coinculture.com
Amidst this year’s bullish market, numerous crypto narratives from previous cycles are resurfacing, including gaming crypto. The Ronin network, known for its game Axie Infinity, has once again taken the spotlight.
Since the beginning of 2024, Ronin’s user base has surged by over 700%, outpacing the growth of Solana’s DeFi landscape fueled by meme coins, as well as TON, the blockchain platform associated with Telegram’s expanding crypto endeavours.
The catalyst behind Ronin’s resurgence is a single game: Pixels. This low-fidelity farming game allows players to cultivate digital land and embark on quests to earn digital currencies. Over the past month alone, DappRadar reports that Pixels has attracted 1.25 million unique users.
Beneath the surface, Pixels is generating a wave of enthusiasm reminiscent of the fervour surrounding Axie Infinity. In places like the Philippines, play-to-earn gaming has once again become a viable means of livelihood, defying earlier expectations.
Jeffery Zirlin, Sky Mavis’s head of growth, notes the unexpected popularity of crypto gaming, suggesting that it doesn’t require studio-quality video games to thrive. Despite being a relatively simple pixelated farming game, Pixels has emerged as a major force in the sector.
Unlike Axie Infinity, Pixels was not initially developed by Sky Mavis for the Ronin network. It originally debuted on Polygon before migrating to Ronin last October, long before the current bull market. Despite starting with around 3,000 daily active users, Pixels now boasts figures reaching up to 750,000.
While these numbers may pale in comparison to Axie Infinity’s peak, Zirlin highlights Ronin’s even larger user base, boasting 12.7 million wallet downloads. These users are potentially primed to engage with NFTs that enhance gameplay in Pixels, although such engagement isn’t mandatory from the outset.
Zirlin emphasises Sky Mavis’s commitment to crypto gaming despite its seasonal nature, acknowledging its tendency to thrive during bullish periods and decline during bearish ones. However, he asserts that the company is well-prepared to navigate these fluctuations and considers them a natural part of the industry’s dynamics.