Jeffrey "Jiho" Zirlin: Ronin Goes Permissionless

Transcript

you're now plugged in to the deli podcast hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the deli podcast today I am delighted to have jho on the show uh of Sky Mavis developers of axi infinity very much the team that kind of gave the activation energy to this entire sector of gaming and uh kind of kicked it all off so jho it's a pleasure to have you here excited today again yeah thanks for having me man um yeah super excited today to be digging into all things Ronin and uh you know some exciting upcoming developments in terms of things going permissionless but wanted to kind of uh stage set for those that somehow may not have been following along for kind of the broader Arc of the Ronin Legacy like maybe we can just take

a step back and you can give us uh I know it's been quite a wild Journey but maybe you can give us a super high level of like you know way back starting with axi uh all the way through to where we are now like what are some of the kind of key Milestones as you see it um maybe you could kind of just yeah fill us in on that broad Arc to to kind of stage set for people before we dig in yeah for sure so the story of ronin really starts with axi infinity and so axi it's kind it's obviously gone on to make quite a name for itself it's in the Guinness Book of World Records now as the number one nft project by alltime trading volume but once upon a time it was just this idea of a creature collecting battling game on ethereum uh basically

many of the early team members Founders community members met while playing crypto kitties and and kind of had this idea of a game that could really show what a blockchain powered game could be but so yeah you know we or this all started out in 2018 but while we built out axi we you know realized that one uh ethereum was not built uh to accommodate gaming and that two like a lot of the tools and infrastructure that we needed to build a blockchain game hadn't been created yet right so uh we actually had the experience of trying to build uh axi on a very early ethereum scaling

solution called Loom Network this might be like a blast from the past for some people but this was uh this was like kind of state-of-the-art uh scaling technology back then they had Georgios working on it seemed very promising and but it didn't it just didn't really work out right so we kind of learned this lesson that hey you don't want to build your startup on top of someone else's startup um so we decided hey no one's going to be able to build a gaming chain like us because we're basically the only web 3 game developers uh that have uh had this experience um of building for a live community so we decided to do it oursel uh and yeah we built Ronin to be the gaming chain that we needed for axi um and so when we deployed axi to Ronin

axis's uh experienced exponential growth it's you know what I like to say is axi was the first game to experience the Rona effect right so within six or nine months of deploying um axi onto Ronin axi went from 19,000 da to 2.8 million da and basically generated a billion dollars in revenue and so uh yeah so that's you know that was the story that was the story of axi and Ronin in the beginning um and then I think the next chapter right is you know obviously there's there's a bare Market everything is uh got uh uh you know a bit deflated um but there were teams that were interested in now building on the Ronin

Network saying hey we know that this infrastructure accommodated axis's exponential rise that's more than you can say for basically any other uh blockchain um and right this team right they probably have a lot of insights on uh what went well what didn't go well right a lot of basically insights into how to run a live economy how to actually operate a web 3 game uh so one of those teams uh was pixels um so pixels I think that's really like the second inflection point where pixels deploy deployed on to Ronin from polygon went from 5,000 to a million plus da uh generated a ton of Revenue were able to right get get on to a become a binance

Launchpad project um so I think that was like the second uh major inflection point that was you know November 2023 uh roughly um and a couple of months onward W I think that was the second inflection point that then brought in this second generation of amazing Builders teams Like Fable born um forgotten R runiverse um Cambria what have you absolutely um so yeah I'm curious then like what was that sort of initial um phase like you know we often talk about in the games industry where people like nailed the killer product right and then pivot into building out sort of platform or infray as well right steam and halflife 2 you know epic games with fortnite um like you know what what did that early period

look like I guess in terms of saying okay you know we've kind of proven we validated this like talk me through the like decision to you know kind of like the curated approach when you guys were initially looking at it like what were those early conversations in 2023 like like what were the kind of things that you were looking for um and yeah would love to just get a bit more about your kind of thinking on how you were going to navigate this like it's a pretty big deal right like the the next sort of title that you launch and make a big push on and obviously there was yeah um huge success in doing that with pixels but we'd love to understand a bit more about thinking at the time and so we can sort of track how that's evolved yeah sure I mean so basically when we decided

to go get into basically the business of publishing games using our infrastructure we had a fork in the road to choose would we right kind of spray and prey um give out a lot of Grants and you know just basically take a lot of shots on goal you can make the argument right that that sounds like the smarter approach right don't pick winners game industry is a hit driven business right like just uh make sure that right you have enough shots on goal that a few uh land we decided to go with a different approach we felt like we had the ability to pick winners having been a winner ourselves um that we felt like we could pick teams that had the right combination of technical ability leadership uh web three uh incentive

understanding um and that was also right like what we felt like we had to do because we weren't going to be able to compete with some of these huge other chains that were that had these uh you ecosystem funds that were in the hund almost like in the billions of dollars why because they're not like gaming uh specific right so we felt like our approach had to be quality over quantity um and I think that had a lot of like important implications down the line um so yeah we chose to go with like a smaller number UPF front uh of teams and that we would basically work uh really heavily and have take a a Hands-On approach uh with these teams um and so that's what we did right like so

we worked heavily with teams like pixels um helping them right like with their go to market teach uh you know answering questions around incentive design and and um basically releasing a token things like that uh so that was our strategy we felt like it was uh right for us uh where you know we felt like we had this very spe specific knowledge and we could basically anoint um you know a few uh good teams um and see hey are our hypotheses working are we able to um actually Venture into this games publishing business and you know so far it's worked Works uh worked so far but now right like we're now on the

precipice of maybe the third inflection point uh which is the opening up of ronin where we go from this curated approach um where we're basically only working and having a a certain number of uh teams that we really believe in Deploy on Ronin to now just right let letting it rip right where it's become too much work and to try and like control all this entropy of right like basically making it so that every single team that wants to deploy on Ronin would have to talk to us and kind of go through some sort of a vetting process um you know we we feel like we're now be we've now become the bottleneck and it's time to remove ourselves as that bottleneck and just uh see what happens uh as we open up the network I'm curious

