Web3 Gaming: Insights from the Ronin Ecosystem

[Music] welcome to the navic gaming podcast where it is our mission to explore the business and future of video games we bring together the industry's brightest Builders investors and thinkers to keep a pulse on current events dissect emerging Trends and games share Lessons Learned and have a great time this podcast is also part of novic growing ecosystem which ranges from free and premium research to Consulting and AD advisory services for more information visit [Music] www.nic.edu to maximize their impact and build momentum that lasts well into the new year Q5 offers unique marketing efficiencies with up to 28% cost reductions in Top Market making it ideal

for engaging audiences and optimizing ad spend powered by Automation and precision Tik tok's Advanced product Solutions work seamlessly with its newest creative tools making content creation easy effective and scalable to drive installs and boost ingame Revenue learn more about making the most of Q5 with TiK ToK by visiting the link in the show notes make sure to check it out and with that let's dive into the episode hello and welcome to the noic gaming podcast I'm your host Nick oori today we're looking at a major turning point in the web3 gaming space Ronin the blockchain that field axi Infinity's explosive success has swung its doors wide open to all developers in other words Ronin is now permissionless this is a huge deal for anyone following the feature of web 3 gaming Defi and Beyond so to help us unpack what this really means I'm joined by Jeff zerlin co-founder of Sky Mavis of course developers of a infinity and uh operators of the Ronin blockchain if

you've been around Axia or followed play to earn uh you've probably come across Jeff he's been one of the key forces over the years behind building and growing one of the most vibrant communities in web 3 gaming and of course one of the biggest success stories the one and only oxy Infinity which really started the the play to earn movement in in Earnest uh and really kicked off the interest in in web 3 in general so um we are going to dive into what this means um and Jeff we're really excited to have you here welcome to the pod thanks for having me Nia all right well with that let's get into the questions then um and and kind of start with your background we always start with the background of our guests how they got into web 3 how they got into gaming how they got into the space that they're in and I'm really excited to hear what your background is because obviously like I said ax Infinity huge deal in web 3 the Beast that started it all the gorilla in the room so tell us more about who you are where you came from and kind of the origin story of of Sky Mavis axi infinity and and where you guys are now with Ronan

well I grew up as a gamer and a collector so the first thing I ever did on the internet was play Starcraft with my cousins that was back in 1997 so I think from an early age I knew that games could be a great way to learn about new technologies my father loves collecting butterflies and moths beetles fossils basically a collector of anything and so I grew up with that that was the context the atmosphere that I grew up in the way that I could impress my father as a child was to find something rare to impress him so in many ways I felt like I was really born for web 3 gaming and this was the thing that I was uniquely put on Earth to do I never knew that I would work in gaming when I was a kid I tended to be the person that would introduce new games to all of my class mates Diablo in fifth grade vanel wow in

seventh grade which I'm pretty proud of and so there were signs you know I was always pretty interested in crypto I found out about it after I volunteered on the Ron Paul campaign in 2008 as a high school student and I was on the Ron Paul newsletter and I found out about Bitcoin in 2010 or 2011 and I believed in Bitcoin but it always felt a little bit weird to me that I as someone who was non-technical would have to buy it from someone else who mined it so I felt like a little bit of like an unfair situation so that was one of the things that just prevented me from getting too deep into it but when I found out about nfts through initially a game called crypto kitties I thought hey here's something that's uniquely suited

to my interests and expertise this is something that I could potentially really Thrive with and so that's how I started to dive down the rabbit hole of crypto and actually starting to use it through crypto kitties that's actually where I met Jung uh trun Chun and Alexander um and that's really where this journey start really started so I found axi as a community member initially and just like many people in web 3 you're kind of looking for a project to get involved with something pequs your interest and for me after crypto kitties that was axi and I wanted to help out I saw that there was a lot of gaps with the project in terms of Community Management uh external coms you know being able to systematically grow and I wanted to step into that role I started doing the work and I eventually you you know join joined as a

formal team member and when we created Sky Mavis about a year later that's when I became a CO co-founder of the project um my education you know we're talking about my background I studied military and economic history at Yale uh my thesis was on sovereign debt restructurings um so I was also really interested in like Financial uh bubbles uh you know how to turn economic power into military power and vice versa these were the types of things I was interested in as a kid I think Loosely related to yeah building a business you know we often say that building axi was like starting a country um so I think also some parallels there nice yeah that's a very eclectic background which I love um we actually have a lot in common there it sounds like uh so my father was also a huge or is is still um he's still still around uh huge collector he collected a he's a he was a doctor he collected uh uh compter medical devices so like made out of tin

like these historic things which is kind of a weird thing to collect very uh random and he also collects art glass that's the other thing that is uh so yeah I've got that collector bug as well myself uh in my background and cryptokitties was how I got into web 3 as well that was my kind of gateway drug if you will into that space so a lot in common there and I think not an unusual story to have kind of an Eclectic background bit of a collector mindset and then getting really interested in in crypto you you got interest in Bitcoin a lot before I did I got in there about 2016 so some years after you but still still a while ago um okay so tell me a little bit then about um about axy we'll just do kind of the background here on we're this episode is more about Ronin and the chain and what we're doing going forward but I know our listeners are going to be really interested in hearing the Axia story so I'm very curious like was it an accident how big it got so quickly or like it seems like it was like an overnight thing but I know it wasn't it took a while for you guys to kind of get there and then did it surprise you how big it got and then how

