In this article, we'll focus on Ronin, a chain that currently dominates the crypto gaming space. This article will delve into the evolution of the Ronin chain, specifically how it has not only reinvigorated itself with games like Axie Infinity, but also brought new life to the crypto gaming industry as a whole. We will also be looking at the Ronin Chain's technological innovations, user growth, and its future prospects as a hub for crypto gaming.
Ronin's current situation
What is Ronin?
Ronin is the Ethereum Virtual Machine compatible L1 launched by the Sky Mavis team in 2021 as an on-chain hub for its growing Axie Infinity game suite.
Today, Ronin is undoubtedly the most thriving gaming chain in the crypto economy, with hundreds of thousands of daily active users and a high trading volume.
After the Lazarus Group attacked Ronin Bridge in March 2022, some thought Ronin was finished. Since then, however, Ronin has made impressive progress, largely thanks to advancements around the Axie Infinity gaming experience, as well as the chain's growing emergence as a destination for non-Axie games.
Axie's progress
In April 2022, Sky Mavis released Axie Infinity: Origins, a major change to Axie with new mechanics such as free starting Axies, equippable cosmetics, and more.
Since then, Sky Mavis has introduced Axie Core, the Axie Progress System (AXP), as well as the Axie parts upgrade mechanism, as well as many other smaller updates.
There have also been a number of new alternative Axie games that have recently made their way into the ecosystem, including Defenders of Lunacian Land, Homeland, Project T, and Raylights.
Overall, these different advancements deepen and expand the possibilities around the Axie game, providing players in the ecosystem with a more engaging experience than ever before.
Ronin is becoming the new gaming hub
Another major factor in the resurgence of Ronin is that the chain is becoming the go-to choice for non-Axie games.
This proved to be a reciprocal flywheel effect: these non-Axie games benefited from Ronin's infrastructure and large, highly active player base (the "Ronin effect"), while Ronin gained more activity and users, becoming a more attractive hub for crypto gaming.
By far the most convincing example is of course Pixels. Pixels, a social farming simulation game that migrated from Polygon to Ronin in October 2023, has seen its daily active users sometimes swell to over 100,000 as interest in the planned $PIXEL airdrop grows.
However, other games have also made great strides towards Ronin, including recent new titles like Apeiron and Zoids Wild Arena. As non-Axie games continue to grow, the variety of gameplay also makes Ronin more appealing to a wider range of gamers.
From a data perspective
The above developments have contributed to the resurgence of Ronin in 2023, to the point that the chain now has more daily active users than Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base combined. Over the past year, Ronin has grown rapidly:
- TVL increased by 262% (from $40 million to $145 million)
- $RON up 469% (from $0.32 to $1.82)
- Daily trading volume increased by 1,370% (from 68,000 to 1,000,000)
- 1,450% increase in monthly active users (from 145,000 to 2,250,000)
Ronin's future
The continued evolution of the Axie Infinity ecosystem and the appeal of non-Axie games have put Ronin on track to thrive in gaming for the foreseeable future.
Now, the main question for the chain is how it will evolve in terms of infrastructure to cope with future demand growth.
To that end, Phuc Thai, director of research at Ronin, noted in the article "Solving the Blockchain Trilemma on Ronin" that the chain's engineers are currently exploring monolithic and modular scaling techniques, namely parallel transactions and zkEVM types of zk-rollups.
That said, the Sky Mavis team has already thought about scaling and has already begun to take steps to realize the future Ronin.
Ronin's resources to get started
If you're interested in learning more about the contemporary Ronin ecosystem, the following resources can help:
- Ronin Wallet: The primary wallet that manages Ronin assets
- Ronin Bridge ： Ronin的原生桥
- Ronin Block Explorer : A service for analyzing Ronin data
- Ronin Ecosystem: A database of games and apps on Ronin
- Ronin Name Service: the domain name service on Ronin
- Ronin Docs:Ronin的官方文档
- Ronin Staking:委托和质押RON的仪表板
- Katana DEX: The most popular Dex on Ronin
- Mavis Market: The first universal NFT marketplace on Ronin
- Mavis Store: A store for in-game Ronin assets
summary
Ronin's games are getting more and more varied, and in my opinion, Axie Infinity: Origins is a phenomenal game. It owns the users, it owns the data. It has doubled down on decentralization and security, bringing in more validators after moving to Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) last year. At the same time, Sky Mavis' current extended research is a testament to its promise.
Thus, Ronon's resurgence is not only a moving story, but also sets a precedent for the specialization and dominance potential of L1 and L2 in crypto gaming.
It's worth noting, however, that Ronin seems poised to evolve into a more comprehensive ecosystem over time, rather than just a thriving gaming experience. In fact, we're already seeing signs of this, including the recent CyberKongz Genkai minting (PFPs), the launch of Ronin Name Service (decentralized ID), and the arrival of Impossible Finance (GameFi).
Overall, keep an eye on Ronin in 2024. The chain is currently riding the wind and the momentum is very strong!