Epicenter - Learn about Crypto, Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin and Distributed Technologies - Ronin: How Axie Infinity Kickstarted the Blockchain Gaming Revolution - Jeff Zirlin

Episode Date: March 27, 2025

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 covered in this episode:Jeff’s backgroundCryptokittiesJoining Axie Infinity and how it evolvedMonetizing Axie’s economyThe recipe for successful blockchain gamesBuilding Ronin, the gaming L1On-chain vs. off-chain game elementsCommunity buildingRonin’s economy & composabilityMost suitable gaming genre for Web3AI x gamingCrypto gaming investmentsRonin’s current state and future roadmapAxie’s upcoming MMOEpisode links:Jeff Zirlin on XAxie Infinity on XRonin on XSky Mavis on XSponsors:Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.ioChorus One: one of the largest node operators worldwide, trusted by 175,000+ accounts across more than 60 networks, Chorus One combines institutional-grade security with the highest yields at - chorus.oneThis episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain.

Axi was meant to introduce people to crypto through something that reminded them of Tamagachi and Pokemon. Was built on the idea that, hey, people want to play with their NFTs. People want to battle. We then realized that, hey, people wanted to trade those experience points and buy them, you know, without the Axi attached to them in many cases. So we were like, okay, this is a good opportunity for a free market. That was the first time, right, that a blockchain game had a token attached to it. One of the ideas was that, hey, if we can get everyday people mining cryptocurrencies by playing a game, that might be a model that they would, you know, basically get them interested in the space.

But AXC didn't really reach its true potential until we played it on Ronan. We had to build it because nobody else understood gaming. And at that time, in 2021, all the scaling solutions were premature and not ready for us. Welcome to Epcenter, the show, which talks about the technologies, projects, and people driving these. centralization and the blockchain revolution. I'm Brian Crane and today I'm speaking with Jeff Zerlin, who's the co-founder of Ronan. Ronan is gaming focused layer one. The same team previously got to some notoriety of fame through starting the Axi Infinity game as well. So I'm really excited to speak with him today about his story, the story of Ronan and blockchain gaming

more generally. So just before we start with Jeff, we'd like to share a few words from our sponsors this week. If you're looking to stake your crypto with confidence, look no further than Corse 1. More than 150,000 delegators, including institutions like BitGo, Pintera Capital and Ledger, trust Coros 1 with their acids. They support over 50 blockchains and are leaders in governance or networks like Cosmos ensuring your stake is responsibly managed. Thanks to their advanced MEV research, you can also enjoy the highest staking rewards. You can stake directly from your preferred wallet, set up a white label note, restake your assets on eigenayer or symbiotic, or use their SDK for multi-chain staking in your app. Learn more at chorus.1 and start staking today.

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Deploy on the EVM-compatible NOSIS chain or secure the network with just one GNO and affordable hardware. Start your decentralization journey today at NOSISDAIO. Cool. Well, yeah, thanks so much for coming on, Jeff. Yeah, thanks for having me, Brian. Just to start off, I'm curious,

how did you become interested in crypto and involved in the space? I volunteered for the campaign of Ron Paul in about 2008, 2009. And when I joined that, I joined the newsletter. So I found out about crypto via the Ron Paul newsletter, but in about 2010, 2011. But for me, the idea of digital gold was a bit boring. And I understood the problems with Fiat money

in sovereign debt. But, you know, if fiat and government bonds were going to crash, there are other ways of making money than just buying Bitcoin or storing wealth, right? You can buy farmland. You can do all these other different things. You can buy stocks because whatever money gets re-denominated in, right? Equities, real estate, real assets will still have value. Bitcoin cool real asset.

So it wasn't until I discovered Ethereum and CryptoKitties that I got really interested in the space. So I grew up playing video games and collecting things. The first thing I ever did on the internet was play StarCraft. My father collects butterflies and insects and fossils. So my way of relating to him as a child was be a collectant. So when I discovered Ethereum and CryptoKitties in 2017, This was like, hey, this is interesting to me, finally, intellectually, and from a entertainment perspective. I can meet a lot of people, just like my father has friends all over the world that collect butterflies.