quickly you know things kind of um you know for lack of a better phrase turned a little bit South um you know a lot of success very quickly and then uh some challenges going forward let's put it that way so curious to hear your thoughts on that and kind of just a little bit about Axia how it came to be uh building on Ronin because obviously you that that was you you needed that you needed Ronin to do ax you essentially so your thoughts on that so axi was designed and created to introduced the world to crypto through something that was fun and nostalgic and reminded them of their childhood something like Pokemon or tagashi and for us what we really wanted to do with axi was ship a ton of experiments quickly because we didn't know what was going to work and so that really manifested in an aggressive road map where we shipped a Auto Battle system a Marketplace um we had a land sale we introduced this concept of land

you know we then went from a passive Auto Battle system to launching axi classic right which is the game that you know really catapulted us to success and you know I believe that we always felt like something special was happening with axi while we were working on it at some point sometimes you think you're delusional of course right you're checking the Google analytics it's 400 a.m. you're the only per this one person right and you closed a tab and went to zero like you're the only person on the site there were to moments like that where I thought like wow you know maybe this is destined to be a very Niche thing that only a few people in the world care about there were definitely moments like that you know how do we get through that well thinking from the first principles of right is this a technology that actually makes it fundamentally better

to run a game economy and we always felt like the answer to that was yes and you know did axi blow up axi I would say you know it got very big in 2021 after we'd been working on it for three years and you know I I would have thought that it would have might have taken five years for example or you know the seven years to get uh as big as it did um but so it you know obviously there was a perfect Confluence of factors crypto in an insane Bull Run there was Co gaming was doing very well at that time and and we had been creating this project product that was ready enough for the moment good enough for the moment um of course right like you know there were uh you know there were things that were in complete uh related to the Token SNS and

the game economy the game economy things like that and but you know if those were perfect there would have been other things that that were uh that that that had gaps right when you're an entrepreneur you're constantly prioritizing right like you know uh the sequence of uh of what you're building so that's that's basically how we're thinking about it right and you know I think obviously one of the amazing things that came out of axi was we had to be thinking about how to scale the ecosystem and what our blockchain infrastructure would look like from a from the very early days we were thinking about this why because we came from the crypto kites Community we knew that if we were successful we would eventually deal with scaling issues so to me actually right the fact that we

even started working on Ronin way before axi was successful is also a little bit of a hint that hey we actually did think that axi would uh go quite go quite big so you know as part of the process of building axi and preparing it for Success we realized that hey there's a lot of tools and infrastructure that we're going to have to build ourselves a Marketplace a wallet a blockchain nobody is going to be able to do it like us that was maybe our arrogance uh as entrepreneurs right that hey nobody understands our problems as well as us and nobody understands our users as well as us therefore we're uniquely suited to build out this thing right that became Ronin this entire Suite of tools that you need to build and launch and grow a block chain

game yeah and obviously you were it's it's easy for us now many years later to think oh there's all these chains and you know you look at some of these reports I was like there's literally hundreds of chains that are like focused on gaming it's actually really uh I think humbling to think back and say hey you guys were the first definitely one of the first and you recognize obviously the issue of hey we can't be building on ethereum crypto kitties of course famously the issue there was transactions were incredibly expensive expensive things were really slow um that was never going to scale right and so in order to actually scale a web 3 blockchain based game crypto-based game um you had to build these tools and that's really where Ronin came from and you were the first or definitely one of the first to to recognize that um but interestingly you you kept Ronin mostly first party for quite a while um how long did it take for you to because there's like three stages of evolution as far as I see it there was Ronin for you Infinity Sky Mavis you guys were

building it these were the tools that were needed they didn't exist you had to go and do that then there's like the second phase which you're coming out of now um with the the announcement about going permission list but that was a very hand curated experience for certain developers in order to maintain the quality in order to maintain um some level of curation as to who gets to build on Ronin so that it attracts more developers obviously or presumably in the future and now you're going permission list which is hey anybody can go there and build right so there's your as far as I see it those are the three phases of evolution of the road in blockchain um how did you guys think about that as you were building yourselves for for oxia when did you decide to say hey now we're going to open it up to other developers we think it's ready for you know these tools are there for others to use but we're going to choose the people you know the developers who going to use it and then now of course the third stage but let's talk about that second stage for a little bit here uh how did that come to be it's the master plan right so it's like first first go in retrospect it

seems like hey this was the master plan all along right but I know it's it's I'm an entrepreneur myself so I know how messy it is when you're on the ground and building so just you know so to us it was we felt like we had the expertise maybe another arrogance as entrepreneurs we felt like we had the expertise to pick winners everyone was doing this spray and prey approach tons of games tons of Grants we couldn't do that we refused to play on those terms and we believe that we would have run out of money and lost if we played the game like that so I was like okay what is our dominant strategy here and and I have to give a lot of credit to to Alex um and and and uh on on this is that we basically decided that instead of right growing super broad we would focus on a few select teams back them right invest in them uh

