to access these tokens will receive a "Forbidden" warning on the block explorer.

The situation escalated further when Alon, the anonymous founder of pump.fun, made critical remarks, accusing the platform of “actively blacklisting meme coins they didn’t like, wiping out everyone’s holdings in an instant.” Kawz, the founder of Time.fun, also claimed that the blacklist affected user funds and accused the platform of freezing the contract. "Soneium caused users to lose more than $100,000 in Ethereum assets on the first day of launch. I have never seen such a scene," Kawz said, adding that two tokens have been frozen. Others have questioned the degree of control blockchain developers should exercise and the balance between protecting intellectual property and maintaining a permissionless network.