is there some element of like um obviously sort of trade-offs come with this I mean you working so closely with these teams with these teams had the added benefit of you know you guys able to sort of invest in them like you know uh basically capture some upside from like their individual successes as well like is that something you guys worry about being diminished now or are you still looking to kind of um work very closely with a particular kind of golden cohort or whatever would love to understand how that piece has evolved because I know for a long time you guys are able to you know um basically come on pretty attractive terms in terms of engaging these teams early and help you know King make them as you say anoint them uh yeah curious how that piece is evolving yeah I'm glad you bring this up

because this is something that we want to be really clear on is that even though we're opening up Ronin we will still be investing in and Publishing certain select teams that we think are really great it's just that right like there will be more of a ability to almost audition as well for this direct publishing relationship by just being on Ronin um and and gaining traction on Ronin before you kind of get on our radar whereas in the past it was like Hey get traction on you know someone mother chain polygon what treasure whatever and then if you do well there uh you can come over um I think it's just it's going to be a little bit different and more open and I just I think just better for Ronin if that kind of trial period happens on on Ronin but

we will still be uh you know investing and and Publishing games because you know a lot of the value ad that we bring as game Publishers not just hey like you guys are you guys are whitelisted to the play on Ronin right it comes with the advisory on uh you know token go to market uh you know using all of our channels right we have we have uh millions of emails right that we don't we don't people don't necessarily know about know about this or talk about it enough but uh you know we have millions of emails right from uh over the years that we're you know able to leverage U for these games as they start to as they come on the the chain and those are the types of things right there are certain like basically benefits that only direct publishing games um have access to absolutely and

and so you kind of touched on this notion that there's you know you guys felt like you were becoming a bit of a a bottleneck with this created approach and there was a ton of sort of demand to open up like I'm curious um yeah whether there's anything beyond that that you can touch on to answer the kind of like why now right obviously you have this like I mean a ton of projects that I'm insanely excited about we were on a spaces last week right touching on a few of them I think you have an incredibly strong cohort which are a really cool blend of like representative of each sort of genre that's going to do well I think it's going to do really well uh you know in the web through gaming space but yeah like the why now question I'm curious because obviously we've had a

lot of teams building throughout all of these years like lots of things that are going to be coming to market now was it like a function of something in broader like Market structure that you guys were seeing with a number of projects coming out as well would love to understand a bit more about yeah why why now early 2025 was the time to pull the trigger on this yeah I I think I think for us right we're we're seeing that you know with the new Administration uh there's this golden window um to really seize the moment and right that you know I think the rationale that just makes sense to us is like if Sky Mavis applied to build on Ronin today would they make it um if the next guy Mavis right it's like maybe a team that isn't super experienced but um you know has something interesting or

unique you know we feel like our ability to screen everything just right by you can basically just by the sheer number of applications that we we have to screen um right that's like one metric that's going uh you know through the roof I think also right like Market environment where you know we're anticipating a very strong H2 um you know I think like H it's look right now like q1 um maybe looking a little bit dicey but you know I think H2 uh we should start to see Bitcoin dominance um trending down and you know that would uh we would basically like we're we're predicting I would say uh that Bas you know we'll start to see like as rates start to come down the uh the spread between the federal funds rate

and like basically yield on ethereum should start to diverge that basically uh starts to get more uh onchain uh TBL um in the ethereum ecosystem I think like hopefully basically contributes to a decreasing Bitcoin dominance ratio uh better better for alts better for gaming right historically what you saw uh gaming season right the very exponential phase of gaming season happened from May 2021 to November of 2021 right so that'd be like basically H2 um and kind of line up with that and um yeah we haven't really seen like the perfect Market structure for gaming yet um which I think is you know good um in some ways um where you would basically

want to see you know Bitcoin um having gone on a huge run and and and and starting to make uh you know Trend towards 40% um uh dominance where it's right now I believe like 61 62% BTC dominance was really really high and not indicative of you know the end of a bull market or anything like that absolutely well uh inshah let's see um excited for all of that for all of that to come one of the other pieces I'm uh Curious on as well is like you guys kind of you know wrote The Playbook in terms of you know uh bringing a community along for a ride right there's a ton of people that you know had tremendous success uh within your ecosystem it kind of evoked this insane loyalty and evangelism I think

that's part of why you know we've seen this continued success into Ronin right where um all of your early curated mints things like that were complete sellouts right everyone was like hungry for the next thing because they trusted you guys to deliver on you know uh you know basically the curation aspect and bringing more strong products into the ecosystem I think we've continued to see that right like you see these projects that come in and launch and do their mints and stuff is is going really well like um you know there's this concept that as you this this notion that as you kind of go permissionless and open up it's like more people kind of competing for the same pool of players um I'm curious like what your take on that is as as you know more projects come into the ecosystem and as you know with

crypto broadly like you know attention scarcity trying to play these games is hard enough like uh how do you think about that um within the Ronin ecosystem you know in the absence of huge new player growth yeah I mean I think that's a sign of people projecting the current uh situation to right go indefinitely into the future whereas you know we've had experience with the 0o to one in reflection points where something gets invented um through pressure and competition and uh teams innovating that then uh gets the space to the next level right um that was like SLP and play to earn with axi um VIP system with pixels uh so the way that I see it is that the more good projects and the higher

shipping velocity of quality economic experiments with these in-game economies obviously right like the games are getting better we know that the games are getting like a lot better every year basically almost month by month uh but the thing that will likely right like unlock the next uh crazy hyperbolic growth moment that brings in net new uh users likly be related to some sort of uh token incentive uh refinement um so I think like you know for us we want Ronin to be home to the most sophisticated experiments uh in web 3 gaming incentives um and right the more team we have like the more more teams we have shipping out unique experiments and Designs um you know I think that's just

