Ronin has processed over $43 billion in NFT trading volume, with its long-term goal being to become the primary hub for on-chain gaming.

Article by: Armita & Benjamin Samahon

Translation: Mars Finance, Eason

Abstract

• Ronin is an EVM-compatible Layer-1 blockchain optimized for NFTs and gaming. The network aims to establish a Play-to-Earn (P2E) gaming ecosystem fully owned and supported by the community.

• Ronin has strong appeal among Web2 and Web3 gamers. As of the time of writing, the network has a peak of 1.6 million daily active addresses (DAA) in 2024. Notable games driving this trend include Pixels, Apeiron, and Axie Infinity Universe (the most popular NFT game by trading volume).

• After a bridge hack in March 2022, Ronin migrated to a Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) consensus mechanism. The game studio Sky Mavis behind Ronin also expanded the number of validators from 9 to 24 and onboarded independent enterprise operators.

• Sky Mavis, in collaboration with the popular game IP "Ragnarok" and 0x&, will introduce "Ragnarok: Monster World" into its ecosystem in the third quarter of 2024.

• Sky Mavis plans to integrate the Zero-Knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) to allow games to launch and operate their own Layer 2 chains on the Ronin network using the Polygon CDK without permission.

Introduction to Ronin Blockchain

Games on the Ethereum network face some limitations. As the number of users on the network steadily increases, so does the transaction volume and gas fees. Intensified block space competition has led to network congestion. High gas prices and scalability issues make on-chain gaming transactions economically unfeasible, thereby undermining player acquisition and retention.

The Ronin blockchain is designed to address these scalability issues and facilitate the entry of hundreds of millions of gamers into blockchain-based platforms in the future. It was initially developed by the game studio Sky Mavis in 2021 for the popular P2E game Axie Infinity. Now, Ronin is an EVM-compatible Layer-1 (L1) blockchain optimized for gaming and NFTs.

Currently, the most popular game on Ronin (calculated by Daily Active Wallets (DAW)) is Pixels, a free farming simulator. The game migrated from Polygon to Ronin in October 2023. To date, Ronin has processed over $11.4 billion in decentralized exchange (DEX) trading volume on Katana and over $43 billion in NFT trading volume.

Development of Ronin

The story of Ronin begins with the popular P2E Web3 game Axie Infinity. The founders of Axie Infinity, Trung Nguyen, Aleksander Leonard Larsen, and Jeffrey Zirlin, met while playing Cryptokitties, one of the earliest games to use blockchain technology. The three saw an opportunity to apply this innovation to solve a fundamental problem in traditional games: the economic value created by players is mainly retained by the platform owners rather than the players themselves.

To address this problem, they founded the game studio Sky Mavis in 2018 and developed Axie Infinity, a game where players can own and benefit from in-game assets. Their first major step was the presale of Axie NFTs in April 2018, allowing players to adopt Axies and receive custom rewards upon the launch of Axie Infinity. This laid the foundation for the Ronin ecosystem, where player ownership is central.

As the popularity of Axie Infinity continued to rise, the team launched the native token AXS on Binance in November 2020. The token was initially released in ERC-20 form on Ethereum, providing governance, staking, in-game functionality, and a share of the game economy. However, as the game's popularity on the Ethereum network grew, users began to experience poor performance due to high gas fees and network congestion. The founders of Axie Infinity created Ronin to address issues with time, scalability, and player experience on the Ethereum network.

Sky Mavis launched the testnet on December 23, 2020, and the mainnet on February 1, 2021. In April 2021, Axie Infinity officially migrated from Ethereum to the Ronin Layer-1 blockchain. Following the transition, the AXS staking program was launched in September 2021, allowing Axie Infinity players to earn rewards and participate in game governance. This enabled players to own and control the direction of the game, creating a gaming platform that shifts value from platform owners to players. At its peak, Axie Infinity had over 1 million on-chain and 2 million off-chain daily active players.

Despite initial success, on March 29, 2022, the Ronin Bridge was hacked, resulting in the theft of 173,600 ETH and 25.5 million USDC, valued at over $600 million at the time of the hack. A week later, an attempt to withdraw 5,000 ETH revealed the hack.

