Ronin Evolution & Beyond w/ Jihoz

Recorded: March 19, 2026 Duration: 1:26:20
Space Recording

Full Transcription

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hello hello gm everybody i see new people are finally arriving in the chat too eleni
the franco hi burnham we have got a show for you today um a man who needs no introduction because
he's one of the most influential people in the whole crypto space and we all know him as
jihose we haven't talked in a while and i'm really looking forward to this chat
how's it going
you're muted jiros one second okay can you hear me now there we go can you hear me perfect loud and clear okay i can't
hear you though so that's perfect technical problems one second
it might be on my end just give me a second the chat hear me
there we go sorry you guys thought that the show's technical problems were bad when they It might be on my end. Just give me a second. Can the chat hear me?
There we go. Sorry. You guys thought that the show's technical problems were bad when it was Gila running things.
It's even worse when it's me.
So how have you been?
It's been a while.
I'm good, man. I'm here in Vietnam.
Yeah, you moved recently, right?
Been here for about two months now. oh cool how's it how's that been
have you did you have you ever lived in vietnam or is this the first time you've like moved
permanently i lived here i lived here in the early days so i lived here in 2018 2019 then
went home for covid in 2020 i got kind kind of shut out because they shut down the country.
I was living in my parents' basement during COVID.
Yeah, I was living in my parents' basement during COVID.
Then I went to Korea, got married, and then actually started blowing up around that time.
Oh, yeah, cool. So it's been a while.
I'm really looking forward to this chat.
And the community has a lot of things that they want to get your take on.
So I think one of the good things that we can start off with would be, like, just the Ronin chain as a whole.
Obviously known for first and foremost.
Yo, you guys are stepping it up.
We got, like up we got like
we got the programming we got a presentation
yeah that's that's that's all thanks to the guys behind the scene
um but yeah so the the first thing obviously the thing that ronan is most
known about is uh crypto gaming what's what's the
first question i have for you is,
what do you like, what first comes to mind
when you think about what's actually working?
And like, let's say if you're thinking about it
over the last three, four months of three to six,
let's say in gaming on Ronin,
what sticks out to you as something that's really working?
really working.
So the the pattern that we see is teams are finally actually figuring out ways of getting users,
getting revenue, creating these economies that isn't just reliant on huge amounts of token incentives
and so you're seeing that with cambria or you're seeing that with moku where you know you really
see this kind of people call it risk to earn i think risk to earn is generally like i guess a
good simplified way of thinking about it but basically basically the idea is that, right, there's no free lunch.
If you want to earn something, right, there has to be some sort of prior spend or kind of money on the table.
So that's what we're seeing.
That's what we're seeing working.
And, you know, in the Axie days, right, there was so much liquidity in the market.
you know, in the Axie days, right, there was so much liquidity in the market. And the real,
the big reason, right, that the Axie economy worked back in 2021, 2022, is that Binance,
right, they listed SLP, and they listed SLP without really, right, just kind of
yellow listing it. And that ended up, right, like like basically creating so much demand for SLP. It was
almost like an early meme coin, right, where people, Binance traders just bought it because,
right, all SLP that existed had to be earned. It had to actually be created with time and human
effort. And that was actually superior to the tokenomic models of a lot of other coins at the time.
And so a lot of people were especially super low valuations for SLP.
They were just interested in buying it on Binance.
And that basically created this capital inflow, right?
Where actually those people who are buying on Binance were kind of like the risk to earn pool, if that makes sense.
Right. So they were buying, right?
They were kind of just gambling on SLP,
buying it for fun, buying because they thought it was interesting,
thinking that maybe it would pump.
And that was kind of like the capital inflow
that was causing people to breed axes.
