The blockchain-powered game Axie Infinity has been a very popular application during the last 12 months, as the game’s NFTs have outpaced every NFT collection today in terms of all-time sales. While Axie Infinity has seen $3.85 billion in all-time sales, Nansen researcher Martin Lee recently published a report on how Ronin, Axie Infinity’s sidechain, has seen exponential growth.
Researcher Takes a Deep Dive Into Axie Infinity’s Ronin Network
Sky Mavis developed Axie Infinity an Ethereum-based blockchain gaming platform. It has witnessed a large number of NFT transactions surpassing any compilation. Axie Infinity’s total annual sales have reached $3.85 billion. This is out of 1.44million buyers who participated in 12.6 million transactions. Axie Infinity uses sidechain Ronin, which is Ethereum-based, to reduce scaling problems. In the introduction to Axie Infinity’s Ronin, Nansen researcher Martin Lee explains that Ethereum’s Layer one (L1) “was not built for gaming.”
To handle the issue with high fees and scaling problems, Axie Infinity’s development team created the Ronin sidechain to help facilitate transactions in a faster and inexpensive fashion. Lee’s research report compares Ronin to the sidechain protocol Polygon and the Layer two (L2) blockchain Arbitrum One. This study describes how Ronin has its native wallet to manage sidechain transactions. Interestingly, when it comes to scaling Lee’s report shows that last November, “Ronin processed over 560% of the total number of transactions on Ethereum.”
“While there is no official documentation on the max TPS (transactions per second) of the Ronin network, it has a block time of ~3s (ETH averages ~13s),” Lee’s study highlights. “Executing trades on the Axie marketplace and sending assets over the network are completed within seconds.” The researcher’s report also highlights a comparison of gas fees as the study’s author states:
The gas costs for Ethereum are between 50 and 100 gwei, making micro-transactions economically uneconomic. Ronin offers 100 transactions for free per wallet every day. There will be an additional fee for the $RON token in the future. But it is likely to cost less than $1.
Study Envisions Other Developers Leveraging Ronin, Nansen Researcher Concludes ‘It’s still early days for Ronin’
This study examines Katana, an AxieInfinity decentralized exchange platform (dex). Lee’s report highlights how the multi-chain layering works and the fact that when it comes to gaming applications specifically, L1 networks cannot adjust beyond their main specialization. “A lot of blockchains, whether they like it or not, will specialize,” Lee stressed in the report. Lee further noted that when Ronin grows mature and stable, “other games developers can start to build their games on Ronin.” Lee’s report continues:
The Ronin network, despite being launched less than a year ago has proved to be an effective scaling solution for gaming. Axie Infinity was born, and Gamefi/Play–to-earn followed.
Lee’s study draws the inference, that while the network does have flaws and is “more centralized than the community would like,” the developers’ Sky Mavis “made consistent steps to decentralize it.” The report notes the distribution of RON tokens and the LPs on the Katana dex. “It’s still early days for Ronin and it will be interesting to see how the blockchain develops and grows over time. What will Ronin do for the gaming industry? Only time will tell,” Lee’s study concludes.
What do you think about Nansen researcher Martin Lee’s study on the Ronin network and how it has outperformed some L1 networks in recent times? Please comment below to let us know your thoughts on this topic.
Images CreditsShutterstock. Pixabay. Wiki commons. Nansen Research. Martin Lee
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