DappRadar is a validator for the new sidechain solution
Sky Mavis has launched their in-house developed Ethereum sidechain Ronin to improve the user experience for their blockchain game Axie Infinity. Ronin needs to make it a lot cheaper for gamers to contribute to the overall in-game economy, which is driven through gameplay SLP rewards, Axie breeding, the AXS governance token, and upcoming features like land gameplay.
The Ethereum gas fees have been very high, troubling the user activity of blockchain games in particular. While decentralized finance (DeFi) applications can still support trading while using unreasonably high gas fees of ten dollars or more, gaming dapps can’t. Nobody wants to acquire a game item with a value of 5 dollars when the gas fee is triple the value of the item.
During the summer of 2020, the number of users diving into Axie Infinity increased a lot. Some of those users breed and trade Axies, others play the game to harvest Small Love Potions. Claiming these SLP tokens requires a transaction fee.
This used to be one dollar or less, but now this often costs more than ten dollars. Since late 2020 interacting with the Ethereum blockchain comes with a high gas fee, and as a result, the number of active user wallets dropped.
It’s also important to note that in January 2020 an average of 523 people played Axie Infinity (Sky Mavis, 2020). In December that weekly average increased to more than 23 thousand.
The popularity of a game automatically translates to more on-chain activity. However, when gas fees increased in late 2020, on-chain user activity dropped. The recent sudden increase in wallet activity had everything to do with the launch of Ronin, which had been teased on social media.
Move your items to Ronin
Sky Mavis solves the gas fee problem on Ethereum by moving the entire economy of Axie Infinity over to Ronin. Starting first with land and land items, which users can now migrate from Loom to Ronin.
Gamers who do this before February 25th will receive a special land item. In addition, Axies will soon move over from the Ethereum blockchain to Ronin as well.
The Ronin sidechain is a so-called Byzantine Fault Tolerant proof of authority (POA) network, which validators operate.
These validators are trustworthy partners, approved by Sky Mavis. DappRadar is one of the validators, alongside for example Binance, Animoca Brands, and Ubisoft.
