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.”

 

In the still early days of blockchain games, only a dozen titles can celebrate their second birthday. Now it’s time for Sky Mavis to mark the occasion since the reboot of Axie Infinity.

Originally launched in 2018, Axie Infinity was then revamped, with a particular focus on more sustainable tokenomics, and re-released on the 14th September 2022 in the shape of Axie Origins. To clarify, it’s worth pointing out that the game is still generally referred to as Axie Infinity.

As a way of thanking its loyal players, Sky Mavis has announced it will be giving away rewards such as AXP boosters, Moonshards, and other exclusive limited-edition prizes like an avatar, sticker, and more. Users have to log in for 9 consecutive days, starting 11th September, to claim all of them. 

In conjunction with the 2-year rewards campaign, Axie Infinity is also kicking off season 10. This features an additional 24,000 AXS ($100,000) prize pool.

As for Axie Infinity’s recent game performance, daily active users have steadily increased since its introduction of Bounty Boards in April 2024. Prior to this, DAUWs remained between 10,000-20,000, whereas today it’s around 80,000-mark. 

More generally, Sky Mavis’ Ronin blockchain continues to be the one on which games are finding a decent audience of players and token claimers. Apart from the long-reigning web3 game with the most daily active users, social RPG Pixels, other games on Ronin including Apeiron, Wild Forest and Lummiterra have also gained recent traction.

Ronin currently has 27 million total lifetime wallets.

Exceeding both TRON and Solana, Sky Mavis’ Ronin blockchain recently grabbed the top spot in terms of daily active wallets, recording over 2 million on 26th July. Its total lifetime wallets are now over 23 million. So what’s driving the growth?

Despite a significant drop-off of daily active players in June, social RPG Pixels remains the top game on Ronin. Currently with up to 750,000 DAUWs, no other game on the blockchain is near.

However, other apps on Ronin are contributing to the current surge. Next after Pixels, data-sharing gaming protocol Carv, which announced its integration with Ronin earlier in 2024, is the top-rated app with more than 260,000 DAUWs. Carv is currently driving activity via its SOUL airdrop campaign, which lets users earn SOUL – that can later be converted to CARV tokens – for binding new users and their data to various networks, including Ronin.

With its $1 million Apeiron Guild Wars tournament running through the summer, hybrid PC god game Apeiron is also driving significant traffic, currently with around 100,000 DAUWs.

As for Sky Mavis’s own Axie Infinity, the company’s Q2 2024 update showed the game’s audience increased by 200% thanks to the release of Bounty Boards in May and a collaborative effort with Coinbase’s Learn & Earn campaign in June, which resulted in a significant influx of new wallets.

Around the 40,000 DAUW mark, as per data from DappRadar, sits mobile RTS Wild Forest which recently launched globally, and has just completed its play-to-airdrop season 2.

PC-based top-down 4V4 hero shooter The Machines Arena from Icelandic/Chinese developer Directive Games has also generated some interestlately. Ahead of the TMA token launch, the game is kicking off its play-to-airdrop campaign on 30th July, through which players can earn TMA tokens through quests, NFT minting and gameplay. 

While Directive Games was one of the initial thirdparty developers to join Ronin in 2023, more recent games on the network include Fight League, which is adding to the growing activity with its free NFT mint on Ronin coming up 31st July.

In addition, MMORPGs Lumiterra and Forgotten Runiverse, both which announced their move to Ronin in June 2024, have imminent closed beta tests launching on the network within the next week.

Stay up-to-date with all upcoming dates via our web3 games calendar.

Continuing to expand in terms of new games added to Ronin, Sky Mavis has also noted growth when it comes to its own games, including Axie Infinity, Axie Classic, and Homeland.

As of its H1 2024 report, the Axie ecosystem experienced two significant peaks. In April, the launch of the new rewards-based Axie quest system Bounty Board led to the growth of over 37,000 new unique users.