going to help everyone and um get more data and and you know more this is like a chance where it's like more shots on goals when goal when it comes to these economic experiments that's what gets us to like the next uh kind of zero to one moment absolutely yeah M makes sense makes sense um I just see like you know I'm in some ways concerned uh when we look at the border gaming market right which feels a little jaded right there's like only so much liquidity that's like aping every new thing and uh seems what like um somewhat dilutive and a bit PVP at the moment some of these recent launches that we've seen not necessarily on Ronin but just just broadly and so uh it's something I'm tracking but you know certainly uh big big believer we're going to see a strong uptick in this and

the products are here now like when the next wave of you know broader retention comes into this space so definitely definitely feeling good on that front um I'm curious then like as times evolv and you've learned more working from these teams like I said last week when we were chatting that I really think Ronan has kind of nailed this you know like very token literate teams kind of more like midcore casual stuff we've seen some really amazing products coming out um but like what are some of the key traits that you are looking for in founders of gaming projects these days like what are the things that seem to have ticked the boxes and have delivered success so far would love to understand yeah how how those insights of yours have evolved yeah sure I there are certain characteristics that we look for in the

founding teams right it could be the founder if there's one or the founding team in general um I I tend to think that having at least two uh right maybe uh very very highly incentivized U team members whether they're Founders or Executives um is helpful um but yeah you know generally we're looking for uh Founders that have uh great leadership skills right so people say we need like a guy who's in the trenches or good at community building I think that actually what you really need is someone who understands how to lead people um uh someone who understands how to communicate expectations to under promise and overd deliver um someone who

can set a direction for the entire Community to basically get in line and and and move in one common uh unified step um so you know I think I think that's important uh we're also looking for teams that have at least someone on the founding team that uh has uh technical chops because right like you don't want people who are just selling air right like you you could have someone who's really great great leadership skills but if they don't actually have the ability uh to deliver what they're uh you know the Del the vision that they're setting right that that gets into dangerous territory right so basically right like teams that can build and teams that can sell um and that's actually that's really that's

very very very uh rare uh to find in in in Founders especially web 3 gamer Founders where there's three either like typically you know great at uh you know building games or more on the technical side or to like kind of you know just salesman right but it's it's hard to find uh either Founders that are both or uh founding teams that have both um kind of evened out amongst them um so yeah I think like you know teams that you either want them to have uh you want also like some well balanced uh some balance right between web 3 experience as well as uh the ability to actually make games um so you know you you uh

teams Like Fable born are are pretty rare and and awesome when we find them where it's like hey they've been familiar with crypto for a while but also have a tons of tons of experience building uh you know mobile freetop playay games um that's something uh pretty rare but when we see that uh see something like that uh our eyes light up um Luke right is another founder that comes to mind where he hasn't engineering background but he's also great at he he studied computer science economics right so he has an understanding of incentives uh he's great with the community um so yeah I I it's kind of like that's what we've seem to be working absolutely um no very very excited for for fable born I got to say Fable born yeah love cam love what he's

doing um yeah stoked to see you know go to go to token launch and turning on some of those sort of like growth uh fly wheels as well um you know already the the kind of play test metrics this thing have being insane in the absence of that so uh I I needed to come back man I was playing I was actually playing so much that my wife was my wife was Act was watching me and she said that I was so good that she was like really impressed I was like I don't think I'm you know I was I was I wasn't that amazing but it's like interesting that that game when women watch you play that game they think that you're really good uh at playing games uh Rel uh relative to other other games out there because I guess it's like you have to have like

you know some dexterity you're like you're dodging a ton of stuff you look like you're a really good gamer if you're like decent I guess at that's that's funny that's why she's your wife I suppose hype Beast hyping you up there I love that but she's not always like that right sometimes sometimes she'll be like this game is boring or right she'll just stop watching right yeah there you go the the other one in on Ronin that I'm super excited about is CRA I love what those guys are doing I think it's uh yeah um we've been talking about the old you know onchain RuneScape thesis for so many years cambrid is U yeah I mean Ben is Ben is crushing it on that front so yeah very excited to see what comes with that um yeah I guess we kind of touched on then

like yeah sort of what you're looking for in Founders for the ecosystem I guess I'd also be curious to get your perspective on like from almost the founders view you know what are they looking for in an ecosystem right like um obviously you know you guys were sort of so early to this gaming like uh thesis you guys obviously delivered an an insane product have a ton of learnings that comes with that but like I mean yeah how are you guys looking to sort of like um more you know longer term kind of differentiate In This Very saturated infrastructure landscape you may have seen that last year there were like more gaming chains launched than products right which is just an insane reality that that we've been confronted with so yeah I'd love to understand just

your your view on that kind of trend and like you know if you're a Founder approaching this now like you know what what are you looking for and how's Ronin looking to stand out yeah sure I think Founders come to us uh for a variety of reasons I think foremost is our expertise uh and how we can help with distribution uh this is like two in two ways right one is obviously just advice and sharing our learnings um and then uh you know second way is right just leveraging all of our different channels and basically all the mini platforms that uh are kind of vertically integrated to make up Ronin right whether that's Discovery through the Ronin wallet the Mavis Marketplace our millions of emails right our our socials right all the founder founder channels um those are kind of right the mechanical elements that make up the

runin effect and I think they're also looking for very responsive uh devil to be honest right where it's like hey right uh a lot of this stuff they're going to need to ask questions um you know when they're building um so it's like how right how scalable can you make that right for some of our right like this is also a reason that having a direct publishing relationship with is with us is helpful right because like obviously our engineers and and devel people can be like you know way more uh give way more attention to them um but um you know I also think that our docs are pretty good and getting better every day um but so I think that's another thing right is like the chain infrastructure needs to work and if they they have questions they want to right basically get handheld a little bit uh