I'm meeting people all over the world that aren't interested in this NFT thing. And they tend to be pretty smart, optimistic people. So that's what initially captured my interest in the space was basically CryptoKitties, Ethereum and after that I wanted to contribute. I thought, hey, this is my chance to become an entrepreneur and actually build something, which was something I'd been waiting for my entire life, but it felt like for our generation, we were born a bit too late to meaningfully contribute to the birth of the internet, the birth of Web 2. All my friends who wanted to be entrepreneurs at the time they were making scooter apps or doing e-commerce, right? They're building something so they

could sell it to Google. That wasn't for me. I wanted to contribute to something that was net new. Cool. So for those who don't remember Cryptokities, can you just explain what were CryptoKDs and what was it about CryptoKitties that you found so cool? CryptoKitties were an early NFT project. and you could breed them, right? So it actually had a Mendelian genetic system, and you could breed them. It had some problems, right? Or it just wasn't set up necessarily

to be a long-term project. But the breeding mechanic and the collecting, these were things that were very, very interesting. And I think people started to think about it. And I actually think that the birth of Web3 Gaming, birth of Axi, was, the answer to a question of, how could we make something like CryptoKitties go on forever,

where it would always make sense to want to collect new cats or breed new cats? How could we extend that cycle, right? So within the CryptoKitties community, people were saying, oh, we need to build games and experiences for these cats so people would always want to buy them. Or we need population control. We need these cats to. to die in order for us to want to continue breeding them.

Because right now it's just like the population is going up and up and over time. Even if demand is constant, then it's not going to be a workable situation. So a lot of those questions are actually what went into the initial conception of Axi infinity, where we're like, okay, you need to be able to earn to, you need to be able to earn the right to breed an Axi. we need games so that anyone who wants to play the game would be forced to basically buy Axis to play the game. So there'll be basically supply control, reasons to buy, things like that. So then Axi was both your first kind of real crypto-4A

and also your first entrepreneurial endeavor that you undertook. So I joined Axi as a community member. I'm a co-founder of SkyMavis because, we built, we found this guy Mavis a year after we started working on AXI. But I found AXI as a community member initially and I fell in love with the project.

I just started doing the things that I felt the project needed me to do and then I joined the project full time. I moved to Vietnam from New York. I gave my dog away to my parents. I broke up with my girlfriend because I fell in love with the project and I thought that it could really go somewhere.

So Axi is probably also something a lot of people have heard of. But can you explain like how did Axi work and how did it manage to get such traction for a while? So Axi was built to introduce the world to crypto through something that was fun and nostalgic, something that reminded them of childhood rather than something that was overly futuristic. Something cannot be too much from the future. Otherwise people are going to be us afraid of it. That's one of the problems that crypto has is that it's too innovative. So if you can package something that's innovative in a way that makes it relatable,

that's where a lot of innovation comes from. For example, an iPod, which is something that people already knew about, that could make calls, right? That's like one way to think about it. Axi was meant to introduce people to crypto through something that reminded them of Tamagachi, in Pokemon. Axi was built on the idea that, hey, people want to play with their NFTs. People want to battle.

Most people want to battle, right? Like, people want a battle mechanic. That was the number one thing that people in the CryptoKitties community wanted was battles and the battles to be related to Breeding. So, yeah, that's basically, you know, you would battle your axes, you would gain experience points, and then you would use those. experience points to breathe. We then realized that, hey, people wanted to trade those experience points and buy them, you know, without the Axi attached to them in many cases. So we were like,

okay, this is a good opportunity for a free market, right? We're in Web3 gaming or we're in blockchain gaming or there was no name for it at the time, right? But we're in, uh, we're doing Web3 or we're doing crypto and gaming. Let's see if we can create a market around these experience points. So then we tokenize the experience points called them small love potions. And, you know, that was, I think, like a crazy moment because that was the first time, right, that a blockchain game had a token attached to it. And at that time in crypto, most people didn't really care about NFTs, but people were still interested in ERC20 tokens. So we started to see that, hey, like, a lot of people are now interested in our game because it has a token related to it. So, yeah, you know, that started to get us some initial traction.

but Axi didn't really reach its true potential until we deployed it on Ronan. So Ronan is a gaming specific blockchain. We had to build it because nobody else understood gaming. And at that time, in 2021, all the scaling solutions were premature and not ready for us. So, for example, we tried to use Loom Network, which is one of the original layer two solutions for Ethereum, right? but they gave up. So we're like, fuck,

like, we can't build our startup on top of another startup. We're going to have to do this ourselves, and we're going to be built one that's specifically built for gaming. So we built Ronan. We deployed Axi on it.

Axi was the first game to experience exponential growth because of Ronan. So Axi went from 19,000 DAU to 2.8 million. You know, it did billions of dollars in volume. It did $1.3 billion in revenue. And, you know, it really created the category of Web3 Gaming. We built throughout the bear.

So with Ronan, right, like we went beyond AXI, where we started to onboard games outside of AXI. And AXE continued to build. Axis has 300,000 monthly active users today. We just announced an MMO that hit 400,000 pre-registrations within 48 hours of the announcement. And, yeah, so I think like basically we built,

built out and proved the use case for Ronin with AXI, and then teams that wanted to learn from us, and also build games for the Axy community, started to deploy on Ronin. Pixels was a big example of this. They came in, they moved migrated from Polygon, where they had 5,000 users and hit 1.5 million users within four months of migrating to Ronan.