give them access to the chain um give them our distribution services and our you know economic advisory services and then see what would happen and you know this is similar to some of the things that we kind of studied right was like oh how did they bootstrap iTunes right in the early is is like very manual right it's like Steve Jobs had to go and like recruit the uh recruit artist himself um so we felt like we were kind of in that stage but always thinking of right eventually wait once there's this precedence of success once the network is more mature we would be able to open it up and and welcome welcome basically everyone and so this is a little bit contrarian for crypto where things tend to be very open from the beginning but it's not so contrarian right when you kind of think of about how to bootstrap

a a developer ecosystem or a developer platform right so if you think about steam as well in the early days to get on Steam you kind of had to know someone there right or you had to really catch their eye um so that was what we want to do and we didn't want to scale something up before we knew what was working we also didn't want to have something come on and clog the chain and ruin the experience for for everybody else um so these were some of the considerations right in that second phase and which we're now coming out of yeah yeah okay um so that's a perfect segue actually into my next question which is you know you've got this thing called the Ronin developer console um I'm presuming that this has come to be based on your own experience of course and your own pain points when you were scaling Axia and then some of the pain points and developer needs in this second phase of curation that you guys have been involved in what is the Ronin development console and which of the

features or tools in the console are the things that you think are going to allow developers to really scale to really power their experiences yeah so the dev console is a suite of tools that we have released to basically make it really easy to build on top of bronin it has things like sponsored transactions uh a really smooth way to integrate with our Marketplace um you know access to apis and and all the data that you would basically need to build something on top of ronin um so this is something that we've uh just made uh public relatively recently we're Gathering feedback on it I think so far the feedback related to the dev console to our documentation has been uh PR pretty positive but these are the types of things right that we need to spend uh a bit more time on right as we as we go from like having these very Hands-On White Glove relationships to now kind of doing more like devell at

scale yeah and of the tools that you've got which of those came from was like was there like an AA moment that when you were trying to scale a you're like oh man like we this is such a pain Point like we need this and developers will need this too or was it just a case of it's all of the above right you need all of the tools that you've put out there in order to to actually be successful as a developer and build on on chain yeah I mean I I think right like the the the tough things right is like so internally right it's like the marketplace the wallet all the apis they kind of become this Suite of tools that are made for the game teams and they have to be pretty easy to integrate for the game teams otherwise right there is going to be like internal conflict right uh so I think that that really set us up um for anticipating and understanding the types of conversations and how to preempt any type of conversation with devs in in the future right because we want it to be smooth and and and scalable and seamless

so yeah I think a lot of the stuff around um you know the apis uh quaring the blockchain data um you know seamlessly integrating into the marketplace you know this is where a lot of the uh the magic happens and where a lot of the priority is when it comes to developer onboarding yeah yeah and so we're goingon to start talking about numbers next here so during the the curated phase how many games did you have uh and what kind of you know daily active users wallet um trading volumes did you see and then we're going to transition to what are we seeing now because I know the numbers are are quite a bit bigger than than they were back in those days yeah I mean so there are now uh and prior to permissionless runin right I think there are over uh 20 there are over 20 games that were're building on the road and network outside of the axi ecosystem um in terms of volumes uh we did 71 million volume million dollars in nft

trading volume uh last year which was 135 135% increase uh over uh 2023 um yeah we we had uh daily active addresses uh really spiked a ton last year as well um hitting like two 2.1 2.3 million uh you know at its peak in December which is basically 10x growth uh over 2023 um so yeah you know ton of growth last last year you know we were actually the fourth most used blockchain period globally uh and that was right only you know specific to gaming and right uh in a curated ecosystems yeah yeah no I and I think like I was going to get into those numbers those are very impressive numbers what Dr those numbers cuz you were still curated last year right until

this point in time so were was there a specific game that was doing it was there just a it was like a rising tide lifting all boats obviously there was another crypto bull you know on the back of a crypto winter so we do know of course we have to be realistic like you know the the bull and the and the uh the bear that drives a lot of web 3 gaming activity as well um so yeah which of the above was the major driver in your opinion of of why the Ronin chain really started to take off we have to give a lot of credit to pixels okay right because Luke we've had Luke on the on the show a couple of times actually he was literally on like maybe two or three episodes ago so yeah awesome yeah he's he's a great guy and he's a really interesting story um so yeah sorry go ahead yes so we have to give a lot of credit to pixels because let's flash back to December you know to or sorry fall of 2023 things were looking Bleak right um um it wasn't clear that there

would be another web 3 gaming season that Ronin would continue to be relevant right to be honest but pixels launched on the Ronin chain went from 5,000 users to millions of users within a couple of months uh right there at a you know became worth three Mill hundreds of millions of dollars billions of dollars um in in in Market cat and uh I think they really captured the imagination of the entire space um so they drove a lot of the traction and they drove a lot of the hey like we saw what pixels did right we want to be the next pixels right we want to do what they did right so they really uh helped catalyze this understanding of the Ronin effect right which is this is a thing that we can do for game developers when they come onto the run and chain we can help Drive attention liquid and and uh success uh for game

