Bots, Airdrops pushed Ronin to #2.

The Ronin network, which hosts Axie Infinity and other games, is booming again with 1.4 million daily active users.

This puts it second in all blockchains behind Tron's 2.2 million daily active users, according to Token Terminal.

But the Ronin network generated the 13th highest payout of all blockchains in the last 30 days with just $200,000. So something doesn't add up very well.

The user growth is a remarkable turnaround from last October, when Ronin was on life support with less than 20,000 daily active users.

That's when the farming simulation game Pixel left its birthplace, Polygon, and migrated to the then-dying chain.

The arrival of Pixels started the network's revival, which helped propel the chain to its current heights. Ronin developer Sky Mavis co-founder Jeff Zirlin said in March that the network is becoming “parabolic and exponential,” largely because of pixels. Today, more than half of Ronin's wallets are available in Pixel, which includes in-game. Items, the PIXEL cryptocurrency and intangible tokens (NFTs).

But are those users all legitimate? As of May 20, Pixels had about 779,000 unique active wallets, according to Dapradar.

According to data from Singapore-based blockchain forensics firm ChainArgos, Pixels' high wallet count can be widely influenced by bot activity.

The companies said that the cumulative increase in daily unique pixel receipts is “too soft” to determine as human activity and could be bots.

The game's developers have acknowledged that this is a problem and have been putting regular bans in place to remove accounts that engage in bot behavior. Pixel recently announced that it had suspended 750,000 accounts in one week.

To be fair, fans say the game has a “massive” number of human players, perhaps a third of the total. And like Axie Infinity, some players in the Philippines are earning a decent daily wage by owning land in the game.

ChainArgos co-founder Jonathan Reiter took a closer look at the activity data and told the magazine that even with bots, the narrative driving Pixel Ronin to great heights is overblown.

Reiter said the non-economic activity associated with airdropped SOUL is far greater than that associated with pixels. On May 21, Ronin's network had eight times more SOUL transactions than PIXEL.

“I first looked at this because I heard a claim that Ronin was the most widely used blockchain, and it wasn't something that came up very often,” Reiter told the magazine.

“It was very clear that the activity was not from the requested project.”

Ronin and developer Sky Mavis did not respond to the magazine's requests for comment.

A blockchain with many souls

According to ChainArgos data, the installation of the Pixel Store by Ronin in October last year was accompanied by a surge in activity.

The number of unique transactions related to BERRY, Pixels' former in-game token, increased immediately following the migration, peaking at 4,700 transactions on Halloween.

It didn't take long for BERRY transactions to reach beyond SLP, the main in-game currency Axie Infinity.

BERRY transactions were replaced by PIXEL transactions, as the former was discontinued by developers.

But trading signals for Pixels-related tokens don't match major spikes in Ronin's blockchain activity, including one in mid-December, suggesting another project may be moving the needle.

SOUL, a token associated with data sharing project Carve, stands out as the candidate responsible for Ronin's rising transaction count. The project allows organizations and players to share data and generate revenue.

It raised $10 million in a Series A funding round, including a 2022 seed round from Singapore-backed venture capital Temasek, which reportedly raised the project's valuation to $40 million.

Since mid-December, Carve has launched SOUL airdrops in conjunction with the expansion of the Ronin movement. SOUL tokens started going from one empty wallet address to hundreds of thousands of different wallets.

The airdrop campaign is not a typical one-time distribution. Instead, participants must link their wallets or online accounts (such as Google and Facebook) and share personal information. Every day SOUL will be awarded as prizes. Users can receive 10 SOUL per day for linking their Ronin wallet.

According to CARV's website, users who store SOUL can exchange it for the utility token CARV when the new tokens are created. As of May 24, users can still participate in data sharing.

There are more SOUL transactions than any other major token on Ronin, including Pixel.

On May 21, the Ronin network had 387,500 SOUL transactions and 47,000 PIXEL transactions.

Reiter argued that the thousands of addresses that have received SOUL tokens on Ronin have yet to “do anything with it,” so SOUL transactions do not reflect healthy economic activity.

If it turns out that someone can sell it for a whole lot of money and buy any services in the future, have a good time. But it seems to have gone down in the air to many dormant addresses. That is not an economic activity.”

Although Ronin is listed as the second most active network, the network fee does not support this ranking. It generated less than $200,000 in revenue in the 30 days to May 22, indicating low economic activity.

Bots are ruining it for real players.

The high number of bots in the Pixel game isn't something that founder Luke Barwikowski has shied away from.

Bot activity can be seen on most online platforms, including social media. In-game, bot activity is considered cheating, and often results in penalties such as permanent bans. But users often return with new bot armies under different accounts.

Because of the direct financial incentives associated with playing the game, pixels can be an especially attractive platform for Sybil and bot activities.

At the XSpace session in April, Barwikowski said the battle against bots has become more clear since the launch of BERRY tokens.

Pixel did not respond to the magazine's request for comment, but the topic of bots is one Barwikowski regularly talks about at AMA sessions. It frequently warns players that those who use automation-related extensions to gain an unfair advantage over other players will be banned.

Dapradar's data on active addresses shows that bot bans can only have temporary effects, as sudden drops in active wallets bounce back quickly.

“Fewer bots mean more rewards for real people,” Can Picak, CEO of Eldarunnu, a Web3 game studio, told the magazine.

Peacock, which hasn't been on Pixel for three months, estimates that 70% of the accounts in the game are bots.

“But even if 70% or 90% of them are bots, the number of real users who play every day is huge,” Peacock told the magazine.

For some it is a reliable source of income.

The crackdown on bots has caught some millers and players in the crossfire. Many players have taken to social media to complain about being banned.

This shows that the Pixel is far from being an Android-led ghost town when it has a bot issue.

The game has become a “legitimate side hustle” for players, especially those who own NFT land, said Joniel Boon, co-founder of the Philippine internet cafe for crypto games, NFT X Street.

Landowners can open their land to the public for players to farm and collect materials and resources, which can ultimately be used to craft items and sell them for PIXEL tokens.

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“I don't have a lot of time to grind, so I let the community grind on my land and I get a commission there,” Boon says.

As a landowner, Bon earns $11 a day (₱640), which is slightly more than the daily minimum wage in the Philippine capital, according to the local labor department. Business-minded players like Boon can have multiple sources of income across multiple games.

He bought the land NFT a year ago for about $2,500 Ether, which he can flip for a profit. Boon said he has no plans to sell the land at the moment.

As of May 23, the floor price for one pixel of farmland NFT is 1.39 Ether, or about $5,400, according to CoinGecko.

So Ronin's No. 2 blockchain for everyday users is as you can see thanks to bots and the SOUL airdrop, a large number of people seem to be playing the game and it's going to be profitable for those who grind. Virtual farm.

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John Yun

Yohan Yun is a multimedia journalist who has been reporting on blockchain since 2017. He has contributed as an editor to crypto media outlet Forkast and covered Asian technology stories as an assistant reporter for Bloomberg BNA and Forbes. He spends his free time cooking and experimenting with new recipes.