So yeah, now Ronan is known as a very gaming-specific blockchain. We just opened it up. Why? Because there are a lot of application developers, that they're like, wow, I've been building DFI protocols, whatever, for the same group of people for over the last four years. The running community is a way to introduce your DFI protocol, your application, what have you, to a group of users that's mainly just been using blockchain games and using One Dux.

Maybe you go back to AXI, like, briefly. So I would know one thing at the time, right, was also that you had a lot of people who were then kind of playing AXI for a living, and like, you know, earning some of these love potions, I guess, and then selling them. So I think you guys had a big community, you know, or a lot of people playing it in places like Philippines. Or can you tell us a little bit about how that economy, what it looked like and what the dynamics there were? So the idea, right, is that like, a lot of people that were obsessed with crypto that I knew about were minors. And I was like, okay, like, of course you guys would be interested in crypto.

You're freaking mining it. Like, you basically only have to pay electricity and you're getting coins. But how will we make everyday people who aren't miners interested in the space in the first place? That was one of the reasons that I wasn't interested in Bitcoin. I didn't want to mine it because it sounded too complicated. I didn't want to buy it from another person. I was like, how come you get it for free basically or you're just able to mine it? But I have to pay you basically real money for it.

So one of the ideas was that, hey, If we can get everyday people mining cryptocurrencies by playing a game, that might be a model that they would, you know, basically that would get them interested in the space. So those are the first principles of why you would even give out a token by playing a game. Those tokens, right, the SLP was needed in order to breed axes. And as more and more people came into the game, right, there was increasing demand for axes.

One of the things that we've done as well, that we deployed during the bear was this idea that you need to kill axes too. There needs to be creation and destruction. There needs to be even more population control rather than just like demand. So now like in order to make your axi more beautiful, more powerful, you actually need to destroy axes. You need to destroy axes, get crafting materials, as well as paying tokens to, you know, make them stronger.

So that's to me, right, like one of the next phases. of web three gaming is basically this idea of a dynamic nfti. When you think of AXI and the history of AXI, what are the biggest things you learned about blockchain gaming and the biggest lessons that you would give to, you know, to anyone else wanting to build a blockchain game? So these are the things that we do for our partners on Ronin. It's like all the lessons that we take that we got from AXI

and building in Web3 gaming for seven years, right? Like, we help disseminate those lessons to our partners. In addition, right, like, we're taking a lot of those lessons and putting them into one game. Axi Infinity Atia's legacy is basically an MMO that we just launched. So a lot of these lessons are, right, how to grow a WebDuring game, right? And how to, like, build community, how to be a leader to many people at once. how to manually onboard people to your crypto product because in the beginning,

you know, it's going to be really difficult to get people interested in your product, right? You might have to do some like manual onboarding. How to manage an economy, how to think about sinks and, and faucets. So these are, you know, these are some of the things that we're thinking about, right? There is no like pre-established, you know, well-defined playbook in WebDree Gaming,

because the market is always changing and the meta is always changing as well. But we do have different case studies and different learnings that we're able to share with these teams. And that's one of the things that really attracts builders to Ronin is Ronan is a chain that's actually built by a team that has built a mainstream crypto app. There aren't very many of those chains, if any, other than the Ronan network. So first you basically built Ronin for Axi specifically and then later we're like, okay, let's make this like a general gaming L1 and allow lots of other people to also build on it. Yeah, I believe that that's like a model that will work, right? And it's kind of similar to right, what hyperliquid is doing where they built a chain

first for their purpose that's now, right, like they're able to theoretically, right, like get that traction and turn into something else. else. So when he came to, you know, building a blockchain specifically for gaming, you know, what's needed there? And like, how does it differ from just a sort of general purpose blockchain? Yeah. So one of the things that makes you run unique is that we have like a vertically integrated

system of applications such as the run in wallet, the run in marketplace. Ronan wallet is a wallet that specifically made for gaming, has a lot of features. that are specifically useful for gamers, as well as a marketplace that specifically made with gaming NFTs in mind. So, yeah, a gaming chain obviously also needs to be really fast, and it needs to have gamers on it.

And I think that's really, you know, now a big differentiator is the people who use run a network, many of them are originally Axi players. There are people who already know about Web3 gaming and know how to use a Web3 wallet and are interested in trying out new, interesting Web3 gaming products. When it comes to maybe Axi or other blockchain games,

what's actually the interaction between, you know, the game and the chain? Because presumably you don't have like the entire game run on chain or do you have that in some cases or in some cases some parts are off-chain and some on-chain? How does that breakdown? Different games do it in different ways.

