Electronics giant Sony has delved deeper into the NFT realm by launching Aibo, its 26-year-old robotic dog product line, on the Ethereum layer-2 scaling network Soneium. Although these digital collectibles are not tradeable, over 40,760 unique wallets have accumulated millions of non-fungible robotic dogs.
Sony initially launched Aibo in 1999 after teasing a prototype in 1989. The company’s choice of the name, Aibo, stems from the Japanese word “aibou,” meaning a trusted friend. The company used this word to form the product line’s acronym – AIBO (Artificial Intelligence roBOt). Like pet dogs, Aibo took its intelligence and charm into households across various countries. Touted as the first of its kind, this robotic dog mimics canine traits like listening, responding to commands, and demonstrating multiple tricks.
With the advancement in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, the electronics company incorporated advanced features to the robot’s functionalities. Sony released the last Aibo model in 2018.
Seeking to bring the beloved household robot to Web3, Sony opened the doors for users to claim Aibo collectibles as soul-bound tokens (SBTs), a kind of non-tradeable NFT. Available on the NFT marketplace OpenSea, these collectibles are claimable for free, where each wallet is eligible to mint up to 1,000 NFTs. The minting window will conclude on March 24th.
The team behind Sony’s dedicated L2 blockchain Soneium named the NFT project “Entertainment Robot aibo” on OpenSea. As of this writing, as many as 10.5 million collectibles have been minted within a few days. Highlighting the potential driver behind the influx of many individuals into the Aibo NFT ecosystem, the development team wrote in its Discord channel:
“Aibo was never just a product—it was a companion. These non-transferable assets reflect the unique bond between Aibo and its owner.”
This is not Sony’s first foray into the non-fungible realm. Last month, the electronic company’s L2 network collaborated with Coop Records, a Web3 record label, to deploy music NFTs. Last year, Sony introduced “digital birth certificates” to store images taken with Sony cameras, a feature that resembles NFTs.
Sony’s team did not provide information on future utilities for the Aibo NFT collectibles. Still, the historic soulbound NFT may see potential utilities in the future.