you know when it relates to basically getting it up and running so um I think those are the I think those are uh you know the big things I think another uh thing is around basically around token stuff um right so I think this is also why right like uh we worked well together right where it's like you know we love teams that are working with Deli because we know that you you know they're also getting another uh pair of eyes uh on their token design helping with the token go to market and stuff like that um so yeah I think like game economy design token design you know advice on listing strategy things like that that's you know that's another uh you know key aspect that people are looking um at from basically our publishing and you know um yeah from our publishing of things right so there's

kind of right like some things that everyone can get on on Ronin just by being on Ronin especially once Ronin opens up and then there are certain things right that you have to be a bit closer to us um you know to go through basically the publishing uh platform um offering uh to really get like full access to absolutely and then I guess just additionally one thing that like for a period of time seemed to govern every single conversation I was having with Founders when we had you know I used to refer to it as the grant Wars like these Big E systems that had a ton of cash that were just chucking around like pretty insane incentives for teams to come over and try and like you know do BD that way I think that's since kind of um uh recessed a bit um but would

love to understand like yeah just any any of like high level thoughts on that kind of period that we saw and also how does that translate into now like I think most people have really wisened up about like you know how and when grants could and should be used but like what does that look like for you guys especially going permissionless now like how do you how do you think through all of that I think we were in a very very good position to sidestep that battle H why well one it's like we didn't have the cash uh to to be able to right fight that war and have some asymmetric Advantage so we decided not to to fight it and to choose another way of of winning uh so it was you know by necessity to from experience uh we Once Upon a Time right

axi was that game that was searching for a chain and we realize right that if you choose based on any other Factor other than hey this is this is the chain that's going to make me a commercial success right it's like what are you going to do like you're going to optimize for a couple million dollars maybe $10 million and uh maybe not and but also be faced with a chain that's not fit for gaming not fit for your project community and and also maybe be your potential downfall right like we got offered $10 million grants from EOS right imagine if we had imagine if we take taken those from axi right good um and and other and many other chains that are you know I won't mention cuz they're still around or whatever right but we'd

gone through that and we were like hey like this is this sounds like right like okay we can drisk ourselves for a year or two that maybe sounds nice uh if we're afraid but you if you live and make your decisions out of fear you're not going to be able to right like get that huge outcome which right any founder should realistically be uh aiming for totally um no makes makes sense and as I say glad to see that that's evolved somewhat um I not to say right that we you know that's not to say that we don't have grants right obviously we have grants we we'll make investments right but uh we're not looking to right compete in size or right like we're we're looking to compete in terms of what we can do uh and provide to make your game a success

right we want Ronin to be the best place to build grow monetize web three games and offering huge crazy grants right that's not uh you know that that's not a that's a false requirement mhm absolutely makes sense um we touched on a few games that you're kind of excited about a couple specific ones earlier but um yeah I think like zooming out a little bit you know what what are some of the kind of themes or Trends you're seeing around you know where kind of crypto gaming is um that you're excited by right like whether that's you know thematic genre stuff or or or you know some of this AI infusion I'd love to know some stuff that you're seeing in the market or that you're looking for in the market at that's exciting you yeah I

mean I think things that we're bullish on are like minimum viable MMOs right so it's like basically web three gaming has been a thing for about four or five years now right so it's like we and we from the beginning have known that MMOs just make sense uh but it takes some time right it takes some time to to to build one out so it's kind of like my like little pet phrase is minimum viable MMOs we're starting to see some of them get on the market we're starting to see some of them uh do volume um so that's your you know forgotten runes your uh Lumias your cambas um for example uh you know next is kind of the yeah like mobile midcore maybe like your AR

RPGs um all right table warn comes to mind where it's like uh mobile so it's going to be very accessible to our to our uh user base um it's going to have like short Punchy uh sessions yeah so like midcore arpg uh games that are going to have like uh you know 10 to 15 minute uh perhaps even shorter uh you know session times really Snappy uh play sessions um but also right like having this ability to have like some sort of a uh progression system that allows for like syncing of of tokens so um so those are some of so that's you know that's what we're kind of seeing right now um

you know I'm I'm personally right like less bullish on um yeah well I'm not gonna say what I'm less bullish on but yeah I think that those specifically uh you know I also think that like browser browser based games right because uh uh are are have an in in interestingly good position right where it's like very accessible you can play it on both a phone or a desktop um and yeah you're able to play some of these like you know kind of relatively basic MMOs out of out out of browsers now absolutely I I guess kind of like following on from that as well I'm curious um also what you're seeing in terms of some of the kind of token Innovation and different approaches to managing that side of things with these sort of like onchain game economies like um yeah what are

some of the things that you're seeing that people are trying that you know seem to hold promise some of the stuff that you know stood out to me even around like you know Fable born for example having these more sort of like time boxed events right which give you much more control over like you know uh inflation adjustments all these kind of things things like seasonal wipes you know we're starting to see people Tinker with with these types of things more and more but yeah curious what you've seen across the breadth of you know the the kind of ring ecosystem that's interesting to you right now so some things that I'm seeing is teams getting way more dialed in when it comes to U measuring uh basically like uh Ras right so it's like basically return on token spend uh so it's like okay you're

emitting tokens what are you getting you're getting some right social engagement mind share uh you know some Revenue uh and your ideally you're able to basically emit these tokens in a way that maximizes the future market cap of your token um so I'm I'm starting to see teams get really scientific with this um you know we actually did you know have made a lot of progression on the axi side right because remember we still keep continue to Tinker and learn with axi and and bring that those types of learnings to the rest of the roning games and kind of Vice Versa right there a lot of things that we learned from pixels that we implemented in axi that improved its economy um so I think that's another like amazing like aspect of ronin ecosystem