In June, the influx mainly came from the company’s partnership with Coinbase’s Learn and Earn campaign – a joint initiative to engage users in educational quests including buying NFTs while rewarding them with RON tokens. As a result, Axie NFT trading volume shot up.

In terms of the games, Sky Mavis highlights its Part Evolution launch in late 2023 as a contributing factor to the growth of Axie Infinity. Also, between season 7 and 9, the in-game prize pools were increased from 63,000 to 81,133 AXS. Notably, the rewards were distributed among more players. 

The game currently has 55,000 daily active users and 150,000 monthly active user wallets, although during the first half of 2024 it did peak at 79,300 DAUWs and 248,000 MAUWs.

Not on the same scale but nonetheless noteworthy, during H1 2024 Axie Classic also saw a revival. New features released included AXP rewards, gold, chests, the Cursed Coliseum mode, and Grand Tournaments.

In April, the game kicked off its Axie Classic Competitive Circuit featuring a 57,000 AXS prize pool, including 12 seasons of guild leaderboard, Guild Wars, and the Axie Classic Guild World Cup, all resulting in Axie Classic’s DAUW hitting 45,000, up by 190% during H1.

In terms of Axie Homeland, its 2024 reboot was not as well received however. As part of mending the problems and realigning with the community, the team is currently working on two new major updates in the game, including replacing existing NPC characters with Axie NFTs.

Finally, the team also launched its new governance system, featuring an Axie Governance Portal. I order to reward community members’ contributions to the Axie ecosystem, Axie Score was also introduced. 

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.

Earn Alliance has announced a partnership with Sky Mavis, entailing an integration of Ronin-based games within its web3 gaming discovery platform.

Described as an “engagement as a service” platform” – Earn Alliance claims to have 500,000 verified gamers. With this latest integration, its users will be introduced to games on Ronin including Pixels, Lumiterra, Ragnarok Monster World, The Machines Arena, Kaidro, Axie Classic, and Puffverse – starting with a dedicated Ronin Week on Monday 24th June.

For each of the 7 days during Ronin Week, a new game will be highlighted. The event consists of daily missions through which participants can earn exclusive badges and rewards. In addition to social engagement challenges, players can also earn rewards through in-game missions. While the games themselves are where users can complete most of the missions, Earn Alliance will elaborate on some of the challenges in its live show “The Wall”, which will also feature guests from the Ronin team.

“Our partnership with Sky Mavis marks a significant milestone in our mission to bridge traditional gaming with blockchain technology,” said Earn Alliance CEO Joseph Cooper. 

Meanwhile, Ronin is currently the fastest growing ecosystem in terms of daily active users, breaking 1.4 million DAUWs in May. Continuing to expand with third-party games, the network recently welcomed its first survival MMORPG Lumiterra.

Sky Mavis CEO and co-founder Trung Nguyen commented, “Partnering with Earn Alliance for Ronin Week allows us to showcase the diverse gameplay experiences on Ronin,” said Sky Mavis CEO and Co-Founder, Trung Nguyen. “In the last month we announced Puffverse and Lumiterra, making this the perfect time to bring both Ronin and Earn Alliance’s communities together to try out these exciting new games.”

“My experience and learnings from Axie Infinity, which Ronin was originally built to scale, is what inspired me to start Earn Alliance, so this collaboration has been a major dream in the making,” added Cooper.

The partnership is announced at the heels of Earn Alliance’s recent staffing revamp. Notably, it’s hired entertainment-industry veteran Kimberly Knoller as new Chief Marketing Officer, while gaming veteran Graeme Griffin is the team’s new Head of Gaming, and software engineer and gaming veteran Amit Goel onboards as Director of Product (Ad Tech).

Stay up-to-date via the Earn Alliance platform, and download the app via Google Play or Apple Store.

Sky Mavis welcomes first third-party open world survival MMORPG as Hong Kong-based developer Ticker Logic brings Lumiterra: Embers of the Legacy to Ronin.