developers and all that really all started with pixels because until pixels happened that was all theoretical hey maybe we maybe the axi community would be interested in playing some other web through games that sounds reasonable right it was a hypothesis but it wasn't didn't become something that was proven until we saw pixels so have to give them a lot of credit of course yeah you know we we started to see the crypto Market start to recover a bit last year as well yeah yeah I know we had Luke uh on the Pod like I said a couple of times but once like over a year ago when they were just kind of getting going and things weren't looking that great and then just a couple of episodes ago where you know Luke was on the Pod talking about how pixels is really taken off and how you know embracing Ronin has has been a a boost a real Boon for their for their business too so uh that's it's been great to see and I I love how

unabashedly Pro play to earn he actually is right like a lot of web 3 developers when you know the going got tough they were like well we're not played to earn we're played to you know own or you know there was like all these different um terminologies that were that were banded about where where they thought well because Axia wasn't like successful forever as a as a you know multi-billion Dollar business um play to earn was somehow tainted and I just love how fullon Luke is about saying like no I believe in PL to earn I believe we can create sustainable plate to earn economies and here's how we think we can do it um so they're not there yet by the way that was the tldr of that episode they don't yet have a fully sustainable plate to earn economy they have more um outflow than they have inflow but they're getting closer and closer to to net neutral which I think is a testament to them experimenting um which by the way brings up the question that I hadn't planned on asking but since we're talking about it I will ask um with the oxy Infinity Community uh economy and and you said you have a real interest in kind of uh economies what is that

looking like at the moment because obviously famously grew very quickly um but obviously the inflows and outflows weren't matching and at some point something's got to give right and it did so I'm curious to hear what you you guys done in the years since that and how are you thinking about the Axia economy at for sure this moment I mean yeah it's gotten uh it's it's it's gotten very interesting so one of the things that we introduced um in 2023 uh basically late 2023 was something called axi Evolution which is basically the idea that right rather than only breeding axes and creating more axes uh we created a system where you can actually destroy axes to upgrade both the power and the Aesthetics of the axes that you currently own um and that has worked uh really well and there basically Evolution fees uh level up fees and these have become the primary drivers of revenue for the axi protocol so you know axi is uh axi made around $4

million in treasury revenues a lot of that in eth uh in 2024 uh we and we had around 20 uh 50,000 monthly active users uh in December of 2024 so the axi community uh remains formidable um it's still the number one IP in web 3 by uh by Mark cap right I think pudgy was up there for a bit after they tged but you know they've come back down and actually has reg regained the crown so um yeah so a lot of a lot of more emphas a lot more emphasis on token SNS uh vertical progression rather than right kind of just like having more and more axis creating more tokens um that's basically the T tldr on it um and yeah you know I think Luke basically looks at like what is the ratio okay if you emit one pixel right like how much uh pixel are basically going to get back so you

know thinking in similar terms right if we emit one access token or one axi token uh you know uh we can expect to get around 6 uh seven back plus you get a ton of Engagement metrics um and uh and and player player loyalty in engagement right I think like you know the core question that and that I've always believed play to earn to be about is okay you're using incentives to bootstrap a network what does the network do once it's formed once it's bootstrapped right um so to me right like there are a couple viable angles for how we put these networks to creating value right one is like okay this is a network that basically can bootstrap other uh applications right so there's value in that right it's like according okay you basically have gotten uh used incentives

to create a a very large and loyal and engaged Community with a ton of great memories uh now you can introduce them to other applications right so it's kind of like you bootstrap kind of something like an advertising Network right uh another thing is okay you've you now have all these people all over the world that have crypto wallets right uh uh and they can now like freely transact with each other they don't have to use Western Union anymore um right so you also like basically booster the payments Network right so so with the so these are I think like philos philos philosophically I think this is the way to look at it is like why are you giving out these rewards like what is the you know end State and eventual utility of this network that you're catalyzing via these rewards yeah yeah yeah I mean I think one of the metrics that that we haven't mentioned is uh Ron the Ron token R and token I think the holders of that have gone from like 3

million to 18 million um so to your point about bootstrapping a payments Network like that's that's legit right 18 million Ron holders who are essentially part of your network uh that you can you know monetize in some way perform or just you know have some some level of loyalty to to your ecosystem okay um so let's talk about some of the projects that you've you've got coming right so you've gone permission list now anybody can come and build um you've highlighted a few games that you're excited by fishing frenzy pirate Nation by the way Amit majan who was my uh colleague at Zinga he was also on the Pod not that long ago he was they were building on a completely different chain I think originally and I guess they've made the shift to to to Ronin so curious to hear a little bit about that too and then Rumble Kongs is another one you've highlighted so curious to hear like what what what do these have in common like what do these projects have in common um what are the bets you're making or what are the bets they're making and how do you see that ecosystem of developers growing now that you've gone permissionless I mean yeah uh fishing frenzy has

