Ronin: How Axie Infinity Kickstarted the Blockchain Gaming Revolution
- Jeff Zirlinđť•Ź
While DeFi’s ultimate goal is to provide an alternative for TradFi, blockchain gaming caters to retail masses, onboarding millions of users to crypto through incentives and fun gameplay. The greatest success story in Web3 gaming thus far has been, without a doubt, Axie Infinity. Apart from creating an engaged community whose early adopters also experienced rags-to-riches stories, it kickstarted an entire movement around play-to-earn gaming. Many have tried copying it, yet most of them failed. Axie Infinity managed to design a sustainable economy that combined NFTs and fungible tokens. The result was the first gamified crypto mining event, at scale. In order to accommodate such a massive demand, in a time when L2 rollups were still in R&D, Sky Mavis founded Ronin, a gaming-oriented Ethereum sidechain. The community that formed around Axie Infinity created a tremendous network effect, solidifying Ronin’s PMF as a gaming powerhouse. Before long, many up-and-coming titles migrated to Ronin, and the growth effects in all their key metrics (i.e. DAUs, transactions, revenue, etc.) further fuelled the flywheel.
Topics:
- Jeff’s background
- Cryptokitties
- Joining Axie Infinity and how it evolved
- Monetizing Axie’s economy
- The recipe for successful blockchain games
- Building Ronin, the gaming L1
- On-chain vs. off-chain game elements
- Community building
- Ronin’s economy & composability
- Most suitable gaming genre for Web3
- AI x gaming
- Crypto gaming investments
- Ronin’s current state and future roadmap
- Axie’s upcoming MMO