But that's a thing that is only possible in certain market environments
right yeah special conditions certain special conditions it's not a repeatable it's not like
a repeatable thing that you can just bank on happening whenever you need it to uh so the
thing that is good about risk to earn is that it is a model that can work in any climate right the business model is a
little bit more similar to poker right it's still skill based you have to be good at the game
but right there's some rng involved there's no right it's not like i don't know it's not like
some of the crypto games of the past where it was like okay everyone as long as
you're early can make money but if you're late you're definitely gonna lose money right
yeah like the like i guess like the ponzi games we saw come out research after like over the last
over the last year that we saw in other chains on abstracts and stuff like that where it was simply
you get an early and and that's so it's like it adds that it added that is
okay in fun or whatever right i see that as like crypto gaming's kind of version of meme coins or
something like that i still think that that is preferable or more serious in some ways than
than memes um right a certain amount of that is fun but that's that's not like enough substance to
sustain an ecosystem uh for the long run right yeah it's
like a it's like a branch it's like a branch of what things are like a branch of the tree but
it can't be the only thing that you're it's like you just have to acknowledge that it's there right
but you have to be working on other stuff right um and so yeah for for for ronan right now, Ronan at the moment, what would you say you guys are doing at the moment for acquiring new users, let's say?
Obviously, it's a tough question because the market conditions are rough for everybody, right?
And one of the biggest ways to get people in is token go up and stuff like that. But so, yeah, what can you tell us about that,
about user acquisition and stuff like that at the moment?
So for us, we have our publishing games.
You have games like Cambria moku fableborn fishing
frenzy pixels and angry dynamites right so each of these games right represents kind of a unique
shot on goal that where we support them we'll invest invest in them. And then, right, they go out and try and,
right, try different UA strategies to bring users to the chain, right? So I think the
promising thing that we're seeing is you have teams like Moku that are actually driving volume
and Cambria that are actually able to figure out new economic models.
And so, yeah, I think like a lot of our UA,
a lot of our growth is really up to our partners and kind of figuring out models that are going to work for scaling together.
That's basically the bet that you have with Ronin as a chain.
I think Pixels is really interesting, right?
Because they also are creating kind of a UA platform.
And what we're also seeing is that since, right,
you have teams like Cambria and Moku that are succeeding, right?
Nothing is really working that well in crypto beyond, right? A few very narrow niche use cases.
Like Hyperliquid is doing well.
Maybe you have some RWA tokenization, some stable coins.
But things related to entertainment, things related to onboarding everyday people,
it's not going very well.
But where it is actually working and showing promise, all of that is centered around Ronin.
The best crypto games that are actually working, I think it's undeniable that these things are happening on Ronin.
You got Ragnarok online. They've literally turned a Web 2 game into a successful Web 3 game, into a crypto game.
You have thousands of people playing. It's always in the top projects for NFT volume on Ronin.
And a lot of the players don't even know that they're using the chain.
Right. So this is this is this is kind of a so that so that is like user user acquisition.
And so so, yeah, that's that's how I see a lot of it.
You know, we also have Axie, right?
So our bet on the Axie side is that Atiyah's legacy can be something that both reactivates a ton of the dormant Axie community, whereas it's also something that can attract a net new audience.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think that, yeah.
What would, like, so I think that would mean that, like, so these teams, these games are the ones that are on who are relying the most for user acquisition.
And that's a good thing, right?
Because once you can observe, you can also support them, right?
How active would you say, it's a very vague question, right?
So it's going to allow you to go in any direction you want.
But how active would you say Sky Mavis is in these games and their user acquisition?
As in, like, do they come to you with their ideas, with things like that?
Or are they rather more independent about it than you're just sit back and watch and see?
We can be hands-on
and generally what we'll do is right like we'll invest and we'll make a variety of different
resources available to them right like we have millions of emails we have all of our different
channels and so so yeah i think it depends but we try to be relatively hands-on.
And I think that is one of the things that distinguishes us as a chain is that we work
closely with the best builders.
We're not doing it with everyone, right?
We're doing it with the ones that we think actually have a good chance.
And then, right, if our job is that if someone is doing a really good job, then we should
know about it and then find ways
to get actively more involved to help them continue to win.
Fair enough.
So the next topic is untapped roots for grown and growth.
That's ambiguous in the sense that there's
a lot of different things I want to cover here.
And the first one being things around like the creator program or creators.
I saw there was so this this post you guys put out by
by on Ronin.
Also, I saw there was something with Keito AI.
I guess both of those are
focused around like more video content while also reaching beyond X.
What can you tell us more on about that?
Yes, we're looking at improving the way that we run the creator program.
And we want to make it more meritocratic.
We want to make it more data-driven.
