渡辺創太：東京から世界へ——Web3インフラを構築する

In January 2022, when much of the blockchain industry was still riding the euphoria of a trillion-dollar bull market, Sota Watanabe was already talking about something less glamorous and far more consequential: infrastructure. Not tokens. Not speculation. The plumbing — the protocol layers, developer tooling, and enterprise integration pathways that would determine whether Web3 became a permanent feature of the global economy or a footnote.

Two years later, after the market had collapsed and rebuilt, that bet on infrastructure proved prescient. Watanabe’s Startale Labs had secured a partnership with Sony to build Soneium, a blockchain platform designed for one of the world’s most recognizable consumer technology brands. His Astar Network had grown into a leading multi-chain smart contract platform in the Polkadot ecosystem. And Japan — the country he had chosen as his base when most Web3 founders were heading to Singapore, Dubai, or Miami — was emerging as the regulatory environment that global institutions increasingly cited as a model.

On April 26, Watanabe will bring that perspective to the Tech for Impact Summit 2026 in Tokyo, joining a speaker roster that includes Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson and other leaders working at the intersection of decentralized technology and real-world impact.

From University of Tokyo to the Polkadot Ecosystem

Watanabe’s path into Web3 did not follow the typical Silicon Valley arc. A graduate of the University of Tokyo, he entered blockchain development at a time when Japan’s crypto industry was still recovering from the reputational damage of the Mt. Gox collapse and the Coincheck hack. The regulatory environment was cautious. Institutional interest was minimal. The talent pipeline for blockchain engineers was thin.

Rather than relocating to a jurisdiction with lighter regulation and deeper crypto-native capital, Watanabe stayed. He founded Astar Network — originally called Plasm — as a smart contract platform built on Substrate, the framework underlying Polkadot. The strategic logic was clear: Polkadot’s architecture allowed specialized blockchains to interoperate through shared security, which meant Astar could serve as a multi-chain hub connecting different ecosystems rather than competing as yet another standalone Layer 1.

The bet paid off. Astar won a parachain slot on Polkadot, attracted a developer community that spanned Japan, Southeast Asia, and Europe, and built integrations with both the Ethereum and Polkadot ecosystems. By 2024, Astar had become the most prominent blockchain project led by a Japanese founder, and Watanabe had been named to Forbes 30 Under 30 Japan — recognition that reflected not just technical achievement but a broader shift in how Japan’s establishment viewed Web3 entrepreneurship.

The Sony Partnership and the Enterprise Thesis

If Astar Network established Watanabe’s credentials in the protocol layer, Startale Labs represents his thesis about where blockchain creates durable value: enterprise infrastructure.

Founded as the commercial arm of his Web3 work, Startale Labs focuses on building blockchain solutions for institutions that need reliability, compliance, and integration with existing systems — requirements that most crypto-native projects historically ignored. The company’s most visible engagement is its partnership with Sony Group to develop Soneium, a blockchain platform that leverages Sony’s distribution network, intellectual property portfolio, and consumer reach.

The Soneium partnership is significant not because of its token economics or DeFi integrations, but because of what it signals about enterprise adoption patterns. Sony did not choose to build its blockchain initiative on an established Layer 1 protocol with maximum liquidity. It chose to partner with a Tokyo-based company that could build custom infrastructure aligned with Sony’s specific product requirements, regulatory obligations, and user experience standards. That decision reflects a maturation in how large companies approach blockchain: less “which token should we launch” and more “who can build the infrastructure layer that our products actually need.”

Startale has also secured contracts with Japanese government entities and institutional clients, further validating the premise that Web3 infrastructure can serve the same enterprises and public institutions that underpin traditional economies. For executives evaluating blockchain strategies, the pattern is instructive. The companies winning institutional mandates are not the ones with the highest market capitalizations. They are the ones that can bridge the gap between decentralized architecture and enterprise-grade operational requirements.

Japan’s Regulatory Advantage: From Liability to Asset

A central theme of Watanabe’s public commentary — and one that will resonate strongly at a summit held during SusHi Tech Tokyo — is that Japan’s regulatory approach to crypto and Web3 has transformed from a perceived disadvantage into a genuine competitive asset.

After the Mt. Gox and Coincheck incidents, Japan imposed some of the strictest crypto regulations in the world. Exchange licensing requirements, customer asset segregation rules, and stablecoin frameworks were implemented years before most other jurisdictions considered them. For a time, this drove founders and capital offshore. Singapore, Dubai, and the Cayman Islands attracted projects that viewed regulation as friction to be minimized.

