Sony-backed blockchain Soneium on Tuesday said it plans to support ERC-8432, a proposed Ethereum standard designed to let people and AI agents discover creative works, read licensing terms and record agreements on-chain.

A rights holder could register a song and publish machine-readable terms, according to a Soneium blog post. An AI agent making a video could then find the recording, check whether it can license the work and acquire an agreement in one transaction. The video app could verify that agreement on-chain before using the track.

The proposal targets a gap between owning tokenized intellectual property and knowing what may legally be done with it. ERC-8432 would give independent registries a common interface and identify each record by its blockchain, registry and ID, rather than requiring one central catalog.

Soneium is an Ethereum layer-2 network developed by Sony Block Solutions Labs, a joint venture between Sony Group and Startale Group. Its mainnet launched in January 2025, and the project has emphasized entertainment and creator applications. Since it's an Ethereum layer-2 chain, it adheres to the same standards as Ethereum, which is the world's largest programmable blockchain.

The DeAI angle: Blockchain projects are rapidly working to develop standards that would make it easier for creators and their AI agents to share and use intellectual property rights, in a copyright-respecting way that includes a mechanism for monetization.


HOW AI WAS USED IN THE PRODUCTION OF THIS PIECE: I created the first version of this piece on Hermes using an OpenAI model and a custom skill designed to write drafts based on blog posts. I then filed the draft directly to DeAI News on DistroVerse, our web app, where I used the built-in story-editing interface to do a final edit. I created the story illustration on Hermes with the OpenAI model and a custom story-illustration skill. I checked the facts prior to publication.