And we want to expand it beyond
x to other platforms right we want to make sure that people are looking at youtube people are looking at instagram even facebook right like we you know like our socials are much bigger on
facebook than they are yeah yeah axie account gets like 100k impressions on facebook
regularly right yeah and so twitter is very much focused on x but actually in 2021 2022 in the past
when we were experiencing hyper growth we were actually getting billions of impressions on
platforms like tick tock and youtube ax generated, I think, 4 billion impressions
on TikTok in 2021.
So yeah, you know,
so the thing that was interesting about Kaido,
so they were always wanted to work with us
and people were like,
why isn't Axie on Kaido?
Why isn't Ronin on Kaido?
I told them,
I'm only going to be interested in working with Kaido
if you guys expand beyond X, right?
X is just an echo chamber.
Literally everyone in crypto already knows.
Marketing is just the act of making sure that people know about you, for the most part.
Everyone in crypto and everyone in the crypto Twitter bubble already knew about us, right?
So yeah, that's generally what we're thinking in terms of the yeah it's so true
like i mean it's a great space twitter is a great space for like once you're in the ecosystem or
once you're in there to get a more condensed feed of what like what everything's going on like it's
a great place to be once you're an active community member but it's true that it might not be the best
place for for either new users in crypto in general, which is what crypto gaming claims to do much better than other crypto mediums is acquire new users, right?
Because there's the game aspect and then you discover the other tools.
So, yeah, I guess it's true that people often forget that it was so huge.
Facebook, I think also because like the Philippines and stuff like that.
But yeah, we often forget about that because it's been a few years now
and we're just, I guess it's just an effect of the echo chamber also.
Do you, yeah, one second.
I read a question in chat, but I'm going to keep that for later.
It derailed me. I read a question in chat, but I'm going to keep that for later. So I think that's a good also with
with this topic, it's a good way to transition onto the token Ron, right?
Because that's that's that's a way to incentivize growth.
I think first and foremost, the first question I was wanting to ask you was like
the end of passive staking is coming.
What are you guys expecting and thinking
about that as a whole? I mean, so right now is a time to reset foundations, right? Like Ron has
gone down a lot. So we can actually take a bunch of drastic decisions that might not be possible
if things are going well. And when things are going well well it's actually really hard to make hard decisions because right like it's it's kind of like oh when you know when axie was running really hot right
and we like got rid of adventure motor rewards we got rid of like slp and different things right
these are things that are good for the economy in the long run but nobody wants to kill the golden goose in the moment right so when times are bad you cannot let a crisis go to waste uh and not make
structural long-term adjustments that wouldn't really be possible to make in other conditions
and so the main idea right is that we have been overpaying for security, right? That was actually one of the main
reasons that we wanted to become an L2 is that it doesn't make sense. If Ethereum is secure
and there's the L2 and there's a possibility of becoming an L2 relatively seamlessly,
it doesn't make sense to have to run your own validators and spend millions, tens of millions of dollars of tokens each year to
incentivize security, right? Remember, the staking system was created to basically
incentivize the validators to secure the network. If that's no longer needed because we're moving
to an L2, then we can basically save that budget. We can just send it
to the treasury. The token holders can decide what they want to do with it, right? Maybe they're like,
hey, like we want to provide liquidity. We want to do an airdrop to holders, whatever, right? Like
that's also one of the changes that we're implementing a governance system based on token holding.
So the idea is to basically take the budget that we had earmarked for staking rewards
and just to put that in the treasury, we then have an end to this passive staking situation
where we took a look at the math around 90% of the rewards were just being instantly
sold when they were claimed right so people complain about the price going down but
um right a lot of a lot of it was because the inflation rate was so high I think inflation
was around 40% majority of that from staking rewards uh last year yeah so that's that's the idea right it's like you know you cannot fix tokens only via
the supply side but you also cannot only fix tokens through the demand side it's actually
obviously easier in some ways to fix the supply side and then adjust the demand side right so
ending the passive staking that's how we fix the supply issue uh on the demand issue right that's about making sure that
okay we're bringing the best games and content to ronin making sure that we're actually performing
the purpose of the chain which is to onboard everyday people who have never used the technology
before and right make sure that the incentives of everyone building on the chain is also aligned with the token holders.
And that's related to the proof of distribution system.
That's related to also Sky Mavis us saying, hey, we're taking too much of the money from the Ronin market fees.
