Jeff: 0:00

We onboarded millions of people into Web3. It went absolutely viral in the pandemic in the Philippines. It's becoming an undeniable that Web3 is the future.

Joeri: 0:11

Hello everyone and welcome to the Web3 CMO Stories podcast. My name is Joeri Billast and I'm your podcast host, and today I'm joined by Jihoz. Jihoz how are you?

Jeff: 0:25

Yeah, I'm doing well. Thanks for inviting me.

Joeri: 0:28

Happy to have you on the show, guys. If you don't know, Jihoz, actually, his real name is Jeff Zirlin. He's the co-founder of Sky Mavis, the creators of Axie infinity and the Ronin blockchain. Axie is the number one NFT game by DAO NFT volume verified by the Guinness Book of Records, by the way and cultural impact. As chief growth officer, his mission is to grow the size and strength of both the community and the economy, and Jeff grew up playing video games and catching insects. Jeff, that as an introduction for our listeners and to start with, tell us a bit about the journey of Ronin's development and maybe how it has contributed to the mainstream adoption of crypto.

Jeff: 1:19

So we started off our mission by creating one game right. That game was Axie Infinity. Axie went on to become the number one NFT project by all time volume, with over $4 billion in trading volume. Right, we actually onboarded millions of people into Web3. It went absolutely viral in the pandemic in the Philippines. So one thing that we noticed while building Axie is that it was really hard to build a Web3 game, very hard to build a crypto game. We were one of the first to do it, and we contend that we were the first to do it with any sort of success, and so we ran up into a lot of issues while building Axie scalability, user experience, and we had to build a lot of these things ourselves, right, and so at a certain point, we realized that, hey, we're the only ones who really understand the Web3 gaming users and nobody is out there building, you know, the blockchain, the wallet, the marketplace that really works for Web3 games. Let's build it ourselves, we'll use it for Axie and then we'll also start to make it available to other teams. It worked very well with Axie, and then we'll also start to make it available to other teams. It worked very well with Axie.

Jeff: 2:26

Axie actually entered hyper growth Once we deployed Axie on the Ronin blockchain. Right, Ronin is a game. Ronin is a blockchain that's specifically tailored for the needs of gamers and game developers. Once Axie deployed on Ronin, it hit hyper growth and we thought, hey, we might be onto something and then fast forward Axie and the rest of the crypto industry. Right, there was a couple of years of hard times, of bear market, and those are really important to build the character, to allow for more education to happen and to also strengthen the community, strengthen the bonds right, because hard times create strong people.

Jeff: 3:11

And then so we entered 2023 and we started to scale Ronin. Right, we actually upgraded the consensus mechanism from proof of authority to delegated proof of state, and then we also started to announce the first game studio partners that were building on Ronin outside of the Axie universe. And I think the most exciting thing that's happened recently was the rise of Pixels. Pixels is a game that's similar to Starter Valley. It's a farming simulation game, and they're north of a million users, or a million daily active users now, and and we believe it's actually one of the first or the only on-chain applications with a million daily active users so far of this cycle right. So pixels is important because it shows that, hey, the Ronin infrastructure is not just great for Axie, it's the thing that helped power, the first two Web3 games, or blockchain games, to hit a million DAU, and we think that's really important and really demonstrates why people would want to use this infrastructure.

Joeri: 4:21

Yeah, sounds really impressive, but what are actually the factors then that drive this rapid growth of Ronin? And maybe you mentioned already the difference it can make for a game, but how does it differentiate itself?

Jeff: 4:47

We differentiate ourselves by being a blockchain that is specifically focused on games and gamers, and we've been doing this since 2018, right. We have a ton of experience building this for ourselves, building this for Axie right. So we're the only ones that are creating a chain that also have created a consumer application in crypto that has achieved mass adoption and if you go to the Philippines, 10% of the country, 10 to 15% of the country, understand or know what Axie Infinity is, right, and so that's in a country of 100 million.

