Similar to other gaming-dedicated blockchains, Sky Mavis’ Ronin chain is the latest to launch its own cross-game onboarding solution. 

Called Ronin Waypoint, the tech essentially lets players access games on Ronin through a single account credential using email or social logins, without the need for seed phrases or browser extensions. It leverages Multi-Party Computation (MPC) technology to create secure keyless wallets in the background.

Using Ronin Waypoint, users can trade, swap and mint assets across Ronin’s partner games from their account. Already live in Axie Classic, the next game to integrate the solution is Axie Origins, followed by other ecosystem games. It also works cross-platform, and is currently available on Unity, Telegram, iOS and Android.

Clunky onboarding is often cited as a general pain point in for web3 games, contributing to its slow adoption. However, despite having lacked a frictionless onboarding solution until now, Ronin has managed to become the most popular blockchain in terms of active users. With the integration of Ronin Waypoint, and its inherent gas-free in-game transactions, Sky Mavis hopes to boost player engagement further. 

“It’s becoming increasingly evident that there is a disconnect between Western capital allocation in crypto and the active user base from emerging economies like Southeast Asia and Latin America, where many of Ronin’s users are located,” commented Sky Mavis CGO Jeff Zirlin.

“Web3 gaming still holds significant potential for mass crypto adoption, and we believe that the launch of Ronin Waypoint is the next step towards this vision.”

 

Filipino crypto exchange Coins.ph has joined forces with Sky Mavis, launching its Philippine Peso stablecoin PHPC on the Ronin blockchain.

Fully regulated and backed by the Philippine Central Bank (the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas), Coins.ph is set to pilot the PHPC stablecoin under the BSP’s Regulatory Sandbox Framework.

PHPC will join USDC as the second stablecoin on the Ronin blockchain.

Founded in 2014, Coins.ph claims over 18 million accounts in total, including 7 million monthly active users, which would be six percent of the Philippine’s 116 million total population. 

Notably, the country has also played a major role in the growth of blockchain gaming, contributing significantly to the breakthrough of Sky Mavis’ flagship game Axie Infinity in late 2021.

Sky Mavis now hopes that providing the ability for users to cash-out in-game earnings, transfer funds or use crypto for in-store payments, PHPC on Ronin can become a valuable financial asset for millions of web3 gamers in the Philippines. With PHPC deposits and withdrawals now live on both Coins.ph and the Ronin Wallet, the team is also looking towards a future listing of PHPC/RON on the Ronin-based decentralized exchange Katana.

“With the Philippines being the epicenter of web3 gaming adoption, it was important for us to make PHPC available on Ronin, the largest web3 gaming chain in the world. Many Filipinos and Coins.ph customers use Ronin and there are a number of areas Ronin and Coins are looking to collaborate on when it comes to using PHPC for transfers, payments, trading and more,” commented Coins.ph CEO Wei Zhou. 

“The Philippines is the beating heart of web3 gaming. We are thrilled that CoinsPH has decided to launch PHPC on Ronin. With this move, Ronin is ascending beyond its original mandate as a gaming chain and entering the realm of real-world payments and merchant transactions,” said Sky Mavis co-founder Jeff Zirlin. 

Once the clear market leader in blockchain gaming – with signature IP Axie Infinity kickstarting the first bullrun – Sky Mavis is now driving momentum in a different manner; through the ecosystem of its Ronin blockchain.

So, with some questioning the pulse of the sector, it was a good opportunity to fire some questions over to Sky Mavis co-founder Jeff Zirlin and get his take on what’s happening now and in the future.

BlockchainGamer: Is web3 gaming dead?

Jeff Zirlin: Last month, Ronin reached an all time high of 1.6 million DAUs. And according to DefiLlama, Axie and Pixels are the top NFT projects by monthly recurring revenue.

• Axie Infinity‘s monthly rev is $306,000,
• Pixels’ monthly rev is $1.3 million.

This is compared to Yuga Labs and Pudgy Penguins, which are both at $146,000.

This week Ronin users purchased over $10 million worth of Moku raffle tickets. Contrary to what some influencers on crypto Twitter might claim, web3 gaming is far from dead – it’s thriving and Ronin is leading the way.

Is web3 gaming apart from Ronin dead?

Ronin is the leader due to its unparalleled focus on community and distribution.

However, we are actually starting to see some interesting contributions from the rest of the space such as The Beacon, which recently hosted a successful p2a event.

Is web3 gaming apart from Pixels dead?

The migration of Pixels to Ronin highlights our power as a games distribution platform. Since the migration in October, Pixels experienced explosive growth, with its DAU surging from 5,000 to over 1 million, and has reached another major milestone with over 5 million lifetime wallets. We are proud of what Luke and the Pixels team have been able to accomplish.

We haven’t seen any evidence that more aggressive games onboarding would have succeeded.

Jeff Zirlin, Sky Mavis

That said, there are plenty of other games and projects building on Ronin that are adding immense value to the ecosystem and web3 gaming. Apeiron, the world’s first NFT-based godgame, went from 8,000 DAUs to 80,000 DAUs after migrating to Ronin. In the last week, Sky Mavis announced major plans to scale, Lumiterra’s migration, 2.2 million RON tokens committed to the Moku Lucky Draw, and a partnership with Earn Alliance. 

Given the above, have you changed your priors that there will be a large number of successful blockchain games or should we reconsider that perhaps there will only be a small number of successful blockchain games?

We believe that the gaming community is looking for diverse gaming experiences, and Ronin will be the distribution platform for those diverse games aiming to onboard the next billion people into crypto through gaming.

It’s likely that the most successful games will be magnitudes larger than the rest. This is also the case in traditional gaming.

Although you have announced plans for this, will we look back and see the relative slowness of Ronin to become more decentralized more quickly to be a weakness?

We believe that history will look back favorably on our focused approach during the early days of the network. We haven’t seen any evidence that more aggressive games onboarding would have succeeded, if this was the case then Ronin would not be the market leader right now.

Despite your best efforts, the various versions of Axie Infinity (and its companion games like Homeland) remain relatively small in terms of audience. Isn’t it time for Sky Mavis to park the IP as a legacy brand and come up with something new?

Axie is in a more mature state relative to other web3 gaming IPs. Therefore, we might have a bias to seeing it as boring or stable. However, in the first half of this year we’ve seen major growth.

For example, since we deployed the Axie Bounty Board in April we’ve seen:

• Axie daily active addresses go from 12,600 to 59,800 (+378%) 
  • MAA from 26,500 to 209,800 (+691%)
• Origins DAU +80%
• Classic DAU +223%
• Avg daily trading volume go from 62,200 to 151,300 (+143%). 
  • Monthly trading volume is up from 2.3 million to 3.4 million (+47%)
• Avg daily treasury revenue has gone from 4,000 to 11,800 (+195%)
  • Monthly trading revenue go from 222,000 to 306,300 (+37%)

Axie is still the #1 NFT and gaming IP by ecosystem revenue, aside from Pixels. However Pixels is in an earlier, more volatile stage of growth.

Finally, will the most successful blockchain games over the next couple of years be web2.1 titles that can be distributed through app stores finding a mass audience, or experiences that leverage fully integrated blockchain primitives?

There will likely be two baskets of successful games.

Web3 native IPs and teams like Axie/Pixels that lean into web3 mechanics and community building.

There will also be web2 IPs like Ragnorok that are able to successfully transition to the web3 world and bring much of their existing fandom.

Find out more about Ronin via its website and X account.