If Ronin NFT volume goes up a lot in the future, we're going to want to make sure that the incentives are much more better aligned with the treasury, right? So that was the rationale behind us dropping our percentage of
the Ronin market fee from 2% all the way down to 1.25% and cutting that 50-50 with the treasury
because it's about incentive alignment. We want to make sure that people understand that if
NFTs are booming on Ronin, content is booming on Ronin, then that's also going to balloon the treasury, which can be used for things like buybacks.
It can be used for drops, can be used for incentive liquidity farming, incentive programs.
And that's really right now becoming the true backer of the token.
main sustainable way to do it is to right buttress the value of the tokens by making it
useful for gas and also creating a bunch of diversified revenue streams that are backing
the value of the token through future potential buybacks airdrops the holders things like that
yeah so absolutely i think also like a big part of like where some fear from the community might come in is like this, like the uncertainty of knowing what's what's what the future holds, especially with big transitions like this.
And I think this is why like hearing hearing it directly from the horse's mouth as a girl who is very important so that. time now is the time to make big changes because obviously right it's like what has been work what
has been happening hasn't been working so let's try let's try a bunch of different bold big changes
now is the time to do it you can't do these things in bull markets you have you can only make these
large structural healthy changes in bear markets the way's the way that I see it. You also see this on the Axie side, right?
BXS, shutting down Homeland.
And now is the time to really address
these supply side issues while building the things
that will also bolster demand moving forward.
Yeah, and I guess the whole proof of,
like this whole proof of distribution thing,
I guess, kind of touches on both, right? Because it's obviously a supply side, because it's
allocation of one. But also the whole point of it is to is to stimulate demand. So I think I had
more questions about that, like the whole proof of distribution model, because I think a lot of
it will rely on how how that's implemented, right? Simply like who decides what, how it's decided, that whole process.
Like how, like the question is, how would you say this is different than,
than say the previous Ronin grants that we might have had?
Is it the Ronin grant system was really annoying because like there were hundreds
of teams that were applying, like asking for and uh they were like you know a lot of them right there's like oh they would they would
only think about the playing on the chain if we gave them a grant or something like that right so
actually having a grant program i think is kind of toxic uh because then right it just becomes this
barrier to people just shutting up and building and proving themselves. Right. So basically the proof of distribution system kind of turns it, it turns things on its
head where it's like, yo, build something, ship something, prove yourself. And then you'll get
naturally rewarded by the protocol without having to talk to me, talking to people at Sky Mavis,
right? Like it's kind of, that's not a good workflow where like you need to talk to people on the chain in order to build on the chain.
And people are so, so I think that that's the big thing that it addresses.
And also in the age of AI, right?
Like I'm talking to a team right now that's going to basically reskin their current game.
It's a successful game.
One of the most successful games in crypto that's not on Ronin.
They're going to reskin their game, kind of make it Axie themed and ship it on Ronin. They can do it in two or three
weeks because of AI powered deployment. So now it's like the thing, the annoying thing about
gaming is that, right, like it took a lot of time and funding to create games in the past,
but that's actually being disrupted right now.
So now you can almost start deploying games.
You can deploy DeFi protocols, and I think that is also going to help.
Yeah, it's a perfect storm of sorts.
Right at the time that we're trying to transition this,
it's also easier for games to do that.
Can I ask you to you ask can i ask you
to tell me more what you mean by like natural i i forget how you said it but like naturally selected
by by the protocol or something like that when you said that like how how will that work as opposed
to because i don't understand that like if because in a grant you're a person's doing the picking how how is that changing yeah so basically there will be a
kind of like a builder score and every project right will have its own score depending on
what metrics it's putting up kind of like an athlete right it's like how many points per game
is it scoring how How many rebounds?
Whatever, right?
So for these projects, the way that we're thinking about it
for now is what's the NFT in the ERC-20 volume?
What are the gas fees that they're generating?
What is the TBL associated with this app?
And are they actively engaging users that are, I think, holding more than a certain amount of run?
And it's also, I think it's flexible.
And this is actually also one of the things that will be related to governance, where changes to the system can be enacted theoretically through the governance system.
But we will propose an initial, uh, initial framework for, for this.
We'll do that before the migration, right?
So it should be at some point in the next 10 days and all the builders
will be able to migrate people will be able to register.