really done an amazing job uh on Ronin they just had their mint fully minted out um I believe yeah they had some crazy stats where I think they were you know between 20 to 30k da um saw you know huge increase in Revenue when coming to Ronin so uh yeah you know that's definitely something to keep an eye out keep an eye on is uh fishing friends you pirate nation and proof of play um you know this is also like a team that we wouldn't have been able to work with in the past uh where a lot of our relationships had to be exclusive right but now and they're building infrastructure for games on a multitude of chains and it's like okay Runner is open let's do something let's uh let's finally work together so that's it's been really uh a pleasure to welcome them and you know we've been friends and talking for a while and you know now that Ronin is open basically allowing us to work with a whole

new cast of developers that you know it it was kind of hard to find a way to to work something out in the past so I think like that's you know the main theme is you know less barriers right and just being able to work with people that um yeah we weren't able to to kind of make something work with in the past so yeah yeah um yeah how so how do you see immutable um I mean you guys are obviously competitors in in in kind of the strictest sense right where you're both competing essentially for bringing developers onto your respective gaming focused chains right so that's that's where the obvious kind of competitive uh analysis comes in but uh is that how you see it is it a zero some game with immutable or do you guys see opportunities to collaborate I mean you mentioned pirate Nation obviously like again they're you know it was a single colleague of mine on on the Pod not that long ago um they're in some way also a

competitor to to you like you said you had in the past you wouldn't have been able to work with them now you can because you've gone you've gone permissionless so curious to hear how you're viewing immutable and maybe there's others that you actually view more as competitors um than than they are how how do you see the competition for Quality developers creating compelling web 3 experiences onchain experiences um how does Ronin versus immutable versus feature into that you know I I try not to think too much about like you know competition within web 3 gaming because web three gaming is so small right now like you know Ronin is clearly the dominant web uh gaming chain uh we're ascended by every metric but does that really matter like you know web 3 gaming uh still has a lot to prove it's not within crypto it's not one of the you know most exciting and uh Innovative areas right now uh you know as perceived by the rest of the

space right um so I think there's just a lot of work to be done when it comes to uh you know figuring out our own uh ways of working and and stuff in within web three gaming within Ronin that you know I'm I'm not too focused on comparing ourselves to other to other chains you know I think that now that Ronin is is open uh it's definitely more conducive to better collaboration with some of the other gaming chains right where you know some of these uh some of the games right it's like hey like if you're on you know if you're on a mutable and you know you want to try deploying on Ronin right like why not why not do that right and uh so I think that you know experiments like that could help to build some bridges between the communities and and the chains um I think you know generally as a sector we will kind of trend together um in any case so you know we try to be you know

relatively uh helpful uh I think and and yeah TR try not to like uh you know think too much about uh about the other teams and what they're guy yeah that's that's fair enough I mean focus on what you what you do and um let the others do what they they do served you pretty well up until this this point you've been in some ways you know you know Trailblazers in many ways Trailblazers and in other way you've been kind of contrarian on some of these bets that you've made which you know have some have paid off right so you have to be in order to be an entrepreneur and to win like you need to be contrarian and and make some strange bets sometimes yeah um and I think that's always been kind of you know part of our strength is we don't just do things for the sake of doing them or because people think we should be doing them uh and sometimes we're willing to take some initial flock because we're going in a direction that might seem weird or strange but we believe is better in the long run yeah yeah no

absolutely okay well let's talk a little bit about uh interoperability I think that's one of the biggest um and then security as as well they're connected but slightly different but we'll start with interoperability um that's obviously one of the most critical things um in web 3 is you know are you locked into some ecosystem that is just that ecosystem and then you're you're basically placing a bet as a developer right that that ecosystem is going to help you rise and then you will help them oriz and you know AR Rising tide lifs all boats right um so how do you guys think about interoperability um obviously going back to your origin story you know Ronin uh ethereum based right so you need it Ronin your own chain in order to even build a game in the first place because crypto kit is just wasn't going to scale if it was built on you know ethereum itself so um how are you guys thinking about interoperability how do your developers who are working with you think about interoperability um how are you making it as easy as possible for for devs to um be able to build games and

experiences that are available not just on Ronin but elsewhere too yeah so some context we uh basically recently announced that we'll be using uh chain links uh ccip um is basically it's cross-chain interoperability protocol um basically as a bridging solution right so we uh felt like hey like chain link is great as security let's let chain link help with uh basically the bridge um and the cool thing also is that that opens up some you know uh ability for bridging of different tokens onto run in from from other chains whether that be gaming tokens or earc 20 tokens or nfts things like that um so yeah I think chain link definitely like helps a lot when it comes to our ability to uh you know smoothly migrate and work with uh with with teams that you know

already have presences on other on other chains yeah and security of course you mentioned security there in the context of chain link um that's obviously a huge uh issue still this episode is being recorded I think two days or maybe three days after the bbits hack which is you know obviously one of the largest uh exchanges out there and they were subject to the biggest hack of all time 1 point something billion dollars I think North Korea was was uh identif ifed as the the hackers obviously uh you guys were a victim of a hack some years ago now uh you know the bit's piece here in particular I think is highlights that even the largest of players multi-billion dollar you know companies and uh exchanges that presumably have some of the highest level of security you would hope you would think um are still subject and still vulnerable to hacks and whenever there is Success right as as your ecosystem grows you're going to become more juicy as a target

