On August 28th, Sony BSL launched the Soneium Minato Public Testnet and Soneium Spark Incubator. Soneium Spark will offer developers a range of benefits, including up to $100,000 in investment and other funding opportunities through partners in the program. Sota Watanabe, director of Sony Block Solutions Labs, said in a statement that eligible developers would also receive "official support from Sony Group, Astar Network and Startale". AstarNetwork is a "special partner" for the emerging blockchain and will support Soneium Spark participants along with Circle, the issuer of USDCoin, Optimism, a developer of two-tier solutions for Ethereum, Alchemy, the decentralized indexing system TheGraph, and Chainlink, the oracle network. Soneium uses Optimism's OP Stack codebase. Sony subsidiaries will also participate in Soneium Spark, including its music, film and education divisions, innovation funds, and Inzone gaming headset division.