Uh, but the idea is basically, yeah.
Like certain we want to have this system that is giving out the rewards
there's rewards that were formerly in the staking rewards program will be flowing to builders that
are naturally creating and putting up good metrics on the chain without us thinking to
fucking do anything or even talking so even if a team that i could hate hate, right? Let's say, I don't know, like, a team that I hate, right?
Obviously, I wasn't going to.
That's what was, like, what?
Alluvium or something, right?
Imagine, right?
But a team that I don't even, that I fucking hate, right?
Sky Mavis hates, right?
They could theoretically, if they do well and they put up good metrics, right?
They could do, they could be getting a lion's share of these uh proof of
distribution rewards right proof of distribution distribution means that you're actually getting
fucking users and driving metrics so will there be a because this is where my mind goes automatically
like will there be a framework also to like monitor for potential abuse whether it's like wash wash
trading to increase volume fake users everything like that
like because that needs i think that needs to be also clearly not maybe not clearly detailed because
then obviously people know how to work around it but um yeah it also will need to be civil resistant
what's resistant sorry civil resistance like bot bot resistance. Yeah, I guess, yeah.
I mean, yeah, obviously.
And yeah, so I guess I'm excited to see how that rolls out, right?
Because even for the whole narrative behind the chain, the fact that it's not about, because
a lot of people might say sometimes that there's like some favorite picking and stuff going
on like that without them knowing everything that goes on behind the scenes right um so it's it's going to be it's going to be good for the narrative
also for people to just be for you to be able to be like hey you guys anybody come and and just
build right so there's i guess this this there was this topic too about like the the i think there's
a big run unlock upcoming, right?
It's one of the big blast ones.
We're already at a huge amount of the run token
has already been allocated.
I guess this question is more in general.
It was prepared to ask, but yeah.
Like, is there any things you guys do specifically
to manage cell pressure?
Or is that more, you let it organically handle
itself? When there's big, like on the cusp of big unlocks, do you guys worry about that? Or do you
do you kind of let the ecosystem handle itself basically?
so i mean a lot of these things right where it's like a lot of this unlock a lot of that is like
in different uh pools of tokens that right it's like the staking rewards right or right part of
it is sky mavis's sky mavis's unlock right and we actually already locked we so i see one of the
next questions we actually locked a lot of our uh existing tokens right so we actually already locked we so i see one of the next questions we actually
locked a lot of our uh existing tokens right so we put out an article about this yeah in
in 2025 about how we actually right had already committed to relocking
yeah i guess the two topics are kind of interplay was that effective to be honest right because uh
Yeah, I guess the two topics are kind of intertwined.
I don't think it was that effective, to be honest, right, because I'm not, yeah, I'm not sure.
I think, right, it's like what we actually need to do is make sure that we're addressing supply from where a lot of the sell pressure is coming from and then also increasing demand.
Yeah, I guess that's. And my take on this or the way that I think about it is it's just good to get all the tokens unlocked, especially while the price is low, because you actually don't want to have these big price.
You don't want these huge unlocks coming later when they're worth a ton more money.
And that's even as you as you're talking about earlier, about handling the supply side before stimulating the demand side, that's also one of the big things that can hamper future demand, right?
Is if people start getting interested in RON, look at the tokenomics as things are ramping up and they see down the line these massive unlocks, that can stop someone from buying tokens, right?
So I'm excited about that stage of the of the wrong uh life cycle that it
gets like even more released i mean you see it even just in meme coins right you see people
appreciate the fact that when a meme comes out um all you have to worry about is like the dev wallet
but all the tokens are out right i think a lot of a lot of the problems that come out about token
price points and stuff like that like sometimes i wish a project would just no unlocks, full release, the whole supply.
But obviously that's scary to do when...
That's why people like meme coins, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And that's actually what was good about like SLP in some ways, right?
And that's not possible for a project that requires people working on it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
It's a big gamble to take it.
Yeah, and a lot of work put in.
So I guess the last question we'll tackle on the whole RON topic is just overall,
like on the whole RON topic is what just overall,
like what would you say with,
what would you say success looks like for the RON token in 12 months?
I would say that basically in 12 months,
I would want to see ecosystem metrics looking significantly better.