The hacker exploited vulnerabilities in the network, gaining control of the private keys of four Sky Mavis validator nodes and Axie DAO nodes. This access was made possible by a backdoor error in the no-gas RPC node, allowing the hacker to obtain signatures from Axie DAO validators. The existence of this backdoor was due to the previous whitelisting of Axie DAO validators for free transactions during periods of high network activity. Although this whitelist was discontinued in December 2021, the IP address of the Axie DAO validator remained on the allowed list, allowing the hacker to gain entry. As only nine validator nodes were running during the attack, it was rumored that the majority of nodes were controlled by the North Korean Lazarus group and could facilitate false withdrawals.

Binance recovered $5.8 million in funds related to the hack, and Chainanalysis recovered $30 million. In June 2024, the Norwegian government's financial crime-fighting agency, Økokrim, announced the return of $5.7 million in funds and froze $40 million in funds from the hack.

Since the bridge hack, Ronin has enhanced its decentralization by migrating to DPoS, established strategic partnerships with independent enterprises to operate validators, and introduced rotating validators. Ronin has also welcomed new Web2 and Web3 games and studios, expanding the ecosystem beyond the core Axie Infinity series. As a result, the network achieved a dramatic comeback in 2024, with a broader collection of games than ever before.

Technologies Adopted by Ronin

Ronin initially adopted the Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) Proof of Authority (PoA) consensus mechanism, where Sky Mavis designated a limited number of validators. The limited number of validators allowed for faster transaction validation, thereby increasing throughput. However, it also brought a major flaw: the system placed a high level of trust in the validator set, leading to a single point of failure if validators colluded maliciously.

Therefore, in 2023, Ronin adopted BFT Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS). This consensus mechanism allows anyone to register as a validator candidate, with a minimum staking requirement of 2,500,000 RON (bridge operators require an additional staking of 100 RON), valued at approximately $390,000 at the time of writing. Under DPoS, validator candidates compete to receive delegated RON from token holders. The top 10 candidates with the highest total staked and delegated RON tokens are selected as standard validators and contribute to the consensus.

Standard validators validate transactions, generate new blocks, and receive operator rewards. These rewards are paid in RON tokens, sourced from the "Rewards" allocation (25% of total token supply) and transaction fees included in each block. Delegators receive a portion of these rewards, minus a commission rate of 5% to 20%, which is paid to the standard validators.

In addition to the 10 standard validators, Ronin also has 12 management validators contributing to the consensus. These validators are elected through on-chain governance and operated by trusted independent enterprises, including notable management validators such as Google Cloud, Nansen, Dapp Radar, and Stablenode. Token holders can still delegate their RON to management validators to receive rewards, but this does not affect the selection of validators.

In July 2024, Ronin launched the Goda upgrade to allow all active validators to contribute to the consensus mechanism and receive rewards. In the previous version of DPoS, only the top 10 validator candidates could contribute to the consensus mechanism and receive rewards, incentivizing token holders to delegate RON to these top candidates to continue receiving rewards. As a result, the number of delegations to other validators decreased, and new validator candidates were reluctant to participate due to the high staking requirement. The previous version of DPoS concentrated the delegated RON among the top 10 validator candidates.

The Goda upgrade addressed this issue by separating the final vote and block production tasks. All validators participate in the final vote, receiving 85% of the rewards, with voting power proportional to the staked RON amount. For block production, Ronin introduced rotating validators to receive the remaining 15% of the rewards. Every period (approximately 10 minutes), 10 validator candidates are randomly selected to produce blocks. This selection uses a Verifiable Random Function (VRF), which considers the total RON of each validator candidate. The 12 management validators also produce blocks but are not rotated.

Malicious validators and bridge operators will be penalized, with the severity of the penalty varying based on the degree of violation. For validators found to be malicious and penalized, delegators will not receive rewards for the day, but the delegated tokens will not be affected. This encourages responsible participation in the network.

For double-signing validators, they will be jailed for 2^63 -1 blocks and cannot become validators in the future. During the jail period, validators will not receive commission and staking rewards. Additionally, validators will be slashed based on their minimum staking amount of self-delegated RON.

