Author: Joyce, BlockBeats

Editor: Jack, BlockBeats

The "bull market" signal that the encryption community has been waiting for has been going on for more than two months. The narrative of the chain game track has once again attracted the attention of investors. The game public chain Immutable X, which has hundreds of games, has increased by nearly 300% in two months. At the same time, Ronin, which has a market value of less than 1/5 of Immutable, has also achieved a 340% increase in two months.

When it comes to Ronin, most people's memories still linger on Axie Infinity, the leading chain game that created the GameFi craze in the last bull market. Two years have passed, and Axie Infinity is still alive, as is Ronin.

Ronin is still here

From 2020 to 2021, Axie Infinity is a game that can't be praised enough. With a monthly revenue of 300 million US dollars and a daily turnover surpassing that of Honor of Kings, it has given rise to large game guilds such as YGG. Axie Infinity's success has attracted a large number of game enthusiasts and developers to enter the Web3 gaming field, shaping today's GameFi track.

Like most of the popular projects in the cryptocurrency industry, Axie Infinity has not escaped the curse of the ups and downs of the market. After reaching 2.8 billion daily active users in November 2021, the significantly inflated game assets raised the new user threshold of Axie Infinity to an unsustainable level. Without new players entering the game, the game's economy became difficult to sustain due to demand mechanisms and inflation models. At the end of the year, as the cryptocurrency market gradually turned bearish, Axie Infinity entered a "death spiral", with its market value dropping from $10 billion to $3 billion, evaporating nearly 70% in two months.

Related reading: "Axie Infinity price drops, is it overvalued?"

According to data released by Nansen, in November, the number of active addresses on Ronin exceeded 460,000, with a month-on-month increase of 368%, the largest increase among all Ethereum sidechains. After experiencing a bull and bear cycle, Ronin is still here.

6 billion stolen

For Sky Mavis, the development team behind Axie Infinity, the impact of the "Great Crash" is particularly painful, as just a few months ago, they had just launched their ambitious "Great Voyage Plan" - the Ronin network.

Ronin is an Ethereum sidechain originally created for the Axie Infinity community. Between 2020 and 2021, due to a large influx of players into Axie Infinity, Ethereum's slow settlement and high gas costs became the team's most headache-inducing problem. Sky Mavis urgently needed a reliable, fast, and inexpensive network to provide security for Axie's continued development. After partner Loom decided to no longer customize L2 networks for To C applications, the Ronin network developed by Sky Mavis alone was born as a result.

With its own application chain, Sky Mavis was able to design the functionality and features of this chain according to its own ideas and the needs of the game and its community. Axie no longer needs to compete for on-chain space and gas with other DeFi projects. In addition to faster and lower costs, Axie players on the Ronin network now have their own game DEX and wallet, and players no longer need to leave the ecosystem to complete transaction activities. In February 2021, Ronin Network was officially launched, and by November, the number of daily active addresses on the chain had exceeded one million.

The most attractive new feature for players is undoubtedly the staking economy that comes with the Ronin network. Ronin has a separate AXS staking pool for users to stake AXS and earn rewards. Within six months of the network's launch, the total amount of staked AXS exceeded 20 million, nearly 30% of the circulating supply.

However, even though Ronin's achievements proved Sky Mavis' idea of "games needing independent networks", by the end of 2021, this ambitious "ronin network" still couldn't reverse the decline of Axie Infinity from the bearish trend in the crypto market. To make matters worse, there was a theft incident that occurred at the beginning of the following year.

In March 2022, the Ronin Network's cross-chain bridge was hacked, resulting in the theft of 173,600 ETH and 25.5 million USDC. For several days after the incident, the entire community could only watch helplessly as the hacker transferred and cashed out assets worth approximately 600 million US dollars, leaving the team almost powerless to stop it.

Related reading: "Ronin Official Summary of Theft: Vulnerability Discovered 6 Days Ago, 5 Private Keys Stolen"

Two weeks after the incident, Sky Mavis announced that it had raised $150 million in funding led by Binance, with participation from Animoca Brands and a16z. According to the plan, this round of funding will be used together with Sky Mavis' existing funds to compensate all users affected by the attack. However, in reality, Sky Mavis only raised $11 million in this round of funding. Shortly after leading the funding, Binance withdrew from the investment, with a spokesperson stating that Sky Mavis had been able to recover funds steadily since April and could cover the stolen funds of users without the need for Binance's investment.

"Stolen $600 million" seems to have become the last memory left by Sky Mavis and Ronin Network before fading out of people's sight.