Some of the things that we see, of course, is having the game assets on chain, having things like daily check-in on chain, so people have an understanding of how many people are actually playing the game on a daily basis, and doing like state changes or basically progress, right? So NFTs are now leveling up, right? So basically having that reflected in the metadata

is really important as well. Having reward systems on top. chain, where you're basically minting tokens, burning tokens. These are some of the things that we're seeing. So, you know, in crypto, of course, always one of the big topics, a big principles is the idea that, you know, you don't have to trust and you can verify. How does that work with the either Axi or other games built on Ronan? Since, you know, there's a lot of off-chain part, and then,

gets, you know, reflected on chain? Is there some way to, like, verify that, you know, the off-chain part is accurately reflected on-chain? Well, the thing is, right, the incentive is for anything that people want to know about, then the developer has some, you know, at least demand for putting it on chain, right? So I think it's really up to the, you know, in some ways. So, so this is an interesting. interesting balance where sometimes, right, it may make sense to have more things on your game server and just selectively put things on chain.

And this is always a constant balance. In the early days of Axi, we used to make it so that for every single time you wanted to battle your axes, you would have to submit a transaction. But the players hated that. They didn't want that. They didn't want to see all the battle logic as well. They didn't care about that, right? What do they care about? they care about free markets, ownership.

They don't care about like individually verifying the data as well. But there are certain things that you want to have like on, that basically use like a on-chain VRF, right? And scotcha systems rolling, right? Things where there's basically a large amount of money at stake based on chance. You don't want to, you want to make sure that, oh, right, there's not some rogue engineer who's like manipulating that to their advantage. One thing you mentioned that you guys, you know, I've learned a lot about and now try to

also teach people building on Ronin is the aspect of like community building. And of course, community building, I think, is important for, you know, all crypto projects, right? Because in the end, you want to have a lot of users, have tokens, they engage, they feel like a part of it. They will hold it also, you know, maybe even things don't go well and stick around with the thing over the long term. So what are the biggest things you've learned

about how to build a community, how to build sort of an engaged and committed community? Yeah. I mean, I wrote a book about this called the Web Free Gaming Growth Handbook. And, you know, I can talk about some of the basic of the principles,

but I also encourage everybody to check it out. So, you know, community building happens in stages. So in the beginning, it's a lot of like manual onboarding, right? So you need to find like, okay, who are, right? Who are the people that I could, that would be theoretically interested in using our product? In the early days for us, it was like, who are the people in the world that are interested in

NFTs? Then we can tell them and get them interested in this idea of an NFT game. So we reached out to the Central End community. We did partnerships with them. We did campaigns where we could, we were who would get them axes manually, likewise with CryptoKitties. You know, there's a lot of like manual onboarding. Incentive alignment, right?

So how do you basically scale this idea of the community doing work? Because you need to find ways to make them feel sufficiently incentivized to use their small amount of time to advance the interests of the network, which they are now owners of. Referral systems can also be really powerful, right, where people are basically doing work and being rewarded systematically for the onboarding impact that they're having. UGC, right, UGC is a lot of what powers both gaming communities, Web2 gaming communities and now Web3 gaming communities. Community members getting tattoos, making musicals, just making a ton of art, right? That all helps to basically promote the network

and show the strength of the community. Doing manual gifting, right? So in the early days, we manually gifted to CryptoKitties into Central End. But now, right, like over time, it was like, who do we strategically gift to? We wanted to go on Binance. Orly, Binance has never done a Web3 game listing or launch pad. Gave every single Binance Angel axes.

And then, boom, it's like they're all become your advocates within whatever organization you want. You know, how do you like actually do interviews or player interviews or user interviews? There's like a whole art to that where you actually want to do it in person. you want to ask them like specific non-leading questions. Yeah, you know, you also want to like find ways of doing your elevator pitch, a one-minute version, a five-minute version, and a 30-minute version, and constantly like repeat that. How do you basically also like tow the line between being transparent with your roadmap,

but also like basically creating unreasonable expectations, right? There's an art to that. And then, yeah, like how do you communicate that you're winning? what is the data? What are the North Star metrics that you're going to be centered around that aren't like vanity metrics that you're able to basically talk about to the outside world to show that you're winning? Because people want to be part of something that's winning. People are lonely and people feel like they're losing. So if your project can basically make them have friends and feel like they're winning, then you're going to be winning. I'm curious. Do you feel there are some projects? outside of gaming, you know, like crypto projects that, you know, have done like some,

I've done the best when it comes to community building and, you know, have done some things that, you know, worked super well and that inspired you. There are a lot, of course. And there, you know, I think that Ethereum's values, especially in the early days, you know, has been, has been able to attract a really great community around it. Bitcoin is the strongest community, right? Where Bitcoin is almost like a meme coin, right? But it's the original one.