For unavailable validators, the slashing penalty is divided into several levels:

• For Level 1 validator slashing, if a validator misses more than 100 blocks in a day, they will not receive commission or staking rewards for that day.

• For Level 2 validator slashing, if a validator misses more than 500 blocks in a day, they will not receive any rewards for that day. In addition to being slashed by 1,000 self-delegated RON and jailed for 57,600 blocks (approximately 2 days), validators are also prohibited from joining the validator set during the jail period.

• For Level 3 validator slashing, if a validator misses over 100 blocks in a day, they will be slashed by 1,000 self-delegated RON. Additionally, validators will be jailed for 57,600 blocks (approximately 2 days), and rewards earned after release from jail will be canceled, with validators unable to unjail.

Similarly, for unavailable bridge operators, the slashing penalty is divided into different levels based on the severity of the violation:

• For Level 1 operator slashing, if a bridge operator misses more than 10% of the votes in a day, they will not receive bridge rewards for that day.

• For Level 2 operator slashing, if a bridge operator misses more than 30% of the votes in a day, they will not receive any rewards for that day.

Each validator also needs to run a bridge. Standard validators use the Ronin Bridge to confirm deposits and withdrawals of tokens between Ronin and other EVM-compatible networks. The Ronin network also includes non-validator nodes and archive nodes. Non-validator nodes do not participate in the consensus mechanism but synchronize with the ledger state and monitor the network as full nodes. Applications use these nodes to query the blockchain, send transactions, and execute smart contracts. Archive nodes store more information than full nodes and retain all historical data from the blockchain. The corresponding data is much denser than the data stored by validator and non-validator nodes and is primarily used for services such as block explorers, wallet providers, and blockchain analytics.

Token Economics

RON Overview

Ronin's native token RON is used for security and resistance to Sybil attacks (validator and delegator staking), as well as resource consumption (transaction fees and smart contract execution). The fixed total supply is 1 billion RON.

Initial Allocation

The initial token supply is divided into four main allocations: 30% allocated to the community, 30% allocated to the team, 25% allocated to staking rewards, and 15% allocated to the ecosystem fund. RON tokens are continuously unlocked rather than block unlocked. Unlocking began on January 27, 2022, and if each unlocked token is issued, the maximum supply will be unlocked in 108 months or 9 years.

RON serves several different practical functions in the Ronin ecosystem:

• Exchange Medium: RON is the payment currency for games, dApps, and NFT markets on Ronin, and is paired with every token on the native DEX Katana.

• Gas Fees: RON is used to pay for transactions on Ronin.

• Staking: Users can stake or delegate RON to validators to participate in the DPoS consensus mechanism and receive rewards. These tokens come from the "Rewards" allocation (25% of token supply) and transaction fees. Since the Goda upgrade, 85% of these rewards are allocated to all validators participating in the final vote, and 15% are allocated to validators selected for block production in each period. Delegators receive all rewards, minus a 5%-20% commission, which goes to the validators. As of June 20, 2024, these rewards are paid in RON, with an annual interest rate ranging from 10% to 13%.

• Gaming Revenue and Payments: Game studios on Ronin often integrate RON as a primary source of revenue in games, including in-game purchases, actions, and NFT minting.

• Special Incentives: RON token holders and stakers can receive airdrops, whitelist opportunities, and token launchpad allocations for projects built on the Ronin network.

In the future, RON token holders will be able to directly participate in governance to decide how to use Ronin's treasury. However, this feature is not yet live. The treasury accumulates a 0.5% fee from swap trades on Katana and NFT sales on the Mavis Market, aimed at supporting the growth of a broader ecosystem. Currently, only governance and standard validators represent RON delegators in voting on proposals.

Network Activity

Usage

When Axie Infinity announced the migration of its NFTs to Ronin on April 28, 2021, network activity rapidly increased. At that time, Ronin had only 361 Daily Active Addresses (DAA) and 10,600 daily transactions. Two months later, on June 28, 2021, these metrics surged to 32,800 DAA and 256,900 daily transactions, representing increases of 8,986% and 2,324%, respectively. Since then, Ronin has continued to grow, reaching a peak of 1.1 million DAA and 7.3 million daily transactions in November 2021.