亡羊补牢

translates to

Make up for lost time

in English.

Binance's withdrawal is seen as a signal that Sky Mavis is no longer favored, and Sky Mavis' valuation has dropped from $3 billion to $1.9 billion. Under the shadow of "serious security risks," the price of RON tokens has further declined, and the network's TVL has shrunk by half in a month. In pursuit of speed and cost, Sky Mavis has ultimately been sanctioned by the "impossible triangle" in the crypto industry.

However, Ronin did not die. In order to regain the trust of the community, Sky Mavis has been strengthening the network security of Ronin since the theft occurred.

In April 2022, Ronin announced the addition of five new validation nodes, namely Nansen, Delphi Digital, Stable Node, Animoca Brands, and Dialectic. Animoca Brands had invested in and consistently supported Ronin since the early days of Axie Infinity.

Two days after Ronin announced the theft, news came out that Animoca and the Sky Mavis team were discussing compensation plans. Animoca also participated in a $150 million financing round led by Binance and specifically issued a statement in support of Sky Mavis, stating "We firmly believe that the kingdom of Axie Infinity will not only continue to exist, but also thrive."

Related reading: "Animoca: Why we continue to invest in Axie Infinity?"

In July 2022, Ronin added 4 new validation nodes, all of which are early supporters of Axie Infinity. This includes Web3 gaming guild YGG, whose DAO owns over 26,000 Axies and 235 Axie Lands. YGG founder Gabby is an early player of Axie Infinity and met Sky Mavis founder Jihoz in 2018. Gabby founded YGG in 2020 and as of March 2022, out of the 27,000 scholars in Southeast Asia, India, and Latin America, 20,000 are Axie Infinity players.

Second from the left is Sky Mavis co-founder Jihoz, third from the left is YGG co-founder Gabby Dizon;

Half a year after being stolen, at the end of September 2022, Ronin announced that Google Cloud became its 18th validation node. Google Cloud has deep technical expertise in blockchain infrastructure and running validators, and has been Sky Mavis' strategic cloud provider since 2020. Its executive, Ruma Balasubramanian, sees Sky Mavis as "a powerful example of cloud technology bringing innovation and value creation to individuals in blockchain."

The upgraded DPos mechanism in March 2023 marked a small milestone for Ronin's security solution. After transitioning from the PoA mechanism to the DPoS mechanism, RON holders can delegate their shares to selected validators who will verify transactions, generate blocks, and earn rewards. Representatives voted for them will also share the rewards. According to Ronin's explanation, anyone who owns 250,000 RON can become a validator and produce blocks. Currently, Ronin has 22 validation nodes.

Most people have once again taken notice of Ronin, perhaps due to its founder Jihoz announcing in November that the daily active addresses on the chain game Pixels on Ronin have exceeded 100,000. Meanwhile, the trading volume on Ronin has quadrupled in the past three months, and the daily active addresses on the Ronin chain have grown from less than 20,000 in early October to nearly 150,000 today.

不止爱好者

translates to

Not just enthusiasts

in English.

In the eyes of other game development teams, Axie Infinity's rapid development has exceeded everyone's expectations, bringing many new users to Web3 and putting Sky Mavis in the spotlight. However, setbacks suddenly occurred and doubts arose. Under pressure, Sky Mavis did not give up, but persisted in building the ecosystem. This passion and persistence for Web3 games also influenced other game development teams.

In addition, Ronin's ability to continue to update is inseparable from the support of its community. Although the collapse of Axie Infinity is an undeniable fact, it has already precipitated a loyal community. There are enough inclusive gamers who believe in and support this team. This resilient and stable relationship also attracts developers, and "being continuously liked by players" is the goal that every game is pursuing.

Aside from a sincere attitude, Ronin also has sufficient professionalism. The entire process of a game, from concept to release, often takes years to complete. For Web3 game developers, working with Ronin, which focuses on games, is more candid and direct compared to traditional public chains with a wide range of use cases. Kent Byers stated that Directive Games and Ronin had been in communication long before establishing a partnership, and initially, Ronin had many questions for the game team. "After more communication, we found that we had a lot of consensus between each other, and we began to receive their affirmation."

"Ronin is a great home for us, and we want to be a part of it." In March 2023, Directive Games and Ronin completed their collaboration at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) held in Los Angeles.