And, you know, I actually haven't really hung out with too many Bitcoiners, except when I went to Trump's inauguration, I met some of them, right? So Bitcoin community is like a total, almost like a totally separate community from the rest of crypto. Because a lot of them are actually like Normies, right? Or they've been onboarded by Bitcoin and only Bitcoin and they're not into anything else. And in many ways that kind of reminds me of the runner community. You know, so these are some of the big, some of the more niche ones, right, is I mean, like, you know, with Defi, right? Things like, you know, the early Uniswop community, I think was really, was really interesting, right?

Like, basically the whole, like, you know, group of people that was interested in, like, DFi summer with Wi-Fi, SNX, uni, like, early compound stuff. Like, to me, that was, like, some of the strongest community. that I ever witnessed in crypto. And, you know, I think, like, part of the problem with Ethereum was that there's been kind of a dispersion or a disillusionment in that exact group. I do think that with regulations changing and loosening, that group is still here and ready to be, like, you're reignited.

Yeah, I think with Bitcoin, one of the things that became such a powerful thing is this huddle meme, right? Because I feel like if you tell people, look, you know, all you have to do is just hold the coin. And then you're basically, one, it becomes this moral imperative, right? Like, oh, if you have to, if you hold the coin, you're strong and you're a believer and you're a part of it. And you also, you know, helping make Bitcoin succeed just by holding Bitcoin. I think it's something that, you know, like, it's very powerful.

For sure. I'm actually curious about the thing you said about Ethereum. So Ethereum has had a bit of this, yeah, like dispersion. I think that's like accurate to say, right, where people feel less like focused just on Ethereum and maybe a bit less aligned. Do you think that's, is that just a consequence of scale and maturity? Or like, do you think there's some other things that Ethereum should have done differently to creep more coherence in the community? Everything is going well with Ethereum except for the price and the narrative.

All the metrics, Ethereum needs to be winning. Ethereum is winning. I believe that what's happening is relatively healthy. I believe that what's happening is also kind of a result of a result of. the regulatory environment. It's only been since November that the regulatory environment has kind of gotten more clarity. If you want to build useful stuff in crypto, then you need to be able to back your token value with cash flows and revenue. Otherwise, of course, people should just buy Bitcoin and meme coins. And basically, that's been illegal for the last four years.

And I believe that Ethereum right has been paying a bit of a price there. But I think, you know, I see the changes being made. Ethereum Foundation has new leadership, which is good. You know, I never, I didn't know what the old leadership was doing. But it wasn't very visible. And crypto was about transparency and kind of leading from the front, or at least, right, servant leadership that is visible. is another way to think about it.

And I don't think that that type of leadership was being exhibited by anybody at the Ethereum Foundation in the past, you know, other than Natalic. So new leadership for the Ethereum Foundation makes me excited and hopeful. Danny joining Ethereumize, which is very focused on real-world adoption. Videk, who's the CEO of Ethereumize, actually one of my college buddies. And so, you know, he's probably one of the smartest people that I know. So I believe that they'll be doing really good work to get to onboard Wall Street to Ethereum.

And then, yeah, Avey just did the buyback, right? And I think they're doing a million dollars per week of buybacks based. And so this is what's going to happen. Defi will win and real use applications will win

because they generate fees that are then used to buyback tokens and create token holder value. And Ethereum wins via that happening at scale. both with defy gaming and other use cases. So yeah, you know, those are all the things that I'm taking, you know,

that I'm keeping my eye on. And, you know, I do, I believe that the, you know, it's annoying, obviously, if Ethereum doesn't go up. I have Heath. I know I've, you know, sympathize with everybody who holds Heath. But everything is going well with. Ethereum except for the price. And, right, like, markets are irrational in the short run.

So let's talk a little bit about the Ronan economy. One thing I'm curious about, so in one of the great benefits of blockchains, especially like general purpose, smart contract blockchains, is that you can have a lot of composability. And you see a ton of that in defa, right? Where, like, people do one thing, I don't know, pendle, and then they use the asset in Avit or against it and then do something in a third protocol.

So I think that kind of composability is working like super well in Defi and you know it feels like very powerful. How do you see that in maybe current state of rodent and also how you want to see it in the future? Do you see a lot of, you know, sort of composability between different games? that are being built or maybe some kind of apps that are being built that, I don't know, maybe like defy-like apps that kind of work across games.

Composability, interoperability. These are some of the things that people always tell as benefits of web free gaming. You know, one of the things that we see is, okay, if you want, there are certain really strong communities that are associated with either strong tokens, culture coins, or NFTs on the running network. If a game wants to do user acquisition, then giving that token or NFT utility within their game economy can be a way to basically create user acquisition.

