Jeff Zirlin, co-founder of Ronin and Sky Mavis, shares insights into the explosive success of Axie Infinity and its impact on blockchain gaming. He explains how Axie created a sustainable economy by merging NFTs with gameplay, attracting millions of players. Zirlin discusses the inception of Ronin as a tailored Ethereum sidechain to support gaming scalability and the vital role of community in driving engagement. He also delves into the future of crypto gaming, the role of AI, and what makes a successful play-to-earn model.
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Crypto Origins
Jeff Zirlin's interest in crypto started with Ron Paul's newsletter around 2010.
He found Bitcoin's "digital gold" concept uninteresting until he discovered Ethereum and CryptoKitties.
insights INSIGHT
CryptoKitties Inspiration
CryptoKitties, an early NFT project, allowed breeding and collecting digital cats.
It lacked long-term sustainability, inspiring Axie Infinity's development.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Axie Dedication
Jeff Zirlin joined Axie Infinity as a community member before becoming a co-founder.
His passion led him to move to Vietnam, give away his dog, and end a relationship.
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While DeFi’s ultimate goal is to provide an alternative for TradFi, blockchain gaming caters to retail masses, onboarding millions of users to crypto through incentives and fun gameplay. The greatest success story in Web3 gaming thus far has been, without a doubt, Axie Infinity. Apart from creating an engaged community whose early adopters also experienced rags-to-riches stories, it kickstarted an entire movement around play-to-earn gaming. Many have tried copying it, yet most of them failed. Axie Infinity managed to design a sustainable economy that combined NFTs and fungible tokens. The result was the first gamified crypto mining event, at scale. In order to accommodate such a massive demand, in a time when L2 rollups were still in R&D, Sky Mavis founded Ronin, a gaming-oriented Ethereum sidechain. The community that formed around Axie Infinity created a tremendous network effect, solidifying Ronin’s PMF as a gaming powerhouse. Before long, many up-and-coming titles migrated to Ronin, and the growth effects in all their key metrics (i.e. DAUs, transactions, revenue, etc.) further fuelled the flywheel.
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