Ronin Effect

With the entry of the first batch of game studios, Ronin has entered a more mature new stage from the initial "Axie Infinity Chain": infrastructure for a wider range of chain games. In this role, Ronin began to reap its fruits of victory. According to Footprint data, Ronin's daily active address count is close to 150,000, a tenfold increase in the past two months; the number of on-chain transactions has exceeded 300,000, a new high this year.

Pixel Fruit

At the end of October, Pixels, a metaverse blockchain game previously on Polygon, officially launched on Ronin. Prior to this, Pixels had over 1.5 million monthly transactions and over 5,000 daily active players, making it the most popular Web3 game on Polygon.

Pixels founder Luke Barwikowski stated on Twitter that "moving to the Ronin Network is not just about acquiring users. Sky Mavis is the only team in Web3 that truly addresses and solves many of the pitfalls that Web3 games encounter in terms of economics and scalability. This guidance is invaluable."

The most direct data comparison shows that after migrating to Ronin for a month, the daily active player count of Pixels fluctuated around 100,000, which is 20 times the number during the Polygon period. According to OpenSea data, the floor price of Pixels Farm Land NFT increased by 600% in two months.

Left: New players of Pixels; Right: Daily active players of Pixels

Purple represents Polygon, green represents Ronin

Related reading: "Pixels 2nd Anniversary: The Metaverse Pixel Wind Farm Chain Game that Supports Ronin Ecosystem".

From wallet payments to token transactions, you can feel the effects of the Ronin infrastructure update through the player experience on Pixels.

First of all, let's talk about the wallet. Players can use the Ronin wallet as a plugin in the Chrome browser, and purchase in-game tokens directly with fiat currency. The mobile version of the Ronin wallet was also launched in 2021. After integrating Binance Pay on December 2nd this year, users can deposit directly through Binance on the Ronin wallet mobile app without scanning or copying the wallet address.

Ronin has also considered the liquidity needs of gamers and launched the Katana DEX platform in 2021, with a lock-up amount of over $1 billion during Axie Infinity's peak. This year, the new staking incentive plan launched by Katana in January resulted in a more than 300% increase in RON within a month, and Ronin's TVL rose from $40 million to $77 million. Axie Infinity's game tokens SLP and AXS also nearly doubled.

In addition, in May of this year, Ronin launched its first NFT marketplace, Mavis Market. The Genkai series of NFT products developed by OWL, the founder of YGG, became the first minting factory on Mavis Market. 3,000 Cyber Kongz Genkai NFTs priced at 0.25 ETH were sold out in less than an hour. During the minting period, Ronin processed 1,500 successful transactions in three minutes, and the daily active addresses almost doubled in three days.

Ronin shared this achievement in their newsletter and wrote, "Ronin is the best place to launch various game-centered NFT collections." The successful minting of Genkai represents Ronin's opening of its boundaries to the Web3 native community beyond Axie Infinity.

After the official launch of Ronin, Pixels opened the Pixels Pets NFT minting, and Mavis Market simultaneously launched this batch of NFTs. Currently, the RON/BERRY trading pair has also appeared on Katana. As of December 12th, the number of BERRY holders has exceeded 100,000.

According to data, in November, Pixels was the best-performing game in terms of traffic growth among chain games, with over 3 million visits that month, while popular chain games such as Big Time and Shrapnel had less than 500,000 visits. Among Pixels players, 51% were from Indonesia and the Philippines, where Southeast Asia is the "stronghold" of Ronin and Axie Infinity.

Transmission Matrix

Sky Mavis Business Development Director Kathleen Osgood mentioned in an interview that the Ronin ecosystem has a large amount of community capital. Therefore, the team has always adopted a more strategic approach to promote the ecological game to the wider audience of Web3 by using these community capital to bring Web3 users to the game. "Sky Mavis has more than 2,500 creators, all of whom are enthusiastic about conveying the community culture and atmosphere of the Ronin ecosystem to the outside world. Now, Ronin has a community, a growth stack, and all the tools and platforms."

During the more than three years of community operation experience in Axie Infinity, the Ronin community has developed a systematic game promotion path. Axie Infinity has set up a column for game update dynamics, and a total of 6 articles were released in November. Whenever new features or seasonal activities are launched, creators of the Axie Infinity vertical community on Youtube will update relevant interpretations and strategies. Players who want to learn about new trends can directly obtain information from the community, and smooth communication channels can greatly stabilize old players and reduce player churn.