The influx of a large number of new players began to put pressure on the network, prompting Sky Mavis to whitelist the Axie DAO for transaction verification—a decision that ultimately led to a hack in March 2022. Due to overfarming and rebalancing of in-game items, the fervor for Axie Infinity declined in 2022, resulting in a decrease in the game's profits. The Ronin Bridge hack in March 2022 further solidified this downward trend. As a result, network activity on Ronin significantly decreased throughout 2022, dropping from 311,200 DAA and 972,000 daily transactions on January 1, 2022, to 10,300 DAA and 57,200 daily transactions on January 1, 2023.

However, driven by key partnerships with Sky Mavis, network activity began to rebound at the end of 2023 and the beginning of 2024, including new games such as Apeiron and Pixels. As the game Apeiron migrated from Polygon and launched, the daily transaction volume on Ronin surged from 370,000 transactions on December 17, 2023, to 7.5 million transactions on December 18, 2023. Apeiron is a unique game that combines simulation, real-time strategy, and action role-playing elements. Players take on the role of gods, managing a planet, nurturing its inhabitants (called Doods), and engaging in battles—while owning and trading NFT assets in the game. Apeiron welcomed players to Ronin through an official release event, including daily login rewards, NFT drops, and game demos.

Pixels is another game that migrated from Polygon to Ronin in October 2023. Pixels is a large-scale multiplayer online (MMO) game that integrates farming, exploration, and community building into an open-world game. The game supports NFT Farm Land and Pixel Pet NFT on the Mavis Market and OpenSea market. In January 2024, Pixels launched Season 2 of its Play-to-Airdrop event for its in-game token PIXEL. Players complete tasks to earn badges, which are then added to the leaderboard. In the token generation event, top-ranking players receive a reward of 250 million PIXEL.

The recovery of Ronin in 2024 can be seen from the significant increase in NFT trading volume on the official NFT market Mavis Market by Sky Mavis. NFT trading volume on Mavis Market increased from $215,000 in December 2023 to $6,775,000 in May 2024, representing an average monthly growth of 90.75% and a cumulative growth of 3,058%.

Security and Decentralization

Before the Goda upgrade, the Ronin network had 22 active validators, and with the implementation of rotating validators, this number has now increased to 24. The Nakamoto coefficient is a measure of the decentralization of a proof-of-stake network, representing the minimum number of independent entities controlling over one-third of the staked native assets in the network. Ronin's Nakamoto coefficient is 7, indicating that the network is more decentralized than other proof-of-stake networks, especially MultiverseX (6), Polygon (4), and Ethereum (1).

A total of 209 million RON is staked (as of June 20, 2024, equivalent to $490 million), accounting for 62.3% of the circulating supply. Locked tokens cannot be staked to earn rewards.

Ecosystem

Gaming and NFTs

Ronin's gaming ecosystem emphasizes player ownership. Therefore, NFTs are an integral part of this mission. Mavis Market is Sky Mavis's official marketplace for trading NFT collectibles outside of the Axie IP. The most popular collections on Mavis Market include CyberKongz Genkai and Apeiron Planets, with cumulative trading volumes of 1.1 million and 865,000 RON, respectively.

Axie Infinity remains the top NFT series by trading volume on Ronin, with a cumulative trading volume of $4.3 billion. However, it is traded on the Axie Market, not on the Mavis Market. Apeiron and Spark Suits Edition 01 (from the game Kaidro) rank as the top three series by trading volume on Ronin to date, with cumulative trading volumes of $3.2 million and $2.7 million, respectively, significantly behind Axie Infinity.

The Ronin ecosystem currently consists of 12 games on the Mavis Hub platform, the official application that provides access to all Sky Mavis games. It features early games supported by Sky Mavis and community-created games. In August 2023, Axie Infinity launched Mavis Hub Greenlight, a new home for game developers to share their early versions of Axie games directly on the Mavis Hub desktop application. Players can vote for their favorite early games and provide feedback to builders who wish to formally launch their products. This is an extension of the original Axie Builder's Program launched in April 2022, where community developers can apply for funding and support for games related to the Axie Infinity series. The latest game launched on Mavis Hub Greenlight is Axie Forge, released in June 2024. Axie Forge is a casual idle sports game inspired by the Axie IP, allowing players to train their Axies through mini-games to level them up.

