Dive Into the Future: Trade RON, the Hero of Blockchain Gaming, Today!

Once upon a time, in the vastness of the Ethereum blockchain, scalability issues left many dApps, including Axie Infinity–known far and wide as the best blockchain game during that time–hopeless and in despair as network congestion and intolerable gas fees swept over the entire ecosystem. But thanks to a highly adaptive sidechain called Ronin, a scaling solution was found that brought joy and earnings to the millions of Axie Infinity players and perhaps to those of other games to come. 

Read on to learn why we’re so excited about the latest token from Skymavis, $RON.

In feudal Japan, Ronin were masterless samurai, wandering far and wide, taking their destinies into their own hands. Because of their unique skills, many of them became heroes and the stuff of legends. It is in this spirit of autonomy, adaptability, and resilience that the Ronin sidechain quickly made a name for itself as one of the most efficient scaling solutions on Ethereum, especially for play-to-earn (P2E) dApps.     

Flashback to 2019 when P2E became a crypto buzzword as Sky Mavis launched Axie Infinity, a turn-based NFT game. Axie had players battling their adorable pet creatures against each other to win crypto tokens which then could be traded for real money. The novel concept quickly gained so much momentum that within a couple of years, there were 2.7 million players logging in daily around the world,  

The massive volume of players, however, exposed a huge flaw with the Ethereum network on which Axie Infinity was built. Ethereum’s Layer-1 infrastructure simply could not scale to handle the network traffic, resulting in player transactions taking minutes (sometimes even hours) to process, while gas fees soared to new heights, costing players a sizable chunk of their earnings. With Ethereum’s own scaling solution still years away on the roadmap, Sky Mavis decided to take matters into their own hands. In true rogue fashion, developed the Ronin sidechain that Axie Infinity players would eventually rally to in the name of seamless and affordable gaming experience. 

Ronin also has its own utility and governance token, RON, and  has already  gained a user base of over 14 million wallets, with an average of over 1 million daily transactions. Ronin has also expanded beyond the Axie Infinity community to include new games such as the wildly popular farming MMORPG, Pixels.  

Ronin is a sidechain, which means that it is a blockchain built on top of another blockchain. Sidechains run parallel to the underlying chain, using its own protocols to optimize and speed up transactions. This is usually done by simplifying the network validation process.    

In the case of Ethereum, back when Axie Infinity was launched, the network was still using a Proof-of-Work (PoW) mining protocol for validating transactions. This meant that it relied on a computationally-heavy process involving thousands of nodes across the world for validating every transaction for Axie Infinity, not to mention the thousands of other dApps on Ethereum that were also competing for bandwidth and miner priority. 

To counter this, Ronin initially deployed a Proof-of-Authority (PoA) consensus protocol to handle Axie Infinity’s traffic and remove its reliance on the much slower PoW channel. In PoA, transactions are processed much faster since the network only relies on a limited number of pre-selected validators to approve each transaction. These validators came from a line of reputable partners in the Web3 community. This immediately turned things around for Axie Infinity players, resulting in transactions taking only seconds to validate, and at a cost of a mere fraction of what it used to be.

In Ronin’s dPos model, a rotating selection provides only 22 daily node slots to be delegated each day by the system to the nodes that have the highest staked amount for the day. 

Meanwhile, Ronin has its own native utility token, RON, which keeps its ecosystem running. It has the following use cases:

• RON is used for processing transactions. Swapping or transferring funds using the Ronin network uses a small amount of RON. 
• RON is also used as a governance token for the network via staking. Anyone who holds RON can support a trusted validator of their choice by allocating their own tokens in return for a share of the network rewards, proportional to their contributed amount. 

Players can access the Ronin network by setting up their own browser wallet at wallet.roninchain.com.

Users can choose to set up a wallet using a seed phrase similar to other crypto wallets, or to use an email address and recovery password instead. Ronin provides the second option to make the user experience familiar even for those who have no prior experience with crypto while maintaining the same level of security, as Ronin also uses blockchain encryption for securing email-based accounts. 

The Ronin ecosystem has a host of its own apps that are essential for gamers and traders alike:

• Ronin Explorer - the Ronin explorer is used for viewing real-time blockchain data which is useful for looking at the volume of network activity and overall network growth. It can also be used for reviewing transaction history, tracking transaction progress, and finding token addresses and contracts for other Ronin-based tokens. 

• Katana - Katana is Ronin’s own decentralized exchange (DEX) which players use for swapping earnings to other tokens, such as stablecoins. Katana can also be used for staking tokens to farm RON rewards. 

• Ronin Bridge - the Ronin bridge is used to transfer tokens from Ronin to the Ethereum Mainnet and vice versa. 

• Ronin Name Service - the Ronin Name Service allows users to assign human-readable addresses (similar to having an email with a domain) instead of a long string of alphanumeric characters that are impossible to memorize. Similar to the Ethereum Name Service, this app makes it easier for active players to maintain contacts and transfer assets without the hassle.

The last quarter of 2023 saw a massive surge in Ronin active wallets, thanks to new games being launched or migrating onto the Ronin chain. Here’s a brief list of just some of the new projects to watch out for on Ronin:

Pixels - Pixels is an immersive open-world farming and crafting game set in a nostalgic 2D format. Previously built on Polygon, Pixels has seen a spike of players after moving to Ronin, with over 180K daily active players according to DappRadar. In Pixels, players engage in gathering resources and planting crops, which are used for crafting other items that can then be sold or traded in the in-game marketplace. Players can also buy NFT lands which can generate passive income. 

Apeiron - Apeiron is an up-and-coming card game mixed with RPG elements, set in a universe where players assume the role of a ‘godling’ and set off exploring dungeons to level up your avatar’s skills and battle with other godlings. Cardplay commences with leading command over ‘apostles’ each with different skill sets to support and complement your own, while  battles take place in NFT planets characterized by different element traits, providing endless gameplay combinations and tactics for players to explore.

Battle Bears Heroes - As the latest release from the Battle Bears franchise, Battle Bears Heroes revives the nostalgia of the popular top-down shooter game from the 2010s, mixing the charm of cuddly bear characters with the frantic fast-paced action of a 3v3 team deathmatch.

RON has a total supply of 1 billion (1,000,000,000) tokens, whose supply will be gradually unlocked over a period of nine years beginning in 2022. As of writing, the circulating supply stands at 294 million or 29.4% of the total possible supply. 

RON’s allocation is as follows: 25% is allocated for network rewards, 30% for community incentives, 30% is owned by SkyMavis, and the remaining 15% is used as an ecosystem fund. The 30% that SkyMavis owns is used for employee bonuses and shareholder contracts, the breakdown of which is disclosed in an official Ronin newsletter. 

Told you it was exciting stuff. 

Ready to start with crypto? $RON is now available on PDAX. Start your trading journey today.

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