Previously deployed on Arbitrum, Lumiterra already features a deep game economy revolving around resource acquisition game loops including farming, crafting, and real-time battles. Its progressive gameplay allows players to level up as they gain experience, participate in quests with their friends, or band together to form alliances against other players.

By bringing Lumiterra to Ronin, Sky Mavis hopes to attract more players from China and Hong Kong to its gaming network.

“Lumiterra’s migration to Ronin is more than just adding a new game; it’s about welcoming legions of web3 gamers from China and Hong Kong into Ronin’s digital nation. With a strong, organically-grown community and proven success in the DeFi space, Lumiterra is set to thrive on Ronin,” commented Sky Mavis CEO and co-founder Trung Nguyen.

“Our goal is to captivate players through high-quality games, allowing the in-game goods economy to function naturally and fostering a healthy economic circulation system that supports the game’s ongoing expansion and depth,” said co-founder and CEO of Lumiterra Lark.

“We are excited to bring Lumiterra to the Ronin ecosystem, uniting DeFi, GameFi, and players in a seamless experience. Ronin’s proven track record, scalability, and active community make it the ideal platform for us. We look forward to introducing a new paradigm to our dedicated followers and the Ronin community,” shared Lark, Co-Founder CEO of Lumiterra.

Lumiterra’s closed beta is set to launch on Ronin in July 2024. However, it’s also worth pointing out that somewhat confusingly, the game has also recently announced it will be launching on Solana L2 Sonic.

Stay up-to-date via the game’s website and X account.

Currently the largest gaming blockchain by active users, Ronin, has announced its forthcoming support for zkEVM L2 chains. Using a modified version of the Polygon Chain Development Kit (CDK) will allow third-party game developers to build their own L2 blockchains on Ronin.

With an active daily user base exceeding 1 million, Ronin is the top gaming blockchain, despite not boasting a large number of games compared to other networks. By collaborating with Polygon and building a dedicated ZK blockchain, Sky Mavis aims to provide a home for infinitely more game developers and users.

“While Ronin has comfortably supported our existing games with low gas costs, our exponential growth means we need to stay 5 steps ahead when it comes to scalability. Certain games, such as fully-onchain-games, have specific needs and may even want to put a majority of game actions onchain. In the past, it’s been difficult for us to work with these types of games as we were wary of games that could potentially clog up Ronin with transactions,” said Sky Mavis in an official blogpost.

Further plans include integrating a Polygon ZK prover directly into Ronin in order for developers to create their own zkEVMs without needing to establish their own security and consensus. In return, game developers looking to launch their L2s on Ronin will need to meet the 250K RON requirement to run a Ronin validator before launching their chain.

In terms of a timeframe, the first zkEVM chain to launch on Ronin may be “sometime in Q1 2025”.

Sky Mavis CEO and co-founder Trung Nguyen commented, “Our key goal is to build a unified gaming ecosystem that facilitates effortless asset transfers, token swaps, and NFT trading between Layer 1 (L1) and L2 games, all while offering low gas fees for users. By removing blockspace as a constraint, we believe Ronin zkEVM is a crucial pillar to help us onboard billions of gamers,” adding, “With the support of Polygon’s best-in-class ZK tech stack, this collaboration between two ecosystems will usher in a new era of Web3 gaming.”

“Ronin is at the forefront of bridging cutting-edge technology with unparalleled distribution power and user engagement. Polygon CDK will help transform Ronin’s gaming ecosystem by creating a permissionless environment, making it a premier destination for thousands of game studios,” said Polygon co-founder and Polygon Labs CBO Sandeep Nailwal.

Sky Mavis, the developer behind Axie Infinity, successfully recovered approximately $5.7 million from the Ronin Bridge exploit with the Norwegian government’s assistance.

In a June 7 statement, the firm stated:

“The Norwegian National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime (Økokrim) has successfully frozen and returned 5.7 M USD in stolen assets from the Ronin bridge incident.”