Ronin is the location for a series of additional games outside the Sky Mavis platform. Notable games include Pixels and Ragnarok: Monster World, expected to be released in the third quarter of 2024.

Game developers looking to release games on Ronin must undergo a strict review process by Sky Mavis before deployment. This ensures tight integration with the ecosystem and prevents spam content. By choosing to build on Ronin, developers have access to a full suite of Solidity development tools brought by EVM compatibility, such as Remix, Truffle, and Hardhat. Additionally, developers can access Sky Mavis's SDK and API for seamless integration with Ronin's current products and services, including the Ronin wallet, Ronin Name Service, app tracking, and Ronin JSON-RPC nodes. The Ronin Developer Console serves as the central hub for accessing Ronin documentation and APIs.

Several key developer primitives on Ronin aim to support growth and help projects raise funds to build their game ecosystem. The Ronin Launchpad, supported by Impossible Finance, allows studios to publicly sell various assets. In March 2024, the popular Ronin game Apeiron successfully launched its token APRS through the application, raising over $3 million from over 11,500 participants. The Mavis Store is the official marketplace for purchasing in-game currency and assets from Sky Mavis games. Game developers can integrate with the application to access its large user base and simplify complex asset listings. Several games currently leverage the platform for in-game purchases, including Axie Quest, Wild Forest, and Ragnarok: Monster World. A notable series recently launched on the platform is Moki Genesis, where participants can mint an egg to hatch Moki characters. All 8,888 NFTs sold out in approximately 2 hours.

DeFi

Decentralized finance (DeFi) on Ronin primarily consists of key infrastructure supporting on-chain games and NFT applications. One of the most important protocols is Katana, the native DEX of Ronin. The platform provides three services: liquidity provision, monitoring analytics, and exchange.

• Liquidity Provision: Users can deposit into liquidity pools to provide trading liquidity. Depositors receive LP tokens and earn rewards from trading fees. As of June 20, 2024, the highest APR for the USDC-RON and AXS-RON liquidity pools is 33.68% and 43.49%, respectively. The WETH-RON and USDC-RON liquidity pools generate the most LP fees.

• Monitoring Analytics: Users can monitor analytics on the Katana dashboard.

• Exchange: Users can exchange supported ERC-20 tokens, such as Ronin (RON), Aprerios (APRS), Pixel (PIXEL), Axie Infinity Shard (AXS), Smooth Love Potion (SLP), and Yield Guild Games Token (YGG).

The TVL of Katana reached a historical high of $1.49 billion on December 4, 2021, and DEX trading volume peaked at $175.77 million on February 10, 2022. This coincided with the peak period of Axie Infinity, where AXS and SLP were highly traded assets. After the bridge hack, TVL on Katana significantly decreased. On May 12, 2022, TVL dropped below $100 million and remained at that level until briefly rising above $100 million on April 14, 2023. On December 4, 2023, TVL on Katana once again exceeded $100 million and has since remained above that level. The recent growth in TVL and DEX trading volume is mainly due to the introduction of new tokens on Katana. As of 2024, Ronin has doubled the number of supported assets on Katana by introducing PIXEL, BANANA, YGG, APRS, ANIMA, and PHPC, reaching a total of 12 assets.

An important new addition to Katana is the Philippine Peso stablecoin (PHPC). PHPC is supported by the centralized cryptocurrency exchange (CEX) Coins.ph and fully backed by cash and cash equivalents in Philippine bank accounts. The new stablecoin has received approval from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) and will undergo an exclusive pilot on Ronin. Additionally, PHPC is supported by the BSP regulatory sandbox framework. This is a significant milestone for Ronin, making it easier for players in the Philippines and the Asia-Pacific region to access on-chain games.