But the regulatory cycle has turned. The collapse of FTX in late 2022 vindicated Japan’s custodial protections — Japanese customers were among the first to recover their assets precisely because of the segregation requirements that had once been criticized as excessive. The European Union’s MiCA framework and evolving U.S. enforcement actions have created uncertainty in jurisdictions that previously offered regulatory arbitrage. Meanwhile, Japan has been steadily refining its framework, introducing clearer guidance on token taxation, approving stablecoin issuance under defined conditions, and engaging directly with Web3 industry leaders through advisory panels that include figures like Watanabe.

The result is a regulatory environment that institutional investors and multinational corporations can actually underwrite. When Sony, NTT, Toyota-affiliated entities, and major Japanese banks explore blockchain initiatives, they are doing so within a legal framework that their compliance departments can navigate. That predictability is worth more than any tax incentive or sandbox exemption, and Watanabe has been one of its most effective advocates on the global stage.

Web3 Infrastructure as a Social Impact Layer

For a technology community often criticized for prioritizing speculation over substance, Watanabe’s infrastructure-first approach carries implications that extend well beyond enterprise revenue.

Consider digital identity. Japan, like most developed economies, is grappling with how to create portable, privacy-preserving digital credentials for an increasingly mobile and digitally connected population. Blockchain-based identity systems — where individuals control their own data rather than relying on centralized databases vulnerable to breach or misuse — are a natural application of the infrastructure Watanabe’s teams are building. Astar’s multi-chain architecture means these identity solutions can interoperate across different blockchain ecosystems, avoiding the vendor lock-in that has plagued previous digital ID initiatives.

Or consider decentralized autonomous organizations. DAOs have been dismissed by many enterprise leaders as idealistic governance experiments, but the underlying mechanism — transparent, programmable coordination among distributed stakeholders — has clear applications in impact investing, community development, and cross-border collaboration. The infrastructure to make DAOs compliant, auditable, and interoperable with existing legal structures is precisely the kind of problem that Startale Labs is positioned to solve.

Watanabe himself has framed his work in these terms. Making Web3 accessible for enterprises and governments is not just a business strategy; it is a prerequisite for the technology to deliver on its original promise of decentralizing power, reducing intermediary costs, and creating more equitable systems of coordination.

Why This Matters at Tech for Impact Summit

The Tech for Impact Summit 2026 is built on the premise that the most consequential technology challenges of the next quarter century will be solved not by any single sector acting alone, but by leaders across business, policy, and culture working in concert. Watanabe’s presence on the stage embodies that thesis.

He is not a crypto evangelist pitching decentralization as an ideology. He is an infrastructure builder who has demonstrated that blockchain systems can meet the requirements of Sony’s product teams, Japan’s financial regulators, and institutional investors who measure risk in basis points rather than Twitter sentiment. His work sits at the intersection of several currents that the summit is designed to address: the role of Japan as a technology hub with global ambitions, the potential for decentralized infrastructure to reshape how institutions operate, and the question of whether emerging technologies can be governed in ways that create broad-based benefit rather than concentrated returns.

Alongside Charles Hoskinson, who brings the perspective of building one of the world’s largest blockchain ecosystems from first principles, Watanabe offers a complementary view — one rooted in the specific dynamics of the Japanese market, enterprise partnerships, and the pragmatic work of making Web3 function within existing regulatory and corporate structures.

For executives attending the summit, the conversation will move well beyond blockchain basics. It will address the strategic decisions that companies and governments face as they evaluate Web3 infrastructure investments: build versus partner, public versus private chains, regulatory jurisdiction as competitive strategy, and how to measure the social return on decentralized technology deployment.

The Builder’s Window

There is a recurring pattern in technology markets. Infrastructure investments made during periods of relative quiet — when speculative excess has receded and institutional frameworks are maturing — tend to define the next cycle’s winners. The companies that built cloud infrastructure in the aftermath of the dot-com bust became the platforms that powered the next two decades of digital transformation. The enterprises that invested in mobile infrastructure before smartphone penetration reached critical mass captured markets that late entrants could not.

Watanabe appears to be operating on the same premise. While the broader crypto market oscillates between fear and greed, he is building enterprise partnerships, securing government contracts, and layering compliance infrastructure into protocol design. The bet is that when institutional adoption of blockchain reaches its inflection point — driven by regulatory clarity, real-world use cases, and infrastructure maturity — the organizations that invested early in the right foundations will define the landscape.

Japan, with its combination of regulatory predictability, institutional capital, technological depth, and cultural emphasis on long-term value creation, may prove to be the ideal environment for that bet to pay off. And Sota Watanabe, more than perhaps any other founder of his generation, has positioned himself at the center of that convergence.

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The Tech for Impact Summit 2026 takes place on April 26 in Tokyo. Seats are limited and allocated by invitation. Request your invitation to join Sota Watanabe, Charles Hoskinson, and other global leaders shaping the future of technology and impact.