So we're seeing, we are seeing a bit of that. But to be honest, like, you know, that is one of the, that's one of the things that still really has a lot of work to be done around like, you know, it's kind of been like, oh, drop or ability or whatever is kind of like a meme of like, like, oh, theoretically what makes WebFree Gaming useful. I think there is an opportunity there. And we have seen games like pixels, right?

Like they were able to attract a lot of NFT communities to pixels simply by integrating their NFTs as PFPs within the system. They created like a scalable architecture for basically being able to import any NFT and kind of like pixelize it, right? And bring it into their game. So, you know, that's kind of a. That's kind of a thing. I mean, games become powerful when they get hooked up to DFI protocols.

Axy infinity and Play to Earn was the combination of Uniswap and Axi. Most of the original users of Uniswap came from the AXI community, not maybe the volume, but in terms of like the people actually using Uniswap, a big chunk of them came from the AXI community. And that was the fundamental innovation. What happens when you connect a decks in a game? Rather than having to pay Google and Apple for marketing, just deposit some liquidity.

And you're able to now have a user base of your game. And that can help you get over the cold start effect. Games aren't fun unless people are playing it. So it theoretically makes sense to pay your first, you know, your first initial group of users. Another way to think about it is like, it's like at a club, right? Like there's certain girls,

they pay them to be in the club that kickstarts the party. And then, right? Like everyone else is, is going to pay to come into a club because it's fun. Yeah. Yeah.

Biff, what are the types of games that you feel almost suitable for Web3 gaming? And, you know, what are some types that it doesn't really make too much sense. I think MMOs are the best because they have deep economies, they have social features,

they're highly emotional. Some things that don't make sense is very hyper-casual games, but maybe if those hyper-casual games have elements of risk or gambling or real loss, then there's ways to make it work. And for those who are not gamers, can you explain what MMO games are and what sort of differentiate them? MMO games are games like World of Warcraft where you basically go into a world you can

play with your friends you can do things like go into dungeons with them and play simultaneously you can just hang out, talk to people, show off your gear. MMOs typically have like very advanced economies

where there are many, many, many different types of resources. Those resources might be needed to craft certain things. they typically have a ton of content, where you basically have like PV content, which might be dungeons, that you need to team up with other people to complete, as well as like PVP content,

which might be like large-scale wars and battles. MMOs are kind of similar to real life. You can do whatever you want in an MMO. You can hang out with people, you can make friends, you can go on your own adventures. MMOs are, yeah, I, you know,

when I play World Warcraft, You know, I would socialize. I would compete. I would have fun. I would progress. You know, basically a lot of the reasons that life, you know, that you're interested in, you know, life, you know, can be almost replicated in an MMO environment. And that's, you know, for me, I got too much into MMOs.

And my mom sent me to boarding school when I was a kid. Because you wanted you to play less MMOs. Yes. So I got a boarding school that. turned off the internet at 9 p.m. And this was before, like, this is before you could, like, just tether up with a hotspot or whatever.

I mean, you know, you need really good internet to play an MMO as well. One of the areas, right, where today everyone is focused a lot on is AI. What do you think the impact of AI is going to be on gaming and on Web3 games in particular? Gaming and AI are a great combination. AI has been in games for a really long time already.

Right? Bosses are powered by AI. You know, a lot of advertising is actually already powered by AI. So I think it's huge. AI is obviously getting smarter and smarter. I think that MPCs that are able to learn and basically, you know, learn in a much more interesting and realistic way are going to be huge, especially to like things like MMOs.

I think that AI powered questing systems, right, where your game experience will be powered by an AI that's basically learning about your preferences, right? What do you like to do? And then it's almost like choose your own adventure, but you're not necessarily choosing. You're kind of choosing by what you're doing, but then the game is like molding itself

to react to your preferences as well. So I think like bosses, MPCs, quest systems, game content, all of these things are right for being enhanced by AI. In many ways, they already are, which is also a good sign that it makes sense because if it's been happening over the last five years when AI hype has been relatively low,

then now that AI is getting even stronger by the day, it should basically be a sign that there's a good likelihood. I also think that AIs will be great at balancing game economies as well. So one of the big problems with Web 3, one of the big problems that's, you know, right for solving is like, right, like ideal distribution of incentives, right? And almost self-balancing economies. And so a lot of that is like, yeah, that should be done by an AGI.