Joeri: 5:13

Okay, so, based on Axie, that was actually the start for the whole story I would say there is something that we can call the Ronin effect, so that propels games to popularity on Ronin and accelerate games hosted on the Ronin blockchain. Can you elaborate on that?

Jeff: 5:33

The Ronin effect is what happens when a game launches or migrates to the Ronin network and experiences a high level of growth. And this happens because we've done the hard work of building a chain that actually has real gamers that are interested in products.

Joeri: 6:04

Okay, and so, of course, gaming Games that are powered by the technology Okay, and so, of course, gaming Web3. Gaming is hot, but why do you believe, personally, that gaming remains a top use case for blockchain technology? And maybe, how does Ronin enhance the gaming experience for players and developers?

Jeff: 6:23

Gamers are great candidates for being introduced to cryptocurrencies. Gamers have been dealing with digital currencies for all of their lives. Games also have tons of gray markets or situations where gamers want to trade and freely trade their in-game assets and encounter roadblocks. This is something that all the Sky Mavis founders encountered as children right, trying to sell Diablo items, trying to sell World of Warcraft items, having to use very sketchy third party websites. So I think gamers really understand the need for this technology that gives property rights to digital items and it's a very clear and easy to understand use case for those that grew up playing video games and attempting to make money and also like profit or monetize from our time within those games. The trend in product development is towards gamification recently and, of course, the most powerful thing to coordinate behaviors and to gamify behaviors is to, of course, just build a game where you can very specifically coordinate and incentivize the behaviors that you want to promote. So I think for us, the big thing that we were able to innovate was actually the creation of a way of distributing token incentives to players to coordinate growth of the network.

Jeff: 7:49

Before Axie Infinity, token incentives were used to incentivize things like mining, staking and providing liquidity, but these are all things that are very nerdy and not accessible to everyday people, even me.

Jeff: 8:08

For me myself, I didn't want to join blockchain, even though I knew about Bitcoin since 2012, because I thought that it was unfair that someone could mine Bitcoin using a computer and that me myself, someone who didn't know how to set up a Bitcoin miner, would have to buy it from them. And so the thing that Web3 and blockchain technology is missing is adoption from everyday that me myself, someone who didn't know how to set up a Bitcoin miner, would have to buy it from them, and so the thing that Web3 and blockchain technology is missing is adoption from everyday people. So we thought, hey, what if we could allow people to mine crypto by playing games? Perhaps that would get gamers and everyday people interested in the technology. And that's what ended up happening, and I believe that moment was when we because we thought of that moment first that's where a lot of our advantages stems from right we were able to hit hyper growth and skill geo, thanks for sharing all that.

Joeri: 8:56

I agree with you. Gaming is really something exciting. It's everyone. A lot of people are interested in gaming. We can understand games. I guess a lot of game developers are interested to come to Ronin to work with Sky Mavis. But then how do you select the games that you want to bring to Ronin and how do you ensure a seamless transition to the blockchain?

Jeff: 9:22

Sky Mavis works with different games right to bring them to the running chain and help them grow and build out their communities. And we're primarily looking for teams that understand Web3, understand community and are experimental. But we're also very interested in very strong IPs that have very strong fandoms and pre-existing player bases and fan bases that are willing and interested in making the leap into Web3, right. So two very successful examples are Pixels. Pixels reminds us a lot of the early Sky Mavis team. Right, they're lean, they're experimental, they understand Web3, they understand how to speak to community.

Jeff: 10:13

We also just onboarded Ragnarok Online onto Ronin. Ragnarok Online is like the Asian RuneScape it's a very popular MMO that still has millions of users and so a very popular IP that has millions of fans and they're interested in exploring Web3. And so they were just able to come onto the Ronin network. They had a very successful NFT sale. And so these are the two buckets right, it's like teams that are very lean, experimental and understand Web3, and then teams that have these existing fandoms that are also interested in embracing this new technology and experimenting.

Joeri: 10:48

Okay makes sense. Let's talk about also about NFTs and games. That's a good combination, I would say, but how does Ronin leverage NFTs and what is the impact that it can have on player engagement?

