Sota Watanabe is a founder and CEO who built Startale Group and Astar Network, two of the more prominent blockchain ventures to emerge from Japan's Web3 ecosystem. Sota Watanabe's Twitter Score is 131 out of 1000 (an Excellent rating) as of July 2026, ranking #5,255 (top 1%) among 531,432 tracked accounts.
Sota Watanabe founded Startale Group and serves as its CEO, and also founded Astar Network, a public blockchain project. He works at Sony Block Solutions Labs, where he holds the title of Director. Sony Block Solutions Labs developed Soneium, a public Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain built on Optimism's OP Stack. In March 2026, Startale Group closed a $63 million Series A round, with $50 million from SBI Group and $13 million from Sony Innovation Fund.
Sota Watanabe is affiliated with several additional projects under the Startale umbrella. Startale Group and SBI Holdings co-developed JPYSC, a trust bank-backed JPY stablecoin issued under Japan's financial regulatory framework. Strium is a Layer 1 blockchain for trading tokenized securities and real-world assets, backed by SBI Holdings and Startale. Sota Watanabe is also affiliated with Startale App and Startale USD. Startale Group was selected for Hub71's Digital Assets cohort and plans to establish operations within Abu Dhabi Global Market.
Sota Watanabe has posted 10,193 times on the platform and has been mentioned by 176 accounts a total of 635 times. As an investor, Sota Watanabe has backed IZUMO and Megaphone.
Who follows Sota Watanabe on X?
The accounts that follow Sota Watanabe include 565 founders, 144 angel investors, 227 influencers and 39 VCs. Among them are Chris Dixon, Laura Shin, Hayden Adams, smolting wassie, verse, Luca Netz and Zhu Su.