for like have a better phrase for hackers right and of course you saw that way back in in the early days of of Axia while you were at your Peak so that's you know chain link that helps with that I'm curious to hear how you guys are thinking about that especially in light of your your past experience and then now with bybit just showing that there is there's currently no such thing as truly 100% secure and safe um in crypto yeah so chain link secures billions of dollars of value across defi um and basically the interoperability protocol is uh their way of taking their expertise and Security in and now also applying that to the number one uh pressing thing which was kind of holding back uh the growth of the industry which is you know basically around like uh cross chain interoperability bridging Solutions um

so yeah they went through like a decentralized uh uh election process where you know they made proposals to our community via the the validator set and and they were basically elected or selected by the community to uh you know take on the responsibility of helping with the the bridging of of assets so yeah we're really excited to work with them um and you know we believe that they have the best team when it comes to security into space and you know related to to buy bit and you know yeah obviously a lot of these protocols these protocols and exchanges uh become honeypots for for Bad actors and you know just something that we you know as a space are still dealing with and getting better at uh you know uh at handling I think each time something happens we learn something new and we get better and but uh yeah there you know a lot of hard lessons uh along the way um it's definitely like a bit of the wild blust

out here um but this is also what happens right when you have freedom and you know you have people who uh make mistakes and have to you know basically deal with the consequences of their actions and and get better you know uh for what it's worth I I I believe that the you know the bybit team you know were able to deal with the crisis and in a pretty effective way um luckily it seems like no user funds will be affected um and yeah we move on from there yeah well that's uh definitely still the wild west I think you know we we do get better as an industry we do get better as a as a um you know ecosystem and uh the good actors are trying to make it safer for everyone um but yeah whenever there's success and whenever there's um a Target there's going to be bad actors who are going to you know go after them so um let's hope let's hope we learn um as a as an industry okay let's uh let's let's move on a little bit about uh onto um Quality versus

openness um you know during that curation period you guys were able to obviously you know curate it's in the it's in the word you were able to pick and choose who you thought might be winners um who certainly were trying to build quality experiences who are essentially you know making the whole Ronin ecosystem a better place now with openness going permissionless you don't control who comes in um so how are you thinking about that are you worried at all you're going to have subpar experiences that kind of taint the whole ecosystem uh are you worried about reputational risks by going uh permissionless at this point in time I mean I think it's a fair point I do think that in open Rin the what I'm seeing is the community is asking for even more curation from Sky Maas as side right because a lot of the curation that we did is not related to hey you're allowed to or not allowed to deploy on the Chain a lot of it is like hey what are we supporting on socials right what are we uh having on the Mavis Market

what are we listing on the Ronin wallet right um so I do believe that right like Sky mavis's kind of stamp of approval and our our support is still something that's valuable um and something that will that helps teams and also something that can help right weed out uh Bad actors um but it's just not right related to the the ultimate gate right is isn't at the hey you're allowed to deploy or not deploy um so I think I think that's the key distinction um I do believe that right like curation will still be valuable and and necessary and and skyus will continue to do uh some of those things that we we did in the past we will still work with uh publishing Partners right we will still directly publish uh teams and so there will be kind of different classifications of games on Ronin now right teams that we're directly working with teams that are um also just getting something like more like a grant right so that was like

the so we had like the sky mavas partners then we have the the forge program and then we Al and then now we have this like new classification of game which is just like hey they're on Ronin they're Pro they're proving themselves um so that's that's kind of how I that's how I see the dynamic and you know you know I do I I do believe that we will still need to play a role ating and there will be maybe like Bad actors and you know we should be prepared that there will be bad actors that come onto the chain um but I also believe that the community is pretty Savvy and sophisticated when it comes to uh you know being able to discern the intentions of uh of developers and and knowing like who can actually back up with action what they're what they're saying and selling yeah for any uh developers who are listening um and thinking about their options in terms of

where they go where they deploy um maybe considering Ronin as a as an option what kinds of Grants or Revenue sharing models marketing support you mentioned socials pushing that you mentioned listing in the sky Mavis Marketplace um what kinds of incentives do you currently offer uh developers who are good actors not bad actors and who are considering their their options yeah I mean I wouldn't come to Ronin to be honest for the grants that would come because we have users uh we have users if you want to build for uh an actual community that loves to use decentralized applications and has experience doing so uh come to Ronin um you know we do have a grants program right so search on Twitter uh run a grants program you definitely feel free to apply uh but I'm also see you know I also would say that you have a better chance of getting a grand if you ship get some traction um and show that you know you have something that the community is

interested in uh before right like basically uh coming to us coming to us for regret um you know I I I do think that the value prop uh is is is pretty clear hey if you're you know building a game and you need users and you need high quality users that are willing to spend you come to run this is what uh you know game like Fable born just demonstrated right Fable born is probably the best uh mobile game in web 3 and they just were able to do a raffle sale for Their Kingdoms which is kind of like land uh in their game and they were able to uh get 15 million Ron contributed which was around $20 million contributed uh to this raffle um so there's players there's uh liquidity uh there are people who know how to use these applications um so you know that's why you should come through and it's if you actually