is like right the knowledge sharing it's almost like early Silicon Valley where you have this Ronin Mafia of Founders that are all uh performing these economic experiments and it's like hey like right like we if we if we invent something or we come up with something we're going to share it with you uh and there's the right the understanding that it that it goes both ways um so I think yeah just really getting really dialed in on uh on uh basically return on token spend um you know we're seeing more uh variations of the play to airdrop um as well uh you know I think as you mentioned right like just the the very time box events um Dynamic nfts right so I think like I saw uh I was I was I was pleased to see like Fable born having like kind

of the upgradeable land um so that's something actually that we you know we we made with axi where you know axis now uh can be upgraded over time um and in order basically you need to burn tokens to make them more powerful more beautiful and able to earn more um and you know that that's this that's the mechanic right where that we're starting to see right cuz like it used to be right that uh nfts were about like breeding right so it's like you would earn tokens and use them to breed and you just have this kind of horizontally expanding uh base of nfts uh but I think like the future you might still have those types of mechanics um andan I think they still work in certain games but I'm I'm more interested in like

vertically vertically vertical progression of nfts Right Where You're basically earning tokens and using them to make your existing nfts more powerful uh I I'm pretty sure that uh Fable born will be doing stuff like that you know once they have the the loot system out and you can basically earn equipment for your for your avatar so I think that's going to be a game changer as well uh because right there's no real like character progression system aside from the XP which I guess has been getting wiped uh anyway right so I think that's going to be like a game Cher for fable burn it's like kind of related to the enthusiasm that I have for uh those types of dynamic progression systems for nfts in general we haven't seen anyone TP uh we haven't seen one of those like

really really be like the game changer or some kind of hyperbolic growth uh Catalyst or lever but uh those right those are the types of mechanics that we need right to make these game economies more resilient and and kind of less uh prone to Market fluctuations I love that I'll definitely definitely keep an eye out of things that affect uh I also yeah want want to get your view on like you know just updated most recent thoughts on sort of like play to earn as a category right like a lot of people love to do the whole you know play to earn things over but I think we're still seeing you know a ton of enduring success and activity and excitement from lots of lots of different Founders around this so would love Yeah would love your high level view on that and then kind kind of have

a followup I want to dig into as well yeah play to earn is evolving it continues to evolve and get better on the running network uh right like we went through the whole play to airdrop phase right which is really just play to earn just uh with kind of like like predetermined amounts and a predetermined uh time window so you know I I see uh play to earn getting uh better uh with every iteration um teams are getting you know a lot more data they're getting a lot more a lot smarter with how they're Distributing these incentives and I mean why would you question play to earn when right there are teams that are airdropping 50% of their supply on on day one right it's like um it's you know from first principles right it's it's

like okay if nobody mines Bitcoin Bitcoin is dead therefore we're emitting uh mining rewards right same thing in the game right it's like nobody's playing your game then you're dead therefore right like we're emitting these awards no one's making content for your game right if no one is like thinking long term uh so it's just a better way of sharing upside in a project uh with your player base with your golden cohort M right like eventually it's not going to be right that you know eventually you're it's not going to be that like every single generation of user that plays this game is definitely going to be able to have a huge outcome right that's not how it's going to be but uh I think web three gaming the play to earn is really about like uh allowing your golden cohort to

uh grow with you and to uh basically dedicate more of their life uh to the game right that was the thing that we saw with axi is like there were people who were just able to justify to their friends and family members why they were spending so much time on the internet because of this they would have played for probably for you know a lot of them would have played uh for free but the fact that they were able to get us get a little something out of it right is like helps when you're negotiating for you know video game time with your wife right totally I love that I love that framing um yeah one of the things I'm also curious to your view on is like one of the areas that I like you know is starting to warm up we're seeing so much

like onchain experimentation around the whole like a gentic piece of things right um I haven't yet seen like the huge strong like you know products where that's like being firmly integrated with games but obviously people are working on it and there's lots of exciting stuff happening you know um tin from Cipher a great example of someone that's like you know really building this kind of into the game design itself like yeah I'm curious how something like that um you know eventually intersects with this notion of you know emissions and rewards and trying to get people aligned right because I feel like either yeah either that can happen inadvertently or people can try and build it into the game itself and have like you know your agents basically part of ipating in a similar fashion and then the whole strategy becomes you know who can optimize and prompt and manage this

portfolio of Agents as well like yeah just curious for any of your thoughts on that cuz I think it's quite an interesting area that I'm excited by uh and is still very early days so yeah I think that you're we're thinking in the similar Direction where I think the most interesting line of opportunity for these agents in game is for them to be like quest uh Masters right where uh instead of you getting like some predetermined uh line of of questing or whatever uh you know you're basically getting an agent that is going to be giving you quests and deals that are really catered to your player archetype and your reputation um and so yeah I think like basically around like giving out quests and giving out rewards as well as like

balancing these economies I think like that's um I think where some of the Fertile ground is um I think we yeah we'll just need to see some to see some uh experiments out there you know like I think like to be honest the first version of this would be hey you have this Quest system just like maybe like set some uh right have some AI right some relatively primitive AI that's kind of like Auto balancing it or whatever and then okay boom you just take that Quest system and uh put it inside the brain of some NPC that's in the game you give it a text wrapper or whatever an llm um and then people are able to interact with that agent rather than having to navigate outside of the game to go to the onchain questing platform

right totally yeah excited excited for all to come I think we'll see uh quite a few examples of this you know uh hopefully not too late into the year um I know several projects starting to starting to look at things from that perspective um so yeah I guess you know obviously nail things with AI with the Ronin launch um you know had this initial sort of 2023 going into 2024 T momentum with this first cohort you know really kind of uh Illustrated the Ronin effect extends Beyond axi to all the world um you know now you find yourselves with this really strong cohort that is sort of all coming to Market you know play tests or or live in the next few months of this like very curated approach now heading into the permissionless phase as as you're kind