Ronin bridge, an Ethereum sidechain for the play-to-earn game Axie Infinity, was exploited in 2022 for 173,600 Ethereum, worth over $615 million at the time. Since then, the firm has been working to recover the funds with little success.

Meanwhile, the attacker, allegedly the North Korea-backed Lazarus Group, has moved a substantial amount of the stolen ETH through crypto mixing tool Tornado Cash.

$40 million frozen

The firm said various law enforcement agencies have frozen a total of $40 million associated with the incident. It added:

“These assets will take some time to recover and we don’t have enough information to give guidance around a specific timetable for recovering and returning this separate pool of assets.”

These recoveries were achieved through the collaborative efforts of various agencies, including the US Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), Økokrim, and blockchain forensic firm Chainalysis. Sky Mavis emphasized the importance of coordination among law enforcement, legal teams, accountants, and blockchain experts in retrieving the stolen assets.

Sky Mavis plans to allocate around 15% of the recovered funds to cover recovery costs, with the remaining 85% being returned to the Axie Infinity Treasury.

Meanwhile, the asset recovery did not improve Axie Infinity’s AXS token price performance or that of Ronin’s RON. According to CryptoSlate’s data, the digital assets were down 1.09 and 2.65%, respectively, over the last 24 hours.

Mentioned in this article

Ronin-developer Sky Mavis has launched its early access grants program Ronin Forge. In order to incentivise innovative web3 games, the program grants admitted teams $50,000, in addition to technology support and access to build on the Ronin blockchain.

Successful developers could also earn the opportunity to become Sky Mavis studio partners. This upgrade entails enhanced support and up to $500,000 in additional grants.

In conjunction with the news, Sky Mavis has opened the application process for prospective web3 game developers, and will enrol up to six teams at a time on a regular basis. The company is particularly looking for games in late alpha or early beta stages, with expected launch in the next 3-6 months. Additionally, it’s particularly asking for teams with a “strong interest for, and conviction in, web3 gaming”, that are open to experiment with NFTs, tokens and market strategies. 

“Ronin Forge is the next step in further opening up Ronin for builders. By offering grants and access to the Sky Mavis ecosystem, this will serve as an experimental ground for developing the next generation of web3 games,” said Sky Mavis Chairman, COO and co-founder, Aleksander Leonard Larsen.

“We aim to encourage innovation and build network effects, inviting like-minded studios to join on our path towards scaling the Ronin Network.”

Currently the top gaming blockchain, Ronin recently hit 20 million lifetime wallets, and serves over 1 million daily active users with games such as Pixels, Axie Infinity, and Apeiron, and onboarding campaigns like Coinbase Learn and Ronin Carnival.

Users can apply to the Ronin Forge program here.

Continuing its growing momentum, Sky Mavis has announced a partnership with crypto exchange Coinbase, which will see its gaming blockchain Ronin’s RON token going live within Coinbase’s educational Learn platform.

In a recent blogpost, Sky Mavis highlights the current Coinbase Learn campaign which will let users earn RON rewards worth $55 for completing various quests and quizzes using the Coinbase app. “Over the past few months, we’ve built portals between our collective movements: Coinbase’s RON listing. The Ronin Wallet’s CoinbasePay integration.” 

Previously mainly focused on Asian markets, Sky Mavis sees this as part of expanding its UA and broader mission globally, adding “Today’s joint campaign is another step together in our shared mission to increase economic freedom around the world.” 

Alongside the collaboration, the web3 developer has also unveiled the month-long Ronin Carnival event. Running from 3rd June, the event entails time-limited activations from Ronin ecosystem partners including games such as Apeiron, Kaidro, PuffTown, Tribesters, and more, in addition to Sky Mavis’ own Axie Infinity Origins.

To participate in Coinbase Learn, users need to create a Coinbase Account and complete KYC, find the learning rewards section in the Coinbase app, and start Ronin Quests.

For more details, check out the full blogpost.