want to get traction uh uh for your for your application or your game um but yeah we do have incentive programs um I think those are fairly standard um yeah you know do ship something and then apply for a yeah yeah and then uh you know marketing support obviously you have the user base right and as you say you know this is a user base who's a lot of them have been around for a long time you know oxy has been around for a long time uh they are crypto Savvy they understand how to use wallets they understand onchain transactions um that's very attractive I think for developer um users right users are always attractive for developers you know you need users to use your your application um how do you help the teams on the marketing side of things even if you're saying like hey look the grants program like that's not the reason to come if the reason to come is player liquidity and a large user base how do you help developers reach these these users yeah I mean we have very valuable

channels and we have sub substack uh list of 30 uh 60,000 we have uh over 5 million emails obviously we have uh we have a Discord and the axi Discord which is uh over 600,000 um we have uh you know very powerful Twitter accounts you know obviously the the the found 18 um we have a Creator program we have thousands of creators and we have a system for basically giving them Creator briefs and um making sure that they understand material uh so we have thousands of basically Grassroots creators we also have an ambassador program of kind of larger creators um so all of this together kind of uh creates this Transformer right this Megatron of of amplification support that um we're able to strategically leverage uh to to push the the teams

that we want uh to be seen by the community yeah any examples you want to kind of a case study if you wanted to throw throw one out there as a like here here's what we can do when we we believe in you as a team as a product as a game um when we really go for it when we want to push it um to our community yeah I mean I think the the most the most famous obviously example is uh is pixels right where we able to and mobilize the community right so um you know we're able to send out emails on their behalf uh uh articles um you know hit all of our discords um you know uh create a flurry of amplification on on socials right and uh other teams that have benefited from from this uh lumit Tera forgotten runiverse Lumera I think did $800,000 dollars in uh volume uh just for their first play test um tens of thousands of users likewise with

forgotten runiverse right so we're able to drive basically around let's say your first 30,000 users um if we put your full uh amplification if I we put our full amplification engine behind something um and then it's obviously it's going to be up to you right like you cannot only ever have the Ronin you uh you know the Ronin bump cannot be the only bump that you ever get if you're going to be successful but it's a great way to get some initial traction right and I think that's a lot more than any other investor any other chain uh will be able to to do for you yeah yeah no that's not those are those are real numbers there and then I presume that there's a a hope that you know kind of a a flywheel effect uh kicks in where you just mentioned like hey you can get 30,000 if we put our might behind it but then it's up to you of course as it always is for a developer you know if you make a game it's up to you to make a good game and something that people want to play and they want to come back to and engage with for you know long periods of time my presumption here and

correct me if I'm wrong is that you are hoping that as more developers come on board they get that initial bump it's fun to build when you've got that many users initially but then you're presumably hoping that they're going to bring in new users into the entire ecosystem so who are not currently playing anything on Ronin who don't necessarily even know about Ronin but are coming in because one of their friends invited them or you know hear about it from from a you know somebody who's like hey there's this really cool game I'm playing it and they may not even know what Ronin is or what what web 3 is which of course has been the dream for web 3 developers from the very beginning which is bring in the mainstream players um how are you guys thinking about that flywheel uh I'm presuming it's something you are at least hoping for but are you actively encouraging that how do you work with developers to bring more people new people into the ecosystem I I I think that this is definitely where a lot of the experimentation and

research um remains to be done uh teams like fa I it's I think it's there's no silver bullet or golden formula I think it's a combination of right having a game having games that are good enough um you know whether that's from play pattern you know obviously bringing in like some uh awesome IPS Al also helps um but I think there's no necessarily golden golden bullet or or Sil Silver Bullet here and one thing that we've seen is you know how did it how did we we onboarded mainstream people with axi right um 50% of the people that played axi right had were totally new to crypto and where where did they come from typically they were the friends and family members of uh of existing players um so you know

I I do think that right like you know once you get the core community of web 3 Gamers excited enough um and they see the opportunity um and they feel like there's really something special at hand they will then begin to bring bring it to their friends their family members right so then right like referral systems um actually probably work uh even better in web tree than they do in in in traditional gaming um so these are some of the things that we see you know uh we have Ragnarok online on The Rona Network as well which is like a classic Southeast Asian MMO and one of the things that we're seeing is like wow like I it was hard for me to get my friends and family involved when it was axi but now that's Ragnarok online it's like so easy to get them uh uh involved with involved with Ronin like they you know they've been looking uh they were they were asking me back in the a days oh I'm not going to play a web three game until something

like Ragnarok is there and now and now you know Ragnarok is on running um so I think it's a combination of yeah good enough games uh you know IPS that are relatable and and and hit home close close to the heart and and then yeah also like you know econ better economic designs um so I I think that's that's what we're seeing uh you know there's also you know I think Partnerships um that that can help um you know some some things there are some things that we're cooking uh and and that kind of angle where it's like yeah can you do some like Partnerships with mainstream Brands to also get yourself some more social credibility and and social proof so okay well we're coming towards the uh the end of our hour here but uh couple questions here the first one is um what next you know you've just gone

