Will Ronin usher in a golden age after Open Ronin's official announcement and 1kx's major investment?
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Will Ronin usher in a golden age after Open Ronin's official announcement and 1kx's major investment?
Abandoning the high-quality premium route, will the "Open Ronin" strategy lead to a flourishing ecosystem?
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Zen, PANews
The stagnant blockchain gaming sector has finally seen some excitement. Recently, the Ethereum-based gaming network Ronin drew attention—it announced its "Open Ronin" initiative, opening its doors to all developers to build new games, decentralized applications, or other projects within the ecosystem. "The golden age of Ronin has begun," said Ronin, expressing high hopes for this major transformation.
Against the backdrop of prolonged stagnation in the Web3 gaming space, Ronin has performed remarkably well in recent years. From the farm-themed hit Pixels at the start of last year, to Apeiron—the first Web3 god simulation game—and now the recently revealed cross-chain title Pirate Nation featured in the Open Ronin announcement, Ronin has become a sought-after new home for many blockchain gaming teams thanks to its "growth effect."
Full openness: Could Open Ronin be a new engine for accelerated growth?
In the past, Ronin followed a "premium strategy," carefully selecting only those developers and projects it deemed high-quality and providing tailored support and resources.
Jeff "Jihoz" Zirlin, co-founder of Ronin, explained that there is an "oversupply" of crypto games while player demand remains insufficient. He added: "This strategy emphasizes quality over quantity, allowing us to work closely with fewer teams and ensure their long-term success in the evolving Web3 gaming landscape." According to Dune data, four games—Pixels, The Machines Arena, Axie Infinity, and Apeiron—currently sustain the entire ecosystem, accounting for at least 90% of player share.
The newly launched "Open Ronin" plan clearly indicates that Ronin has abandoned its previous approach. "Now the ecosystem is more mature and market demand is growing. Shifting to a more self-serve model makes sense, enabling more developers and creators to build, experiment, and scale on Ronin, while preserving the quality and success that initially attracted users," said Trung Nguyen, CEO and co-founder of Sky Mavis, in a statement.
Sky Mavis, the developer behind the popular game Axie Infinity, also designed the Ronin blockchain. Sky Mavis released the Ronin Developer Console as a toolkit to assist builders on the network. The toolkit will help developers create simple NFT listings, sponsored transactions (allowing players to avoid gas fees), in-game markets, and provide smart contract templates. Nguyen stated: "With Open Ronin, we're accelerating growth—unlocking more games, DeFi, and dApps than ever before."
Zirlin claimed that permissionless deployment will accelerate the number of games on the Ronin network. He hopes this "blossoming diversity" will help Ronin not miss the next big hit, replicate the successes of Axie Infinity and Pixels, and further drive ecosystem growth.
Data from Token Terminal shows that as of February 17, Ronin had 570,000 daily active users, ranking sixth among all blockchains. Since the beginning of this year, its daily active users have fluctuated between 500,000 and 700,000. Additionally, over the past year, Ronin's daily and weekly active users peaked at 1.7 million and 2.6 million respectively in August 2024, then steadily declined back to early 2024 levels. However, by key metrics, Ronin remains one of the top ten most-used blockchains globally.
Top backer 1kx makes a major bet on Ronin
Earlier this month, prominent investment firm 1kx network announced that over the past year and a half, it had gradually become one of the largest holders of Ronin’s RON token through a series of open-market liquidity purchases. 1kx stated that Ronin is leading the Play-to-Earn revolution in the gaming industry and has the potential to become a core platform for next-generation gaming, rivaling top platforms like Steam and Epic.
Unlike projects that routinely announce multi-million-dollar ecosystem funds, Ronin’s ecosystem fund has invested less than $10 million to date—primarily in game investments rather than grants.
1kx believes Ronin’s core strengths lie in its distribution capabilities and its highly sticky early community. Even during the toughest periods, Axie’s core player base remained active, forming the foundation of the Ronin ecosystem. It was precisely this distribution advantage that attracted Pixels to migrate from Polygon to Ronin, where it quickly rose to prominence, reaching a milestone of over one million daily active users in May 2024. The successful migration of Pixels created a demonstration effect, prompting other blockchain games such as Fableborne and The Forgotten Runiverse to leave their original ecosystems and join Ronin.
Moreover, Ronin is the only chain built by an application product team, giving it deep practical understanding of game economics and enabling it to offer precise guidance to teams on real-time tokenomics execution.
1kx also pointed out that Ronin’s users are among the most valuable on-chain traders in the entire crypto industry. Over the past year, its NFT marketplace transaction volume ranked fourth, behind only ETH, Solana, and Base. Ronin users have cumulatively invested over $10 million in game mints and crowdfunding over the past year. Its 30-day new address retention rate is three times higher than Base and 17.5 times higher than Solana. 1kx believes these figures not only reflect the quality of Ronin users but also reveal the core culture of the Ronin ecosystem:
- High Integrity: Deep trust relationships exist between users and developers;
- Long-term Orientation: Continuous development sustained through bull and bear cycles;
- Positive-sum Thinking: All parties in the ecosystem grow together, rather than engaging in zero-sum competition;
- Community First: Strong community cohesion is key to Ronin’s ability to weather market cycles
"This spirit not only helped the community survive the bear market but also enabled it to rise again in 2025, becoming one of the most valuable communities in the crypto consumer space."
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