of anticipating coinciding with you know favorable Market set up for gaming broadly with with all these products coming to Market as well like playing this forward a bit you know I I know it's a dangerous thing to do in crypto um but yeah what does what does RONA look like in like two to three years in an ideal scenario for you guys from here so so yeah we like to think of ronin as king of the gaming chains um we would like uh yeah I ideally we continue to to you know do really well uh within the web three gaming sector um have dominant amount of mind uh mind share as well as liquidity and player numbers um but yeah hopefully maybe maybe there's also other chains right like because if we're the only ones um that might mean that the you know that the market is still

relatively small um you know I would want to see some uh really interesting advancements when it comes to uh plate earn um and token emissions I feel like there's still a lot to be uncracked uh kind of unraveled there or Unleashed um so and and and as I said right I I suspect that how we get to the next level involves right evolution of these uh token incentive models and yeah you know I I I would want to see multiple games right and the you know axi got to Sev digigit uh user base right like it was with pixels so like you know axi and pixels both hit millions of Dau I would

want to see right games in the eight digits right 10 million plus um I would want to see Ronin uh you know in the top uh most used blockchains globally by basically every almost every uh metric that you look at right right now we're the fourth most used blockchain in 2024 uh by active you know unique active addresses I would also want us to right uh be up there when it comes to TDL uh volume transferred on chain uh you know number of significant or non you know I guess nonzero uh transactions so so yeah I think you know we're doing well when it comes to engagement but I would also want to see

us um you know basically up there with the Titans um when you know when it comes to like things like T TBL and and volume transferred so I love that I I'm also curious for your view on like um I feel like you've got this brilliant audience of people that are really you know really leaning into the sort of onchain pieces available that really want to yeah like fully Embrace crypto gaming as opposed to the more sort of lighter touch economy Integrations that we might see with a more like quote unquote AAA approach um you you you probably know I'm a bit of a a gonzilla fanboy with OTG and what they're trying to do like how much of um what you'd hope to see in the next few years also stems from like you know more traditional Publishers or traditional IP

kind of waiting in because I feel like you guys kind of are validating all of your stuff independent of that so just curious on your view of that overall because obviously we've got some big stuff like maple story even e Frontier and now stuff like OTG as well like um yeah curious how much of that is part of what's uh interesting to you guys or exciting so we are uh we have we have a few bets in this direction mostly uh around uh the Ragnarok uh online uh Universe right so uh we have Ragnarok lers which is basically the classic Ragnarok MMO which and is like enjoyed by millions still um but I think they're doing something really unique and interesting where it's like hey they're just they're opening up one or two they're just opening up nft servers

right so it's like hey you want to play the old classic Ragnarok or whatever you don't like nfts like it's okay like you can just go play on the normal server you don't have to do anything nothing has to change for you but hey if you want to experiment uh and you know potenti and potentially exper some of the benefits of crypto and and and web 3 blockchain you know try out this new server um so uh so yeah you know that's that's an experiment kind of in that direction um that we're really excited about and I have some inklings that just will work because I heard I've heard anecdotally that uh actually Ragnarok guilds is one of the ways that uh a lot of people got onboard to taxi last cycle right people would be uh talking within their Ragnarok guilds and be like hey we're

also playing this game or what uh and uh there's actually a famous streamer named Myrtle um in the Philippines uh she does like stuff with blizzard right she's like a mainstream streamer right um and Tik tocker and it was actually her and she was actually running a Ragnarok Guild it was her scholar it was her like Guild mates who basically onboarded her right so a lot of these things right that um we'll hopefully see more of in the future with like basically just like traditional normal two Gamers normal or uh streamers right a lot of this has happened uh on Ronin but primarily right in in Southeast Asia in the Philippines so um it will it will happen yeah I

think it takes the right like market conditions the right IPS um but yeah you know so that's that's one thing to keep an eye out for is basically like the Ragnarok uh Universe we have Ragnarok Monster World which is more of like a mobile play a mobile mobile game kind of like uh Tower Defense kind of like Clash of Clans CL Clash Royale and then uh yeah and then we also have lur which is basically going to be like nft servers of the classic uh R dude I love this approach I I was pitching RuneScape on the same thing some time ago right you have like your server lless especially if you have game worlds or economies that are very much adjacent to like real world trade there are some kind of secondary gray markets right like if you have you know a new server where what

whatever you have like a stat white but it says like you know it's a real money trade world or like an onchain world and basically allow people that are playing games that you know already have a sort of like proclivity or tendency towards having you know some material dollar value to in-game economies and stuff where people understand this stuff and alongside that give them the ability to test this stuff out and like understand the ownership and the kind of economic agency without having to go and trade outside of the games like I think that's an incredibly powerful onboarding um still working on it still working on the RuneScape front but I think that would be really cool excited to keep an eye on that in the r ecosystem yeah I think that that approach with the right the kind of parall servers it's G it's like

a Gres Gram's law when it but with servers right it's like oh if you know the harder money the harder items are on one server like you know theoretically people would migrate over right I love that I love that yes sir Let's uh let's see fingers crossed excited to to see more to see more on that front um for some of these big IPS that can bring over you know Mega audiences um yeah I I guess um yeah would love to kind of ask you just some some sort of higher level questions as well like um you know obvious being a hell of a ride from axi into Ronin and kind of all the all of the sort of stuff you guys have to navigate along the way like um curious if you have anything you can share just in terms of like reconciling you know a

bit more like long-term thinking around building an ecosystem and a game versus kind of the you know um ADHD nature of this Market where you have a lot of short termism from Market participants like it's been epic to watch you guys kind of weather various storms and build you know build this epic trajectory for Ronin like yeah curious what you can share just for for people interested and perhaps for other builders uh who are you know having a Dark Night of the Soul because Gaming's been a little challenging of late yeah I mean do planning do company planning whether that's one year planning right I mean at the beginning it's probably going to be like one month two months three months uh one year uh but I think that was something that we you know started doing in 2019 at that

time it felt late uh but we do like you know some sort of a annual structured is uh planning cycle with you know something like akin to okrs or you know whatever you want to call it um so I don't know that's maybe like some you know I'm going to try to give boring advice because I feel like that's I usually give like weird advice so yeah I think like do do definitely do company planning um yeah you know don't don't just right get kind of corded by the new shiny object right don't like don't don't be uh don't chase the herd don't try to chase the meta um you know I we saw this right with the everyone like migrate trying to do telegram games um yeah I think telegram games are cool but

