Ronin’s Trail From Investigated Ethereum Game To ‘Frequently Unlicensed’

Ronin goes against the grain when it comes to Web3 philosophy.

For many in the crypto space, the beauty of blockchain is that it is permissionless and anyone can build it without a central authority. Instead, the Ethereum sidechain gaming network has instead opted for a currently closed, decentralized approach.

There is a reason for such an early approach, the team – and it is difficult to argue with the success of the Ronin players in recent months, which showed a significant increase in prices ahead of the recent markets in March. cool down.

And there is a way to “not much permission”. Ronin Network forward.

“There are too many developers, too many apps and too many games.” Sky Mavis and co-founder of Ronin Jeff “The Gear” Zirlin said Decrypt. “There are more apps, games, and developers than real people using these apps.”

Many open blockchain games have “overkill,” Zirlin believes, with the relatively small number of players playing in this space struggling to sort out what's good and what's bad. To combat this problem, Ronin It hosts licensed games on its network.

In his personal time – and outside of crypto games – Zirlin only plays games by Nintendo, Blizzard and Supercell. They are an industry giant known for releasing quite a few games and often releasing really popular and highly popular games.

By taking over Ronin's game library, he believes the network is aligning itself with these game publishers. In fact, he suggests that Web3 Element “adds another layer on top” by encouraging players to support the network with tokens.

“This strategy emphasizes quality over quantity, allowing us to work closely with a few teams and ensure their long-term success in the Web3 game development landscape,” explained Zirlin. “[A Twitter poll] He showed us 40% Of all [Axie] Players are boarded by a friend or family member. So these are crazy levels of evangelism.

In turn, Ronin accounts for 30% of all active Web3 players, the largest share by some margin with Polygon at 17% per second. Footprint analysis. Although the model works for Ronin, most Web3s prefer this approach.

“To win, you have to do things without compromise. That's where most of the strategic advantage is,” Zirlin explained. “People want chaos, I think, in Web3. But for new technology adoption, you have to be more Zen. You don't want to confuse people because the technology is confusing enough.” .

So far, the integrated approach seems to have served Ronin well. The doors will only be closed for so long, but Zirlin admits open models have benefits in the long run — and Ronin is looking forward to a more open future.

Looking down the road, one major obstacle in Ronin's path is scalability. Currently, Ronin, the network can handle 7.5 million daily transactions without congestion. This may not be enough once the network opens up to all builders, so it's Sky Mavis. Active browsing Balance solutions to increase Ronin's grip. But the scale isn't just a technical leap, Zirlin says — it's also a cultural challenge.

“Ultimately, the key thing to measure is not just technical excellence, but also user adoption and loyalty,” Zirlin explains. “Similar to previous console wars where players chose platforms based on where their friends were, our focus is on making games that draw players to Ronin.”

Once Ronin becomes “heavily unlicensed,” Zirlin says, he expects the number of games running on Ronin to accelerate. He hopes one of these games will help the network grow, as the current game is doing Pixels and Axie Infinity is back in 2021 during game-to-own development—but this time without such a heavy-handed approach from Ronin. .

The network is still undecided as Ronin's plans unfold. Once that path is over and Ronin opens the door, the network will begin to see its next big change – one that will expand beyond gaming.

“The end game is to create an ecosystem that integrates gaming with e-commerce and payment applications,” Zirlin said. Decrypt. “We believe the way to get there is to drive adoption and focus through gaming and expand into payments and e-commerce, disrupting the predatory banking and credit card industry.”

Edited by Andrew Hayward.