So you mentioned the kind of similarity between MMOs in real life. And I'm curious your thought to because I guess one of the scenarios sometimes people talk about is like, oh, AI is going to, you know, make human, labor kind of redundant and then you know people will just go and play games right as a way to you know get some sense of achievement so i guess that's like one thing i'm also wondering to what extent you feel m m mose actually you know teach people like skills and competencies that then they they help them in in the real world or is it more like an escape thing where people feel like,

ah, the real world, it's too hard, but, you know, in the game, I can get like this much more consistent

reward and tent of progress. Yes. First of all, AI, and AI will disrupt a lot of different types of human labor that maybe humans

are best not to do. And humans will spend their days, right, trying to figure out, what is my how do I have a sense of meaning in the world? And then they will start to think about, you know,

how am I spending my time with my friend? Am I being a good friend? Am I being a good family member? And am I being a good human being? And how do I do better? These are some of the things that people will start to think about once they're relieved of some of their day-to-day concerns and activities. theoretically this is in a world where

AGI exists and where it's like almost permanent abundance people just get like food and stuff like that because AGI has created like a golden society otherwise right it could be like more bleak but let's let's think about that type of a situation

which I think is more of the likely outcome because it's also like related to the trend of the world so yeah people will be lonely and human to human interaction will be one of the last things that humans kind of specialize in, right? So, you know, hanging out, playing games, being a good friend,

these are some of the things that people will, many people will find meaning in. I think that will be great for gaming, and I also think that gaming will be an increasingly important part of society because of that. Yeah, you know, we've been thinking about this for a long time, right? Where with the rise of AI, people are going to have to find new ways of contributing to society.

and participating in these virtual economies, right, that will be a path for many people. Also, testing products, right, giving feedback, right? Grinding Discord. It's really like, you know, you're starting to see if you squint, right, that crypto, like, it's just like more of society will become, like, the day to day of some person who's, right, and not really working or just kind of like uses crypto apps and kind of trades a little bit, uses crypto apps, right?

Like that type of archetype of person already exists. And I think that more people, you know, will do that over time. If we speak with like crypto investors, many of them feel like, oh, we've made like gaming related investments and those all like, I think have a track record of working out very poorly. Why do you think it's been so hard for crypto gaming related to? things to, you know, like succeed as tokens and as things that create economic value. Everyone tried to copy us and raise money, right? It became too easy, right? So, you know, we skipped, right? Like, we skipped all of the stuff that tried to copy us. And of course,

they weren't necessarily coming to us. So we're kind of safe. But investors were looking for the next axi. Right. Whenever you try to invest in the next something, you lose, right? Sushi swap. think of all the people who tried to buy sushi swap because they thought it would be the next unit swap, right? It's always the original. There's only one Bitcoin. There's only one. Bitcoin, the original store of value. Ethereum's original smart contract platform.

Right. Axi, right, the original play to earn game. Ronin, the original gaming blockchain, right? Like, people always lose money when they kind of try to look for the second best. So, you know, that's kind of the way that I see it, right? It's like they were looking for the second Axi, the second SkyMavis, the second Ronan, and they failed. But that's how things work in crypto. It's like you, the majority of the value accrues to the one that did it best first at scale.

And I also think right like that, yeah, you know, there will be there will be teams right that figure out, right? Like new models of Web3 Gaming Value. cruel because people also think that yeah with gaming there's a lot of winners right oh yeah like the cool thing about gaming is there's going to be a lot of winners but actually crypto products are networks right networks typically have like a credo distribution of value accrual right yeah so when you look at where ronin is today as a chain how would you describe the current state and what are where do you want to see it go in the long term?

Ronan has proved that it's about more than Axi we had pixels that went parabolic. Currently 600,000 daily active addresses, 1.8 million monthly active addresses, 18 million run and wallet downloads. NFT volume on the run and chain

went up 182% last year. You're seeing like a lot of, you're seeing NFTments sell out and a ton of outperformance in terms of like the NFTs that are launching on the Ronan chain

games like Fableborn Cambria Lummi Terra Forgotten Roonibers, Ragnarok Online are all poised to I think do really well and and ship So

I think Ronan has proved that it's home to the best Web3 games I think that Ronan has proved that it can be about more than Axi even as Axi has continued to innovate and reinvented self. And we just recently opened up the Runnin chain. And we'll be having different Defi protocols come to Run in. I think there's like a huge interest from also developers that aren't necessarily game developers,

but are interested in building applications for everyday people. I think that's the pitch. There are a lot of people on Ronin who have never used some of these DeFi protocols. So if these DFR protocols want to access a new user base, then Ronan is a really good chain expansion opportunity for them. And so that's why I'm seeing the current landscape. I also think that, you know, people are looking for new use cases over time. Like people are going to want to actually use crypto more and more.

And people are going to be looking for friends and communities that they can partake in. to be part of crypto and to learn about it. So I think that's really where we specialize and somehow I see the current state of Ronan. And then the long term, do you want to see Ronin as kind of like D-Hub for like Web3 gaming and have like, you know, all the games or you know,

as many as possible, all kind of build on Ronan and then have kind of Ronin chain as this like shared like economic substrate for all. all these chains? Is it like something like that division? The more of the best games are on Ronin, right? Just creates this network effect where, you know, the most vulnerable point for Ronan was after Axi did well, but then there was obviously the bear market, we got attacked.