Things like TVL, things uh gas usage and treasury inflows
you know I would also want to see that the best games in crypto continue to be on Ronin
perhaps we have some other categories that are percolating that are kind of
peripheral or just like Katana for example is, is one of the biggest DEXs in 2021.
And so to see some peripheral categories looking good on Ronin, perhaps like, right.
I think Ronin is a good fit for an emerging market stablecoin solution could be good for
like TCG type of type of application. And so, yeah, I would want to see treasury inflows,
gas usage, for us to continue to have the best crypto gaming content.
Also, crypto games that are growing are much bigger than they are right now.
And I think ideally, we would have the treasury inflows each month higher than the inflation rate.
So that would basically be like almost a kind of like a inflationary token.
Yeah, I think that would be, that's a good, good stepping stone for the rest of the future after that.
So there's the next topic I'm going to,
I want to talk about,
I'm going to talk about is Axie.
And then after that, we'll handle,
we'll tackle some community questions
before wrapping things up.
So first of all,
at the moment these days,
like how involved would you say
you are in the whole,
with Axie,
on the Axie games, let's say?
I'm pretty involved,
especially on the Atiyah's Legacy side
and some of the game economy things.
So yeah, I'm pretty in the weeds and hands-on
when it comes to what are the things
that we want to try to build and explore with the
Tia's legacy. And so yeah, I'm really, I'm quite involved. Yeah, especially also now that I'm in
Vietnam, like one of the reasons I wanted to move to Vietnam is like allows me to be a bit more
hands on and product rather than just, okay, right, it's time left for us to launch something.
okay right it's time left for us to launch something uh right i'm able to be a little
bit more part of the full life cycle yeah yeah that's i mean it must be cool to be i mean on
the ground with the team it makes it more direct right so yeah one of the things i wanted i was
gonna ask you until you tweeted about it yesterday was when next play test but as you said so you
in this tweet you posted yesterday,
you said targeting April.
Yeah, like mid-April, I would say, is a good target.
Also, likewise with the migration.
And likewise with the migration.
So I think we had originally said late March,
but we're going to shift that ETA to April due to us, some of the exchange
partners needing a bit of time to kind of go through the migration process.
So what can you tell us more about this?
What are you most excited about for people to discover in the next playtest?
I mean, the first playtest, I had a lot of fun.
We made this one.
So the last playtest was way too easy.
So we're going to play around with the difficulty here in terms of the content.
Hopefully.
So it's a bit of a meme in the show
that I keep complaining about
because my phone couldn't run the Atiyah's legacy playtest.
So hopefully one of the difficulty metrics won't be access to the game because I really want to play this one.
I think at the time I still had my 10-year-old GC.
Talk to ET.
Yeah, I did.
Okay, I will in advance then because during it, I think it was something to do with the processor or a chip
like that so it was because it's a it's a it was it's a samsung galaxy s24 so it was the flagship
samsung phone at the time but i think one of the chips right you have a korean phone dude
i didn't know that non-koreans have samsung galaxy s20 like that's
yeah well they they sell their phones elsewhere.
I really like all the Samsung phones.
But yeah, I hope that's not one of the difficulty metrics
is access to the game.
So I guess I really like that answer, right?
Because it's the discovery of difficulty.
Yeah, I mean. We want to explore
making Atiyah's
legacy. Maybe I'll just talk about
some thoughts that I have about Atiyah's
One of the things that we're seeing is that
session-based gameplay is
really important these days, if that makes sense,
where it's a game that you can come in and play for 15 to 20 minutes at a time and feel like you had a complete experience rather than something that you need to play for five hours.
Especially also like when it comes to an MMO.
The ability to also be able to leave at any point and not feel like you've been, that you're missing out and that you've been dragged away because that's like that negative experience makes people less likely to come back on.
Yeah, like for me, like I cannot play WoW because I just know that it's going to disrupt my entire life.
I'm the same. I can't play MMOs.
mmos so so the idea of an mmo that's a little bit more session based where you feel like you can
play for 15 to 20 minutes and have a complete experience right also the integration of risk to
earn um and also right let's think about what works for eve online is the idea of risk actually as well, right? Because you join a war, you have your ship, that ship can be destroyed, right? It's social. So the element of risk, the ability to profit, the fact that you're with your friends, these are all the critical elements. And we're looking at, based on the building blocks that we have right now, this kind of top-down ARPG,
combat system, the town, how do we basically
kind of reconcile these things into something that is workable?
