The Ronin Effect
Why Ronin is becoming THE blockchain for games.
Key Points
We’ve welcomed new allies to our movement over the past weeks – resulting in a surge in daily active addresses, legions of new social media followers, and many fresh partnership discussions. While all eyes are on us, we’d like to share our thoughts on why real builders say Ronin is THE blockchain for gaming. In Part 1 of this article, we’ll discuss the “Ronin Effect”.
Pixels.xyz’s explosive growth is a great example of the Ronin Effect: DAU surpassing 100K, in-game item sales hitting all-time highs, the Pixels Farm Land NFT floor growing by 300% – all after migrating to Ronin. In Part 2 of this article, you’ll understand how we created the Ronin Effect for them.
Mavis Market is Ronin’s generalized NFT Marketplace that guarantees creator royalties. In Part 3 of this article, you’ll see how Mavis Market supports the Ronin Effect, and why the CyberKongz chose to launch their Genkai collection on Ronin earlier this year.
Over the past month, the Web3 industry started to turn heads again. Bitcoin’s market cap grew by almost 40% and Ronin’s daily active addresses surged by 300%. There’s a buzz in the market, and many builders are wondering whether our industry is about to onboard millions of more users on-chain. After reading this article, you’ll see why Ronin is ready to seize this moment. Whether you’re developing a game, preparing to launch an NFT collection, or building blockchain infrastructure, the Ronin Effect will help you realize what’s possible when you join our movement.
Part 1: What is the Ronin Effect?
The Ronin Effect occurs when a Web3 game or NFT collection experiences massive growth after migrating or launching on Ronin.
In 2018, we introduced Axie Infinity to a handful of players on Ethereum. However, we soon ran into many roadblocks. For example, Ethereum’s high gas fees and slow transaction speeds sidelined players from key experiences in our game. The lack of control over wallet design made it hard to connect in-game actions with on-chain counterparts. Ethereum’s sheer complexity confused new users away! It became obvious that gamers needed a blockchain built for them. So, we built Ronin from the ground up to solve the problems Web3 gamers face everyday.
Fast and affordable transactions. A sleek and intuitive wallet. Curated partnerships that benefit gamers first. These were our north stars as we built the world’s first EVM blockchain for developers building games with player-owned economies.
267,000 players have used Ronin in the past month, and two game studios have migrated from other blockchains onto Ronin in the last few weeks alone – Pixels.xyz and ZOIDS WILD ARENA. We’re also honored to count Wild Forest, Battle Bears, the Machines Arena, Tribesters: Island of Solas, Axie Champions, and Bowled.io as allies in our movement. Ronin has become more than the #1 gaming chain by active wallets and engagement. It’s where serious game studios come to find their first 1,000 superfans. Real players, real communities – they both start here.
Part 2: How we created the Ronin Effect
Every movement starts with a group of passionate people – and this is even more true in gaming. Stans. Power users. Superfans. These players will be the first to playtest a new feature, and the most committed online marketers in any community. Through Axie, we learned the importance of finding and nurturing these superfans into a self-sustaining engine. That’s how we create the Ronin Effect.
We know what it takes to connect games with their first superfans. We did it once with Axie, we’re doing it again with Pixels.xyz, and we’re ready to help other teams join us. In the last 30 days alone, Ronin monthly active users spiked from 159K to over 203K as Pixels drove exponential growth from their recent migration. That means there are almost 200K Ronin gamers right now with more flocking home and being onboarded each week. Pixels followers on the X platform also grew from 117K to over 123K in a matter of days. Pixels may have already had 1,000 superfans before coming to Ronin. However, its next 100,000 may be on the horizon. On other chains, builders can feel like droplets in an ocean. On Ronin, we can help our partners fuel viral waves.
Pixels.xyz’s explosive growth is a great example of the Ronin Effect, made possible by the best Web3 gaming publishing team around. With our partners, we share what we’ve learned from building Axie – the Web3 game that introduced almost every gamer in our industry to blockchain gaming. We also provide technical support to help list tokens, migrate NFT collections, and integrate our native Ronin wallet to your game. We curate every partnership, which allows us to build a Web3 gaming ecosystem people can trust. Distribution, go-to-market support, financial funding – we do it all on Ronin. Let’s get back to what the Ronin Effect looks like for Pixels.xyz.
Players have spent ~190 K RON (150K USD) buying Pixels VIP passes since the VIP passes launched on Ronin last week. These are real paying customers and revenue for Pixels.
Pixels has already launched their in-game $BERRY currency as a token on the Katana exchange. Trading volume reached ~$240K USD in less than two weeks, while the $BERRY/WRON liquidity pool is now worth about $160K USD. The Pixels Genesis Pets NFT Collection also began minting on Mavis Market – Ronin’s generalized NFT marketplace. The collection’s total trading volume surpassed 120K RON, which is about $93K USD at time of writing. These are real transactions from real players. Their team is now free to focus on scaling their game, shipping new features, and keeping in touch with their growing community. Here’s what their team had to say about their experience on Ronin:
We’re looking for more partners who want to build a Web3 game that can grow. If you yearn to spread economic freedom through games, reach out to us. We’re always looking for community-focused, aggressive teams to join our movement.
Part 3: How Mavis Market Supports the Ronin Effect
Mavis Market does everything most marketplaces can do with one major difference: we guarantee creator royalties. On many chains, we’ve seen a race to the bottom as the inability to enforce creator royalties limits NFT projects’ sustainability. However, Mavis Market’s aligned incentives between creators, their communities, and Ronin ensure a more balanced economic model. This works because contract deployment on Ronin requires whitelist access, which prevents mercenary marketplaces from deploying and eliminating minimum royalties for builders. Guaranteed creator royalties on Mavis Market give projects an unfair advantage over other NFT marketplaces.
Case Study: the Smoothest Mint of All Time
In July, we hosted Ronin’s first-ever non-Axie NFT mint: the CyberKongz Genkai Collection. In under an hour, the entire Ronin-based supply of 3,000 Genkai NFTs had minted out at the price of 0.25 ETH by over a thousand unique owners. Many called it the smoothest mint of all time! 3K NFTs. 1.2K owners. 200K RON total volume – all on Mavis Market. The Genkai mint drew in $1.4M USD during the depths of a bear market and proved what we already knew: Ronin is a great place to launch NFT collections. Here’s what our community had to say about their experience:
Anyone can now apply to list an existing NFT collection or launch a new one on Mavis Market. However, NFT collections on Mavis Market must first go through a rigorous curation process because we want to make sure each project aligns with our vision. This also gives our team the chance to better understand how we can help, and whether a larger partnership would be a good fit. Fill out the typeform at the button below to get in touch about listing or launch your NFT collection:
Final Thoughts
Ronin gets teams to the next level. Pixels was already the #1 Web3 game by real users on Polygon before coming to Ronin, and they cemented their lead even further after their migration. The CyberKongz hold the world record for the highest floor price of an NFT collection at 210 ETH – and they chose to launch their Genkai collection on Ronin’s Mavis Market. Why? Because Ronin works. Let us know if your team is interested in experiencing the Ronin Effect. We’re ready to onboard the next generation of Web3 users and gamers. Are you?