Another key DeFi protocol on Ronin is MetaLend. MetaLend allows borrowers to obtain overcollateralized loans on assets that generate yield without relinquishing custody. This is achieved through MetaLend's assessment engine, which continuously recalculates the value of assets to ensure they meet the protocol's risk parameters. Borrowers provide collateral to MetaLend (staked AXS, staked RON, and Axie Land NFTs). Lenders stake WETH, RON, or USDC in the protocol's lending pool and receive receipt tokens to track their deposits and interest earned. As of June 20, 2024, the APR for lenders ranges from 1.4% to 12.1%.

Borrowers pay a 1% fee on the yield generated from staked AXS and staked RON, which compounds automatically daily. Borrowers can withdraw up to 30% and 50% of the current value of the supported NFTs and tokens, respectively. Loans on MetaLend do not have a specified repayment period. However, if the value of the collateral decreases or interest accumulates beyond the maximum LTV, the protocol will liquidate assets to repay the loan.

Additionally, if a borrower exceeds the loan limit, MetaLend will list their collateral for sale at a 10% liquidation discount, allowing liquidators to repay up to 10% of the loan at once. Any excess proceeds from the sale of larger assets (minus gas fees) will be returned to the borrower. This liquidation strategy helps MetaLend reduce risk during market downturns. As of June 20, 2024, MetaLend's TVL is $1.37 million.

Roadmap

Technical Improvements

In the past few months, Ronin has undergone significant technical improvements. In May 2024, Ronin partnered with zkMe to integrate its identity oracle into the chain, enabling a novel privacy and security solution. zkMe uses zero-knowledge proofs to verify user credentials without handling personal information. This collaboration will provide options for games built on Ronin to integrate identity verification and KYC elements to help prevent fraud and prioritize user data protection.

In June 2024, Ronin announced plans to enable zkEVM (zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine) on-chain by the first quarter of 2025. This will allow builders and game developers to deploy their Layer 2 chains on the Ronin network without permission using the Polygon CDK. This will increase transaction volume and improve incentive alignment for RON token holders and the broader Ronin ecosystem. Initially, the Ronin chain was created to scale Axie Infinity. This upgrade will allow for game-specific chains to be built on top of Ronin.

For L2s looking to launch on Ronin, meeting the 250,000 RON staking requirement to operate a validator node will increase competition for delegators. As sequencer fees accumulate to validators, this will also increase staking rewards. Therefore, the more competitive it is, the more decentralized the entire network becomes.

On June 25, 2024, Ronin announced the implementation plan for the Goda upgrade, which will be completed in July 2024. This upgrade includes the Trippp and Aaron hard forks, aimed at further decentralizing Ronin.

The Trippp hard fork implements Rotating Validators (REP-0010), allowing all validators to earn rewards by separating block production and final voting tasks. Starting from July 3, 10 validators will be randomly selected to produce blocks in each epoch (10 minutes). This enhances the security of Ronin by significantly increasing the number of active validators contributing to consensus.

The Aaron hard fork addresses a significant issue in the current Axie and Land smart contracts: the inability to upgrade them without time-consuming migration or creating new assets. With the help of REP-0016, the Ronin validator community decides to hard fork the chain, update contract bytecode, and implement the ERC-1967 transparent proxy standard. This change will upgrade the Axie and Land smart contracts without resource-intensive migration or minting. Additionally, these contracts will adopt the ownership delegation standard from REP-0015, expanding the ERC-721 token standard on the Ronin blockchain. This will add more flexibility to NFTs, allowing users to stake, collateralize, rent, and delegate their assets.

Growth Strategy

Since the launch of the first five games in 2023, more and more independent games have migrated to Ronin, experiencing what the team calls the "Ronin effect": significant growth driven by Ronin's scalability and strong community.

As Ronin caters to both Web2 and Web3 gamers, the ecosystem can attract multiple audiences to stimulate large-scale growth. Some notable cases include Pixels' migration from Polygon to Ronin, where DAA grew by 7 times. When Kaidro migrated to Ronin, the first NFT minting for the game witnessed over 100,000 new Ronin wallet installations, 230,000 new wallet addresses, and over 346,000 NFTs minted. Since migrating to Ronin, both Apeiron (APRS) and Wild Forest (WF) have successfully conducted token launches. Aperion raised $18 million for APRS in the Primeral community round in just 3 minutes and 30 seconds. Over 17.2 million WRON ($74.5 million) was staked in the Ronin Launchpad for the official APRS sale.