Jeff: 11:04

We see NFTs as a new type of collectible, and NFTs, especially in games, have a variety of different properties. First and foremost, nfts are scarce, right, so they have like verifiable scarcity, and you know that, which is part of what makes them highly collectible. And the thing that we find is the most interesting, though, is when you can give NFTs the ability to perform different actions within these digital economies. For example, in our ecosystem, we have axes. Axes can be used to breed, to create additional axes. They can be used as a ticket to many different experiences.

Jeff: 11:43

They can actually be upgraded and evolved over time, so this is the first example of a digital collectible. It's actually being upgraded as you play with it. This is very different from a, a pokemon card, right, a pokemon. You don't want to play it, right, or it might damage it, right, but we have the the scarcity scarcity and the resale ability of a physical collectible like a Pokemon card, but you also have the dynamism and the ability to change and actually get better of something like a video game character. So that's why we see NMTs in games as being this very exciting new type of collectible that kind of combines the best of both worlds, right, where they have some of the properties of game items, but also some of the interesting properties of physical collectibles.

Joeri: 12:34

Okay, I also saw a list of games that are successful on the road, and you mentioned already Pixels. There is also I hope I pronounced it the right way Pyram, that game which had a lot of growth in daily active users. I thought it was more than 500%. Can you talk a bit about the strategies that were used there?

Jeff: 12:57

So, in order for these games to be successful on Ronin, they need to be able to understand how to talk to our community and how to attract gamers, they have to understand how to balance these digital economies and they have to be able to perform this sort of web three live ops or live operations, where you're basically tweaking and building the game out continuously in public, and so, yeah, we're attracting the right partners, supporting them, introducing them to our community, using our pre built distribution channels, things like our email list.

Jeff: 13:33

We have millions of emails. Nobody else has that. In Web3 game, right. We have a 19 million Ronin wallet installs, right. So that's a huge install base that can be leveraged for different games, different products that are on the running network. And so I think it's really about we build our community, we empower our community and we bring on new products and games that we think this community will like, as well as the friends and family members of our community. So when a product is very approachable to a mainstream audience, a lot of the new people that are onboarded end up becoming the being the friends or the family members of our existing user base, and so, yeah, that's that's how we see the growth materializing.

Joeri: 14:23

Yeah, community is really important in Web3, of course, for the growth, and another thing for me that's important because I'm a podcaster and a blogger, so it's storytelling. One of the games that's successful on running 2 is Kaidro. Can you talk a bit about Kaidro and how? Yes, storytelling intersects with blockchain, gaming and maybe some of the unique opportunities that Kaidro offers?

Jeff: 14:49

So the thing that we love about Kydera is that it's a really strong IP, an IP that had a lot of demand, that had a lot of fans before it entered Web3.

Jeff: 14:58

So there's clearly something really interesting and special there. And then we're adding in Web3 mechanics, nfts, our community and the reception has been really great and they were able to raise around 3.1 million US dollars in a NFT sale. This is in an environment where NFT sales on most other chains are failing, but they were able to mint out less than 15 seconds, I believe, in the public portion of that sale. So the response has been amazing and Peggy and the founders of Kaidra are really responsive. They're great at interacting with our communities. I think they're an example of founders that are a really great fit for Web3 because they love to engage with the community, they like to build in public, they like to co-create and then they also have a talent to back it up the lore, the storytelling ability and, as well as it seems, the ability to build a fun and engaging game. I just play tested the game last week and I had a lot of fun okay, yeah, you, of course.

Joeri: 16:02

If you are a gamer yourself, oh, it's, it's fun also to do this as your business. Actually, let's talk about the future of Web3 gaming, because a lot of things are happening in Web3. Also in Web3 gaming. It's really fast evolved. How do you think blockchain, AI, Metaverse technologies would shape the future of the gaming landscape?