That was the most vulnerable point because we needed to prove that that Ronin could be about more than Axi. Then pixels came and they showed that. And they showed that, wow, this model could actually work for other games. And then, or we got in an All-Star class of subsequent games. So that has been like the, that was, that has been like the key, right, is to show that like we could be about more than Axi. And then after pixels being able to catalyze that momentum into getting the next class of best games. And now that we have that, okay, great, we're king of the gaming chains.

But what's the larger vision, right? Is that we can basically create this network of games that onboard people to Web3 at scale. And then you can introduce them to defy protocols and payments applications and fulfill the original vision of crypto, which is basically creating like this mass interconnected payments network. You just need to figure out like how to. use everyday applications that get people in at scale as the cart. Yeah, that's interesting. So do you also see some kind of, because I guess one thing is like,

okay, Ronan, you can have, you know, the dexas for, you know, trading different gaming assets and things like that. But then I guess could also go in the direction where then these people maybe start, I don't know, doing like stable coin yield stuff and hold their savings there or like sort of as a general. chain. Some people have said to me, oh, because of Ronan,

I realize I don't have to use Western Union anymore to send money to my relatives, right? Oh, like, my, I feel so happy because my grocer now accepts Ronan Wallet QR code payments. So, yeah, like, obviously,

that's the idea, is you onboard them to gaming, and then, right, it becomes this natural payments network as well. Cool. Anything else you want to talk about? Yeah, I mean, I would just encourage everybody to check out the new AXE MMO.

Many people I'm sure know about AXI and probably everything, one number one thing that people ask me, hey, how's AXI going? What's next for AXI? What's next for Roan? Right. Well, what's next for AXI? The AXI MMO. Pre-register for that.

Axi Infinity.com are going to be able to pre-register. What's next for Ronan? More games launching. More MMOs launching. You know, follow Ronan on Twitter. and wiki.roninchain.com. Really great resource for figuring out all the different applications and games to check out on the Ronan network.

Also how to build on Ronan, right? A lot of people are also asking me like, oh, like we want to deploy something on Ronan. Like, can we talk to you and get a grant? Yeah, you know, for us, the thing that's going to work is, you know, just deploy your shit and get some users and get the community excited, then, right, that kind of forces our hand to talk to you and, uh, you know, potentially take a look at giving you a grant. I don't, I, I know like people are broke right

now, but that's kind of like a pet peeve of me is like, people just being like, hey, we, we, we need to talk to you before we deploy. Just shut up and deploy, like, and get some, uh, real traction, uh, before coming to get, you know, for the, for the, for the money. Yeah. So if people want to like experience, Ron, and, and what it's like, do you. think the best starting point is the Axi MMO, so to participate in that? Well, XIMO, we're just pre-register for it, right? So it's not out yet. What I would do is just, you know, go to wiki.runenchain.com and explore, right?

Like, we have, you know, we have a lot of different games that might be a good fit for you. Download the RunaW wallet. RuneWallet has the best user experience of all Web3 wallets, I believe. So that's what I would do, right? If you want to use it, go to wiki.ruinenchain.com and explore around. And if you're a developer, yeah, wiki.orgianchain.com and you'll figure out how to have all the documentation for learning how to deploy and go, you know, mess around and post on Twitter. The Rorunin community is super strong.

There's also like Memecoin communities on Rorin, right? So there's something called Ronke, which is like a Roden meme, and it has a super strong community. If you want to get some users in excitement around anything that you're building on Ronan, like, you know, kind of make an offering to the Ronke community, right? Like, give them a shout out and boom, like, you're going to have like the attention of thousands of crazy people almost immediately. Yeah, yeah, I've heard a little bit that you guys have a super vibrant and passionate and passion. community. Yeah.

Cool. Well, thank you so much for coming on, Jeff. It was really great to dive a little bit into the Ronin and sort of Web 3 gaming into current state. I'm excited to see how that evolves over the coming year. And I'm excited also to try out more myself because I have to admit that's like one of the areas of crypto. I have beast explored.

So I'd love to kind of dive into it a little bit too. is the games are getting better like the thing that makes me super optimistic about WebDree gaming is that the games are getting better the founders are getting better and the game economies are getting better consistently over time and you know if that weren't the case then I would be

worried but luckily that's not the case the games are getting really good if you are figuring out like optimizations for the for the game economies as well as like trying out some novel new experiments and founders are getting better at leading and communicating and creating agreements

with the communities that choose to follow them. Cool. Well, thank you so much for coming on, Jeff. It was really great to have you. Yeah, thanks for the invite.