Ronin has many plans dedicated to helping new game studios establish and succeed. Ronin Forge is an early access program that helps experimental Web3 game studios get started on Ronin. The accelerator provides founders with technical materials, support from the Sky Mavis team, and up to $50,000 in RON funding. Other programs include the Axie Builder Program and Mavis Hub Greenlight, which help new game developers and studios build around the Axie Infinity IP. There is also the Axie Creator Program for content creators, highlighting and rewarding them through benefits and features on their social media channels. Axie Infinity has an ecosystem fund currently managed by the Sky Mavis core team, transitioning to a DAO. The fund has allocated 8% of the total AXS. Stakers of AXS can vote to decide who receives funding, with the mission to increase the value of the Axie Infinity community and promote long-term development. The Axie Governance Portal completed its first vote on AIP-001 in May 2024, signaling a decentralized future for the fund.

Ronin continues to transform its ecosystem into an open, creator-led gaming economy that goes far beyond the boundaries of its own games. The number of games launched on Ronin has increased significantly in recent months. In a short period of time, the Ronin ecosystem has welcomed Fight League, Puffverse, Kaidro, Ragnarok: Monster World, Lumiterra, and the recent Forgotten Runiverse.

In April 2024, Ronin announced a strategic partnership with "Ragnarok: Monster World" to bring the game onto the network. Ragnarok is one of the most important cross-media game IPs, with over 68 million players across all games. This partnership marks Ronin's efforts to bridge the gap between traditional Web2 and Web3 gamers and attract more gamers beyond the crypto space.

Lumiterra is a free cross-platform MMORPG game and another game undergoing a significant transformation to the Ronin blockchain. The game combines survival, crafting, and exploration, allowing players to battle NPC monsters, farm, craft items, and trade with other players. Lumiterra utilizes RON as an in-game currency and aims to provide a multifaceted experience for Web3 gamers, primarily because it integrates DeFi protocols through Lumi Finance, a platform focused on sustainable yield investments. This migration marks a pivotal moment for Ronin, expanding its influence and deepening its impact in the Asian gaming market. The game is in the early stages of development, and closed beta testing (CBT) will launch in July. CBT will offer prizes worth $1 million, including RON, in-game items, and the ability to mint future Lumiterra NFTs.

In July 2024, Ronin welcomed Forgotten Runiverse, a Web3 fantasy MMORPG set in a magical open world. In Forgotten Runiverse, players take on the role of wizards, reviving forgotten runes through storytelling, animation, and artwork. Players can form guilds, engage in PvE adventures, participate in monthly PvP leagues, and craft items by collecting resources, which can then be minted and traded on the Ronin blockchain. After the closed beta testing on July 31, an open game event will be held, where players can earn special rewards and create unique NFT items. Forgotten Runiverse also plans to support mobile gaming over time.

Closing Remarks

Ronin is a Layer 1 blockchain optimized for gaming and NFTs. Created by Sky Mavis in 2021, it aims to improve the user experience for the Axie Infinity series of games after they became congested on the Ethereum mainnet. Ronin uses a DPoS consensus mechanism to secure the network, where all validators participate in final voting and 10 validator candidates are randomly selected and rotated in each epoch to produce blocks.

Since its launch, the chain has processed over $4.3 billion in cumulative NFT trading volume, with a TVL of over $166 million for its protocol and DEX. Ronin's long-term goal is to become a primary hub for on-chain gaming. It aims to attract traditional Web2 gamers to its ecosystem by introducing innovative play-to-earn game mechanics and promoting community-created and owned content. Ronin announced a partnership with Ragnarok: Monster World, a traditional Web2 game IP with over 68 million players across all games, demonstrating its commitment to bringing Web2 gamers into the Web3 space. With the release of zkEVM L2s, Ronin positions itself as the settlement layer for various games running on its L2, achieving high scalability for sustained growth.

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