I think like a lot of people like put way too much of their uh hopes and dreams uh on them after seeing like one or two successes um so don't yeah don't get farmed like that um so yeah I mean for us you know whenever we go through hard times it's just like okay how do you you know buckle down and just right just make go on a winning streak of making the The Right Move uh you you know X number of times in a row right um and yeah I think like you know you need to have like you need to go to the gym right you need to like you need to like have a supportive friends and family maybe a significant other wife or or something like that right um it's it's

it's important in in this space to basically have like a a strong mental base cuz you're going to be getting like a lot of like pressure from everyone from investors from the community members community members much worse um than than the investors you typically pretty chill um but from from you know angry community members from you know very excited uh community members um so yeah just you know be sure that you know for us like one one thing that we learned was like you have to make sure that people don't have expectations of you that are impossible um and that basically you are align on what people should expect of you when someone knows what to expect of you and you are aware that they're expecting that and you're

okay with it that's actually an agreement right so always like you know say this to my team is like agreements over expectations because expectations right it's like you're going to it's almost impossible to win when you have all these right expectations that you can never meet right um so it's like you should promise right like people know what you're promising right and and be very explicit about that um so yeah I mean I think like another thing right is like speed in this space you need to like be able to ship stuff and kill it and ship stuff and learn like really quickly um you know even much more so than maybe even in a traditional startup to be honest I'm not sure I I never I never really did a Ser you know too large but but the speed of shipping and

iteration needs to be uh and learning just needs to be uh astronomical yeah I love that I love that some some good learnings in there um yeah I think uh particularly agree on the you know um sort of just expectation management around shipping things I think uh what I've seen over the last couple years as well is just like it's been I think a lot of these ambitious product road maps like uh I think Community was a bit naive maybe the developers were too on like you know how yeah that's what happens too when you have a you know that's why I feel blessed right that we have uh you know well-rounded founding team right because if it was just me like I wouldn't know right like I'm not an engineer uh and so when I came into the space I was like I need to attach to

a team that can really build otherwise I'm GNA sell something uh too well right uh and I'm G to get myself into a situation uh that I don't want to be in right so that was my number one thing when I got into space like I need to find a team that can actually deliver uh what we're you know talking about into the world I like that I like that a lot um yeah I'm more so curious you know as a as a very experienced Builder you've been on this kind of crazy crazy Journey um I've been asking people of late what their favorite crypto learnings were but I think people who have really been through it uh I I kind of want to ask like if you're if there's a sort of develop a war story that comes to mind AR Technica did this series that

I loved what they'd go and talk about you know in the traditional games industry sort of crunch times all this crazy what things went wrong I mean you know I think a couple of uh particular points come to mind in terms of in terms of your your journey that you've been on like um with Ronin and and with axi and everything like yeah curious if there's a story that comes to mind that you can share as well for uh for you know other builders and and people curious I think like you know one of the hard things in starting any type of company is getting your first 100 users getting your first right like one five 100 to 500 users I think there's a lot of people who know how to go from like you know 10,000 to 50,000 10,000 to 100,000 but I think like the number the people

who know how to go from zero to 1,000 is is kind of uh a much more select group um so yeah in the early days right it's like in the early days we used to manually recruit people to play our game right so I feel like right now like there's actually a lot of Founders that should be manual trying to manually recruit Gamers right they're just kind of like oh there's no there's no players there are no players they're all en Ronin or or something like that right um so you know in the early days of ax it was like okay who might be interested in this thing okay well there's only other two other nft projects uh decentraland and crypto Kitty so let's right like let's go into their Discord and manually

uh bring you know bring them into ours um so we would right like basically give axis out um we would give a lot of gifts uh we did a thing where every to centraland landholder uh got free axis um you know the top people you know we we ran like you know we pulled the data from crypto Kitty's Discord to see who are the most active Chatters all right let's get them all like in the in the axi Discord right so kind of like this almost manual right now PE people try to do like vampire attacks like via incentives and aird drops or some or something like that right whereas yeah we're doing it like pretty pretty manually like in the trenches um so yeah you know that was all back in the days

right 2018 where you know I would look at the Google analytics and it would be one person on the site and I would close my tab and it's like zero it was like literally I was the person on the site at 400 a.m. um so yeah I think I think like you know that and and that approach to getting your initial users that's not necessarily that's not like unique to web 3 that's something that Paul Graham has written about so I would also say that a lot of people are like oh none of the old school skillon Valley startup advice works that's actually true like the writings from Paul Graham like the very early web 2 era like 2003 to 2006 like that Golden Age try to read like Paul Grant from back then that's going

to be really helpful to uh web3 Builders someone I can't remember who it was the early investor in openc uh sent those over to us uh as a founding team when we were just like before we had even done our first fundraise and I went through a lot of that and yeah you know Paul Graham's advice I think this is also my ebook uh Paul Gram's advice like really really uh works for uh for crypto and and web three of that yeah he's he's put out a ton of ton of brilliant writings over the years um might need to digest them a bit more effectively with all of our new AI tooling these days um but yeah I I also wanted to ask like uh where's your head at on all things the metaverse right um obviously this is this uh amazing Confluence of forces

