Users of the Ronin wallet will no longer enjoy free transactions starting from October 9. The former subsidy for some of the Axie NFT owners and Ronin wallet accounts will be discontinued and replaced with a new, smaller package of free transactions.

Until recently, Sky Mavis allowed free transactions for selected owners of Axie NFT and Ronin wallet accounts. However, it will discontinue the program for a subsidized gas policy. Starting from October 9, all Ronin transactions will incur a fee of 0.01 RON as gas expenses, an equivalent of $0.016 per transaction.

The entire chain hosts 1.4M daily active users, mostly tied to popular games and NFT activities. Ronin manages under $5K in daily fees, while the Katana DEX carries around $13K in daily fees. The new gas fee is expected to benefit the chain’s validators. Ronin also pays out under $7K in daily token incentives.

However, Ronin stated that its goal is not to extract more fees, but to provide a sustainable ecosystem for gaming studios.

In place of the free transactions, Sky Mavis will introduce Ronin Waypoint, specifically targeted at new users. The first gas-free transactions aim to make the onboarding process easier, with no extra steps to transfer tokens and estimate gas fees. One of the use cases would be to allow gaming teams to onboard new users, by sponsoring their initial transactions.

The launch of Ronin Waypoint will start with Sky Mavis’ sponsorship. Until recently, the organization used its Ronin validator to mint the transactions for free.

The new sponsored transaction format allows any entity to become a sponsoring service. Whitelisted wallets can submit their initial transactions for free. The sponsoring service then co-signs the transaction and actually pays for the gas.

From the end user’s point of view, the transaction is free.

Ronin grows beyond Axie Infinity

The Ronin network was specifically created to carry Axie NFT and the native Katana DEX. Since then, Ronin turned into an all-around Web3 hub and a niche L2 network.

Ronin now carries the Pixels (PIXEL) game after its migration from Ethereum. Axie Infinity and its mini-games are also fully migrated, along with all the Axie NFT. Games like Wild Forest and Apeiron host more than 100K active daily users. Axie Infinity retained 75K active daily users, turning into a more sustainable Web3 game.

Ronin also hosts a small-scale DeFi sector, with around $135M in total value locked. Katana DEX is the leading app, with MetaLend trying to build up value for a native lending protocol.

Ronin is also drawing in stablecoins, though only around $31.4M as of the final week of September. The Ronin bridge remains active, though mostly for AXS and PIXEL tokens.

In the past few weeks, the chain also hosted inflows of $200K in WBTC, as well as $92.4M in WETH. Other bridged assets include Yield Guild Games (WGG) and PIXEL.

Bridged USDC is close to $32M, while Ronin hosts WETH, WBTC and other Web3 tokens. | Source: Dune Analytics

During the April peak in 2024, RON traded above $4, sparking hopes of double-digit valuations. However, the native RON token sank under $1.70 after the most recent market correction.

RON tokens are 57% unlocked, with 350M in circulation out of 1B total supply. From October 27 onward and for 92 days, RON will add 389.94K newly unlocked tokens to its circulating supply.

Ronin prepares to target game studios

The latest updates on Ronin are part of the chain’s strategy to target gaming studios. After gaining experience with the Axie community, Ronin is also reaching out to other game builders.

While play-to-earn games became unsustainable due to token inflation, the Web3 game stack is alive and well, and Ronin is scaling its services to new builders. The Sky Mavis publishing team is creating pathways for game studios to launch on Ronin. Recently launched projects include Forgotten Runiverse, Lumiterra and Ragnarok: Monster World.

The chain said it will try to vet games that already have a playable version, or are at most six months from launching. Ronin’s goal is to avoid supporting vaporware projects or games that only want to extract funding through NFT sales.

Cryptopolitan reporting by Hristina Vasileva.