The atmosphere on Twitter is more lively, and independent players will post personalized content such as game sharing and secondary art creations. For example, there are many players in the community who have recently shared their Axie models created in Axie Infinity. In addition to independent players, guilds and KOLs who frequently hold season activities and live broadcasts on Twitter also provide motivation for the community's popularity. Axie Infinity's official team is also very active in participating in community interactions. One detail is that founder Jihoz follows many active gamers with less than 1000 followers.

After Pixels' DAU exceeded 100,000, founder Luke stated in an interview that Pixels did not make significant changes after migrating to Ronin, so "the initial surge in new users is almost entirely attributed to Ronin."

The community power accumulated from the Axie Infinity era has given Ronin a large player community. As of the time of writing, the Axie Infinity Discord community has 610,000 members with nearly 40,000 online, while the AAA-level blockchain game Big Time, which attracted community attention this year due to its huge increase, has 30,000 online members on Discord. Considering the vastly different levels of attention between the two communities this year, it can be seen that Axie Infinity has already established a loyal community.

With the continued careful operation of Ronin, these players often participate in the ecosystem of Ronin as creators. On social media, many players from the Axie Infinity community have formed a promotion matrix about Pixels.

Chinese content: Youtube 上的博主 Elijah MT8 从 2021 年 1 月就开始发布关于 Axie Infinity 的视频，两年多来，Elijah MT8 已经发布了超 200 多个视频，内容均围绕 Axie Infinity 展开，这些视频为他积累了超 13 万订阅者，Elijah MT8 在主页介绍自己为「Axie Infinity Top 10 player」。而自 11 月以来，Elijah MT8 的视频中开始出现关于 Pixels 的内容，涵盖从新手指南、进阶攻略到两周前 Pixels 更新的公会板块。类似 Elijah MT8 这样的 Axie Infinity 创作者在 Youtube 和推特上有很多，他们中有不少人在近期宣传起了 Pixels。

English translation: Elijah MT8, a YouTuber, has been publishing videos about Axie Infinity since January 2021. Over the past two years, he has released over 200 videos, all of which revolve around Axie Infinity. These videos have earned him over 130,000 subscribers, and Elijah MT8 introduces himself on his homepage as an "Axie Infinity Top 10 player." Since November, Elijah MT8's videos have started to feature content about Pixels, covering everything from beginner's guides and advanced strategies to the guild section updated two weeks ago. There are many Axie Infinity creators like Elijah MT8 on YouTube and Twitter, and many of them have recently started promoting Pixels.

Axie.tech, a community tool website under Tribally, a Web3 gaming social platform founded in 2021, is the official community partner of Axie Infinity. Tribally announced its partnership with Pixels on October 23rd this year. Following this, Axie.Tech launched the "Pixels party" on Twitter, which can be understood as a "team building" event for Axie Infinity community players in the Pixels game. This is the first time a non-Axie series game has appeared in Axie.Tech's tweets.

These promotions all occurred one week after Pixels officially migrated to Ronin. On November 26th, the Axie community also held the Pixels x Axie Art Challenge, where players had the opportunity to win prizes by creating art that combined elements of both.

Using Axie's community resources to promote Pixels is something that is being pushed by both the player community and the game team. Jihoz, one of the founders of Ronin and responsible for growth business, is also a founder of Axie Infinity. Jihoz has mentioned Pixels multiple times on Twitter, sharing its growth data and even stating that "Pixels feels like Axie Infinity." Pixels has also responded to Jihoz's enthusiasm in the game, with players discovering an NPC named "Jihoz" on the map. This little Easter egg has received praise from players for being "simple but cool."

Ronin considers its collaboration with Pixels as a "homework" to showcase to the community, and Ronin refers to such achievements as the "Ronin Effect". The experience of building and operating Axie for 4 years is still the foundation for Ronin to create the Web3 gaming ecosystem. "We know how to connect games with their first batch of super fans. We have done it with Axie and completed it with Pixels.xyz."

Undeniably, the recent impressive performance of Ronin is largely due to the overall recovery of the blockchain gaming industry. It remains to be seen how strong Ronin's driving force is. Currently, in the eyes of the community, Ronin's advantage seems to be only a "story" - the fact that it created the concept of GameFi and survived the second bull market after returning all user funds following a $600 million hack.

For investors, what they care more about is how much appreciation space Ronin can bring to their related asset targets. On the one hand, the current TVL of Ronin is four times that of Immutable X, and the on-chain trading volume is also much higher than the latter, but its market value is currently only 1/5 of Immutable X. In the short term, Ronin's development momentum will continue. However, the market is also watching to see how far Ronin's story can support it in fierce competition. Will the next Axie Infinity and Pixels also come to Ronin?

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