that gave rise to to this kind of crazy run like obviously within crypto but way way Beyond it as well um uh a lot of it was kind of hijacked and used for gimmicky stuff but you know I still think a lot of the core ideals and Ethos um you know is 100% relevant in the kind of the world that we're heading towards I think a lot of the sort of messaging that you guys adopted with you know Ai and a digital nation and I think more recently there's a lot of stuff that's been dropped in terms of um you know baji with the network State and what and whatnot of this kind of world that we're working towards like uh yeah what are what are jho's thoughts these days we're spending more time we're spending more time online right um so it's it's hard

to say like obviously like people got uh you know a bit carried away uh back in back in 21 um so it's hard to really say how it'll play out right just like oh everyone thinks that AI agents right like need to go inside these games but right now they're just like living on Twitter or something like that right that's kind of like basically what stage we're in right with the metaverse it's like we're all living online already we're just not like right it's just not we're not like perceiving it um in the way that right like you know we would think of uh you know with the with the metaverse um but I think that's the initial right fertile uh soil that's needed right it's just us spending more time on line spending more time on

screens um and then you know uh and we're starting to right develop the system of property rights right that's why right it's like okay we're spending more time online we're getting system of property rights okay like these are right I think like the two of the uh you know core components that are going to be needed um you know and then the VR space and headset space I'm less familiar with I'm and I'm less like a believer that that is one of the core requirements right I I kind of would challenge right that that is like a core requirement of that metaverse I think like for me it's just like when people are spending tons amount tons of their time online and having real socioeconomic connections with people

all over the world right um to me that's kind of like you know the early Proto uh metaverse and you know we're and we're starting to see that emerge um and then uh yeah you know I think what what comes after that is you know we we'll have to see indeed we will uh wanted to wanted to just hit on a few kind of like yeah closing questions um what would you regard as the most impactful digital experience you've ever had well the first thing I ever did on the internet was play Starcraft with my uh cousins uh in Korea so I think that was important because from an early age I knew that games could be a portal into

a new technology um I remember yeah Starcraft right like using dial up to play Diablo like I literally if my dad had to have a work call I couldn't play Diablo so I'd have to go to my friend's house or just not play um so yeah I think those like formative early experiences with battl net right CU like think of Battlenet in 1997 1998 that's the literally the best thing that exists on the internet right that's the best application of the internet at that time right like what is competing with it is like right like very primitive versions of America online right I love that I love that um and yeah kind of kind of adjacent what what is your favorite video game ever I would I would have to go with like uh with vanillo with

vanilla wow that's the most most like slpl I have in anything nice so yeah that was a special that was a special experience like I felt like I was raised by my wild Guild so I played I beta tested in 20 3 um and and started playing right when vanilla came out and I was one of somehow I was one of the first four uh uh level 60 warriors on my server uh and then they're like yeah we're running this thing called molten core like it's going to take a long time um and so I just joined up and somehow I ended up in like uh you know top the top uh horde uh Guild um in vanilla they were called overrated um so yeah that that was like a formative experience for

me so I have to say I would have to say wow like you know some other Runner UPS would be uh Ocarina of Time um which is just beautiful it was like my my second grade year was really defined by that and then yeah like you know I my first game was Donkey Kong Country so I remember like playing the hell out of that game as a as a child nice dude that's dope about your uh wow career PE Peaks early on that's dope yeah like I always say that you know if I ever if I ever right like have time um you know that's that's my that the thing that I've sacrificed is not being able to WR just like play some MMO um as much as I want so yeah they're amazing to get lost in um yeah finally wanted to ask what is

the most impactful or important book that you've ever read book book book um so yeah I think I think this will be a good one um so this book there's a book called The Mystery of capital it's by this guy named ernando DeSoto he's a perian economist um I actually know him um somehow like you know I spoke I kept speaking about him on podcasts and uh one of my friends was right he he was like oh I I'm gonna get to know him and somehow like we manifested it to the point where you know I've met him I've I've been in his house um so he's a proving Economist basically he specializes in property rights so he wrote this book The Mystery of capital

which basically asserts that there is no such thing as capitalism M socialism there's only property rights and lack of property rights um and basically right like this manifest in for example South American countries right you you might think that it's a free market economy but let's say you're a farmer and you know you're doing well as a farmer you know you scr a little uh money together and you're now ready to build a factory right you want to uh do something else uh so you go to the bank and you say hey like you know want I want to start a factory I need a loan I have this amount of money but you know I can put my land up as collateral they're like okay like yeah sure give us your deed and then the founder is like what what is a deed like

no I've lived on this land for Generations they're like okay like well you need to somehow get a deed you go to the government and it takes you know you have to bribe them to basically get this deed right or it takes years um he basically asserts that all these little right like inefficiencies and bureaucracies and red tapes um are actually the things that prevent capitalism from or free market economies uh from uh flourishing in uh a lot of Emerging Markets across the world um so what you know why does why was this important to me it's like well when I learned about nfts I was like oh this is just a digital deed this is a right this is property rights on the internet uh so even though it was just like cryptokitties at that time I was like okay there's this is at least like

actually more has the potential to be more uh sophisticated than the econ than most of the economies on Earth uh especially those in developed markets at that time right so that's also helped me understand that probably like you know the the countries that are going to be using crypto on a day-to-day basis or very early on uh before right this whole thing is built out a lot of that right everyday user is probably going to be in uh countries that lack sophisticated systems of property rights which lo and behold right like the inflation rate in a country is highly correlated with their right like propensity to be interested in web three super interesting man I'll uh have to dig into

that one um sounds sounds well worth to read uh well J it's been a pleasure having you on um thank you for sharing uh a ton of hard-earned insights uh from from spending years in the you know on on the front lines of this whole gaming space um yeah it's a pleasure chatting pleasure learning from you and uh very excited for all things Ronin as as you guys open up uh is there a date you can share yet or I mean where where we at on that front well it depends on when will come out but uh yeah we're looking at like basically next week and it's February 5th right now so okay cool uh love it well J thank you once again looking forward to all all all to come later this year and uh yeah it's been a pleasure awesome man yeah thanks for

having me