Open Ronin official announcement, 1kx heavy bet, can Ronin usher in a golden age?

Author: Zen, PANews

The dull blockchain game track has finally seen some noise. Recently, the Ethereum game network Ronin has attracted attention. This ecosystem with the largest Web3 game community announced the "Open Ronin" plan, opening the door to all developers, allowing them to build new games, decentralized applications or other projects in the ecosystem. "The golden age of Ronin has begun", and Ronin has high hopes for this major change.

Against the backdrop of a long-term downturn in the Web3 game market, Ronin has performed well in recent years. From the popular farm game Pixels at the beginning of last year, to the first Web3 god simulation game Apeiron, to the popular full-chain game Pirate Nation also disclosed in the "Open Ronin" plan announcement, Ronin has become the new home that many blockchain game teams are looking forward to with its "growth effect".

Fully open, Open Ronin may be a new engine to accelerate growth?

In the past, Ronin has always chosen to take the "boutique route", only selecting project developers that they believe to be of high quality, and carefully planning and empowering them with ecology and resources.

Ronin co-founder Jeff "Jihoz" Zirlin once said that there is an "oversupply" of games in the crypto space, but insufficient player demand. He also said: "This strategy emphasizes quality rather than quantity, allowing us to work closely with fewer teams and ensure their long-term success in the growing Web3 gaming space." According to Dune, four games, Pixel, The Machines Arena, Axie Infinity, and Apeiron, currently support the entire ecosystem, accounting for at least 90% of the player share.

The newly released "Open Ronin" plan clearly shows that Ronin has abandoned its original strategy. "Now that the ecosystem is more mature and market demand is growing, it makes sense to move to a more self-service model that will allow more developers and creators to build, experiment, and expand on Ronin while maintaining the quality and success that made it so appealing in the first place," said Trung Nguyen, CEO and co-founder of Sky Mavis , in a statement.

Sky Mavis, the developer of the hit game Axie Infinity and the designer of the Ronin blockchain, released the Ronin Developer Console as a toolkit to help those building on the network. The toolkit will help developers create simple NFT listings, sponsorship transactions (so players can avoid paying gas fees), and in-game marketplaces, and will provide smart contract templates. "With Open Ronin, we are accelerating growth - unlocking more games, DeFi, and dApps than ever before," said Nguyen.

Zirlin claimed that by being license-free, the number of games deployed on the Ronin gaming network will grow faster. He hopes that through this "let a hundred flowers bloom" approach, Ronin will avoid missing out on the next hit, replicate the past success of Axie Infinity and Pixels, and promote further development of the ecosystem.

According to Token Terminal data, 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. In addition, over the past year, Ronin's daily and weekly active users have begun to decline after reaching a peak of 1.7 million and 2.6 million in August 2024, and have returned to the level at the beginning of last year. However, judging from the indicators, Ronin is still one of the ten most used blockchains in the world.

"Top supporter" 1kx bets heavily on Ronin

Earlier this month, the well-known investment institution 1kx network announced that in the past year and a half, it has become one of the largest holders of Ronin's RON tokens through a series of open market liquidity purchases. 1kx said that Ronin is leading the Play-to-Earn revolution in the gaming industry and is expected to become the core platform in the next generation of gaming, competing with top gaming platforms such as Steam and Epic.

Unlike other projects that claim to have launched tens of millions of dollars in ecological funds, the Ronin Ecological Fund has invested less than 10 million U.S. dollars in the entire ecological construction so far, mainly used to invest in games rather than provide subsidies.

1kx believes that Ronin's core advantage is its distribution capabilities and the most sticky early community. Even in the most difficult times, Axie's core player community remains active, which has become the cornerstone of the Ronin ecosystem. It is also based on this distribution advantage that Ronin attracted Pixels to migrate from Polygon and quickly rose to reach a milestone of over one million daily active users in May 2024. The success of Pixels' "tree moving and living" has formed a demonstration effect, and blockchain games such as Fableborne and The Forgotten Runiverse have begun to leave their original ecosystems and move to Ronin.

In addition, Ronin is the only chain built by an application product team that has a deep understanding of the actual operation of the game economy and can provide the team with precise guidance on real-time token economic execution.

1kx also pointed out that users of the Ronin ecosystem are the most valuable on-chain transaction users in the entire crypto industry. Its NFT market transaction volume ranked fourth in the past year, second only to ETH, Solana and Base. Ecosystem users have invested more than 10 million US dollars in game casting and crowdfunding in the past year. The 30-day new address retention rate is 3 times higher than Base and 17.5 times higher than Solana. 1kx believes that the above data not only shows the quality of Ronin users, but also reflects the core culture of the Ronin ecosystem:

• High integrity : A deep trust relationship is established between users and developers;
• Long-termism : After experiencing bull and bear cycles, we still maintain continuous development;
• Positive-sum thinking : all parties in the ecosystem grow together, rather than zero-sum competition;
• Community first : Strong community cohesion is the key to Ronin's ability to survive market cycles

“This spirit not only helped the community survive the bear market, but also re-emerged in 2025 as one of the most valuable communities in the crypto consumer space.”