Users will now need RON to pay for transactions
The Ronin network is finally making the changes it proposed back in March, bringing more utility to the native RON token. The news will not come as a shock to the community, who have been anticipating the changes for a while now. Since the proposal one month ago RON has lost roughly 50% of its value.
Summary
- Proposed changes to the use of RON will take effect on April 28th.
- Users will now need to spend their RON to make transactions and can no longer rely on zero cost trades.
- The move comes as Axie Infinity and Ronin look to develop a more sustainable ecosystem. They can not afford to pay everyone’s transaction costs indefinitely.
The days of free transactions on the Ronin blockchain are finally over. It’s taken the network behind Axie Infinity a while to follow through on its announcement last month, when the team announced it was making sweeping changes to its marketplace. On April 28th, the network will massively restrict free transactions and users will need RON to carry out their trades.
DappRadar reported back on March 28th that the Ronin network was changing its terms of use and no longer allowing players to make trades without gas fees. Free transactions were necessary as users transitioned to the new Ronin blockchain. But now, the team behind Ronin wants to reduce players’ dependency on a zero-fees marketplace.
What are the changes?
As we reported back in March, the Ronin team is drastically reducing the number of free transactions that players can make on its network. Up until now, players could effectively make unlimited trades and not incur any gas fees.
Holding one Axie currently gives you three free transactions. Holding an MEO Axie allows ten free transactions per day. If a player has anything more substantial in their wallet, they have more free transactions than they can reasonably use.
As the graphic above shows, these days are over. Now players will need to spend their RON to make a trade or hold so many Axies and Lands that they can build up a store of free transactions to use on a monthly basis.
The Ronin team has also made it clear that the monthly allowance of free transactions is based on how many days in the month the player holds their asset for. It’s no good holding an MEO Axie for one day and thinking you’ll get two free transactions. You must hold the Axie for the entirety of the month to get your whole allowance.
Axie Infinity, Ronin and the RON token
It’s been a tough time for Axie Infinity and its blockchain Ronin. An expensive bridge hack in late March had an immediate impact on the game’s on-chain metrics and on people’s confidence in the security of the network.
It was an episode from which the platform is still recovering and it may be the reason why they pushed back the proposed changes to April 28th. Ensuring user and investor confidence was important during the crisis. Dealing with the fallout from the bridge hack probably took up a lot of the company’s time, which left little room for anything else.
Immediately after the hack, the RON token dropped by 20% and hasn’t recovered since. It’s currently trading around the $1.18 level. RON is the native token of the Ronin network and it enables transactions on the blockchain.
In the month that has followed the bridge exploit, the price of the AXS token dropped by 40%. AXS is the governance token of Axie Infinity and is on the Ethereum blockchain. Holders can stake it on the Ronin network and earn rewards.
Now we have confirmation that free transactions on Ronin will soon become a thing of the past, one might expect the importance of RON to increase and prices to go up. But bear in mind, RON is only important if people are making transactions in the Axie Infinity marketplace. So keep an eye on the game’s on-chain analytics using DappRadar’s tools.
You can also keep up to date with the Axie Infinity story as it unfolds by following our blog and our Twitter page. Check out where Axie Infinity compares with other games and dapps by using our rankings pages. Use our dedicated NFTs page to see if Axie Infinity can regain its place as the most important player in the blockchain space.