permissionless um you've had some success over the last year you know you said yourself that it wasn't clear that it was you know necessarily going to work and then you've seen this rise mostly driven I don't say mostly but a Big Driver of it was pixels uh and now of course you're hoping for more from from these new games you're you're bringing on board what does success look like in 12 months 24 months what's next on the road map what do you guys talked a lot about experimentation but what are you guys working on like what are your bigger bets that you're act definitely doing for for sure yeah I'm I'm excited for defi as well because we saw how axi and Unis swap work together really in a very synergistic way U so with open running we should expect to see like way more defi protocols uh coming on and you know I'm also excited to see I believe that we're entering like a macro environment where you'll start to see lower taxes lower interest rates and and more of a risk on environment um and I think that that will help out ethereum um ethereum

has actually been underperforming which I think is hurting has been hurting Defi and gaming basically the more utility driven aspects uh of the space um are pretty reliant on uh ethereum for kind of uh capital capital and liquidity so um you know that's another thing that I'm uh you know pretty pretty excited about um I do think that we're going to start to see like more economic experiments over the coming year um so you know more models like you know SLP and Barry and um and things like that you know with the Trump Administration I think that teams will start to experiment more with uh getting real demand and usage for their tokens uh you might start to see teams uh experimenting with buyback and burns um you know uh sending rewards to stakers of their tokens as well um basically like I feel like utility is being legalized um and that basically makes it

easier to build something of real value in crypto as well um yeah let's see if it's actually being legalized or just not illegalized which which one of those two it is right there's there's a big difference between legalizing something and not taking any action for the next four years or so right like who knows what happens with the next Administration um but yeah that's a it's a fair point I think the next four years are probably going to be a more um uh permissive environment for for a lot of these uh these things such as token launches and and uh staking and things like that um so um and then I guess just finally uh you know I'm excited for a lot of our best Flagship games to be live yeah uh simultaneously I think a lot of them have been kind of in doing Alpha tests and Clos betas but um we're getting to a point where a lot of them are going to start to be live uh simultaneously games like uh Fable born

forgotten runiverse Lumi Tera the moku team is is cooking a game right now as well um you know we have some stuff in the works for axi so you know I'm I'm I I think that the last year has been a lot of testing as well and preparing but you know I think you're going to start to see a lot of games be live simultaneously and kind of live service um yeah over the you know over the next coming months so I think that's going to be key for us yeah I mean it's there's something to be said about Cross promo right once you've got multiple games live and you've got an audience that potentially has some affinity for another title um the ability to cross promote that and we did that at Zinga back in the day like very very effectively right like you just have all your vill games would Point their audiences into the new Ville game that just launched and you have millions of Da overnight um so I think with web 3 games in particular like that's the

dream isn't it right to get once you've got a a meaningful mass of web 3 Sav users who are playing certain games or engaging in certain um uh you know daps if you could put the right kind of product in front of them that they have affinity for boom you know you could really start to see some some uh very synergistic um uh activities and that would obviously be something that would be beneficial for Ronin as well um so curious to see how you guys evolve that and what the the game teams are prepared to do amongst each other and whether you guys uh formalize that in some way where there's some incentive for uh Cross promo for developers um so curious about that in the future obviously too soon to speak about that now before you actually have those yeah would love to pick your brain too on like that on the Cross promo and the publishing uh angle but yeah you know I think we basically are uh seeing that it can be very synergistic uh to have a ton of these games kind of overlapping andely and pointing at each other and I think that's like yeah uh you know the special

opportunity that we have right where is like we're able to have not just one or two but many great games live simultaneously kind of uh uh all feeding into each other and and and driving uh traction right for the for the chain simultaneously yeah I mean that's that's the whole flywheel once you get the flywheel effect going like you know it's a win-win-win for everybody um okay final question ask all of our guests uh what three games are you playing or are you most excited going forward and doesn't have to be web 3 um could just be whatever you're you're spending your free time on okay okay okay so uh yeah know me Rec recently I played uh fishing frenzy uh Fable born and kurl Wilds those are like three of the games that I played um recently on the running Network and so yeah you know got to go with those um Outsider Ronin you know I played Path of Exile during Christmas um which it was it was fun it was I got the old Diablo crew back together maybe a

little cliche there but yeah awesome all right well thank you very much it's been a real pleasure having you on I've actually wanted to to cover Ronin for a while we like I said we had Luke not that long ago and he was telling us about the success pickles has been having and so I was actually curious about what was going on with Ronin in general and and how you guys were thinking about the the ecosystem and uh going permissionless so thank you very much for coming on the home Jeff awesome yeah thanks niik I'm GNA hopefully see you Luke later today all right well say hi to him for me he's he's a good guy um okay and of course as always a big thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in we'll be back next week with more interviews more insights and more analysis from the weird and wonderful world of gaming so until next time friends stay curious and feel free to send feedback questions and guest recommendations to me my email is nikvik.com if you enjoyed today's episode whether on YouTube or your favorite podcast app make sure to like subscribe comment or give a five-star review and if you want to reach out or provide feedback shoot

us a note at podcast nov. or find us on Twitter and Linkedin plus if you want to learn more about what novic has to offer make sure to check out our website www.navicamls.net doco thanks for listening and we'll catch you in the next episode