Jeff: 16:27

I think that gaming will shape the future of those other landscapes. So gaming was the first thing that I ever did on the internet. So gaming is often the most approachable and interesting of the early use cases for a new technology, and that's what we believe to be happening with regards to Web3. When it comes to ai, I'm not an ai expert. I'm using chat, gpt, and I think so.

Joeri: 17:00

Yeah for me as a marketer, for me it's more like an umbrella term Web3 with all these new technologies, and it makes sense to use chat GPT, like lots of people do these days, if it's available, because yesterday I had the problem that I couldn't even access it because it was too busy. Now, yeah, a question that I always like to ask to Jihoz is what are you now the most excited about for your business or for the market in general?

Jeff: 17:30

I'm excited that we're beginning to really scale up Ronin when it comes to being able to onboard more and more games and game studios, and I'm also excited that it seems like people are interested in where will real adoption come from, and people are starting to realize that, when it comes to actually onboarding real people and everyday people, ronin is leading when it comes to consumer adoption of crypto and Web3. And yeah, so I'm excited for that trend to continue. I'm excited for, I think, people to spend less time thinking about meme coins and more time thinking about the things that are actually going to keep everyday people engaged in crypto for a very long time.

Joeri: 18:19

Yeah, it's a lot of things happening like these meme coins, but you mentioned community, of course, too, which is really important. Where does actually the community building? Where does it happen? Does it happen on Discord? Does it happen on other platforms? Sorry, in your. So the community we mentioned it already a bit early in this podcast episode. It's really an important tool. It's a lot of powering community. Where does the Ronin community? Where does community building happen? Does it happen on Discord? Does it happen on other channels, on other places?

Jeff: 18:58

So it happens on a variety of platforms, from Discord, where we have one of the largest Discord servers in the world and 650,000 members in the Axie, quite for example to Facebook, where we have the largest Web3 Facebook community. Because it really used in the Phillippines. And then to Twitter which is quite common and, I guess, the primary channel for communication and community activity and Web3.

Joeri: 19:24

Yeah, it's interesting that you mentioned Facebook. There was a time when I was posting myself, even on X but also Facebook, that they didn't really like the word crypto and that you could have problems with your account. But I guess today the world has changed and Web3 is more and more mainstream, also like cryptic gaming, so I guess it's not an issue anymore, right.

Jeff: 19:49

It's becoming undeniable that Web3 is the future, and we have both parties right now in the United States that are looking to get the crypto voter right. So I think this is just a trend that will continue, and there has been in the past, issues with twitter and facebook and things like that instagram when they're shadow banning crypto related content and material, but it seems like that is becoming less obvious or less of a problem. These days.

Joeri: 20:19

Yeah, that's something from the past. Luckily, of course, also with the bitcoin, ETF and so on, more and more people are getting interested in this space. With web3 games like yours and blockchains like ronin, this will attract more and more people. So if now my listeners they want to find out more about everything that you're doing with Sky Mavis and with Ronin, where would you like to send them?

Jeff: 20:47

Yeah, you can follow me, Jihoz_ Axie on Twitter and follow Ronin Network as well. Follow Axie Infinity and yeah, you'll be able to get involved.

Joeri: 21:00

Okay, great, and maybe they can also find you on Facebook, the group or the page. Like always, there are podcast show notes. Linked to this podcast episode, there is a blog article, so if you're not listening to the show, be sure to check them, because all the links will be in there. You can find them, you can follow up, you can check out ronin and so on. So, thank you, Jihoz, it was really a pleasure to have you on the show. Yeah, thanks for having me.

Joeri: 21:30

So, guys, a really interesting episode about Web3 gaming. That it it is the future. It's one of the ways that we can get more and more people in Web3. So if people around you gamers or maybe people just interest that in everything that's happening in the landscape, be sure to share this episode with them. If you're not yet following the show, as I always say, this is a really good moment to do this. If you haven't yet given me a review on our podcast or Spotify, I would love to get your review, because it helps me get even more people listening to the show and, of course, I would like to see you back next time, take care.