Yeah, sure.
So I'm highlighting this question.
Will there be co-op in the next playtest?
Or a system party system?
You can't confirm or deny?
Obviously, that needs to happen, is what I'll say.
But I don't believe that it will be in the next one.
So maybe some sneak peek is our idea is to have like the second playtest test like a dungeon,
kind of like a dungeon extraction loop, right?
Where you're fighting your way through a dungeon further and further.
The further you go, the more loot you get.
But you can also like lose your loot.
So we want to test that first.
A few weeks after that, we want to test PVP.
And then perhaps parties would be the playtest after that.
So does that mean you're saying that playtest number three
will be a few weeks after this playtest?
No, that's the current thinking.
That's the current thinking.
We want to have the next playtest, which will be the PvP testing, quite soon, relatively
soon after the second one.
So can we safely say that the time between playtest two and playtest three will be shorter
than the time between playtest one and playtest two?
That's cool.
We also, like, some of us on the
team are like obsessed with uh arc raiders not like the idea of our creators right or the idea
of like what would actually x arc raiders look like with minus the guns right but you don't think about
the gun aspect right but but yeah but the idea of an extraction, session-based extraction
with the loadout system, right?
These are where our thoughts are up.
We just had Jeff K come to HQ, actually,
and he's actually a huge fan of ArcGraders,
so we're discussing, right?
Like, what makes that game so good?
What is the tension? That seems like it could be a good fit right for
for what free is like that type of mechanic that's actually also what you know from what works for me
personally with cambria during gold rush is what i love is like right either crafting my outfit
or my my loadout basically crafting my my equipment or having to buy my equipment after I die, going out there and feeling like, right, I'm wearing a lot of money.
So I'm wearing a lot of money on my body.
And you go out there, right, you're farming mobs.
When someone comes, you're not sure whether they're friendly
whether they're going to gank you or try to gank you yeah right there's that all that tension and
the fact that it's involving real money just increases something the tension that's already
there if that makes sense right rather than um so so these are the types of conversations or
this got thinking that's the type of thinking that we've had around what makes Atiyah's legacy
really interesting potentially in the endgame.
Yeah, I mean, it's exciting to think about, right?
Obviously, good conversations to be having while designing a game.
One of the questions there is like, what's Axie's next major moment?
I think the easy answer to that is,
would you say it's the release of Atiyah's legacy?
Or what's your answer to that question?
What's Axie's next big moment?
So we have some, we don't necessarily
want to wait that long.
I think these playtests are going to be fun.
And we have terrariums coming up. wait that long, right? It's like, I think like these play tests are going to be fun. And, you
know, we have terrariums coming up, you know, BAXS, I think is an important structural change to the
economy. And but yeah, we're also thinking about, can we do something that's like, you know,
remember the nightmare event? Nightmare event was pretty good for stimulating the economy. Could we do something that's much bigger than that?
And, you know, there's like 11 million inactive axes that are kind of just out there.
You know, is there a way that somehow we could get rid of those?
That's another question that we've been thinking about, Right. That's another way to like solve it.
Like, yes, we can stimulate demand, but if there's 12 million axes, right,
it's still really a drop in the bucket.
But if we're able to get the AXI population down to like a million or so,
two million, three million even like then we're
kind of cooking yeah i mean it's yeah that's it's crazy to think about because we have so many axes
right but obviously um that would be only let's say 10 of them are active over the last year which
is actually still a lot million right it's like you know roughly it can estimate like there's still around 100 000
people uh in the axi community uh on a yearly basis right so but but yeah that's still right
only around like 10 of the supply being active and so yeah we're also looking at if we can do something maybe lore-related, or maybe chimera-related to help
kind of fix the supply issue.
So I may have said too much already.
But that's the point of the show,
it's to extract some alpha from you unwittingly.
But before we move on to the community questions, there was one, like the question of like,
do you think Ronin has grown like beyond the needs
of Axie to lead it forward?
Are we there yet?
If, you know, hopefully, Axie and Ronan, right, are just in this symbiotic beneficial relationship
to each other where they're both helping each other.
And yes, of course, right, like, Ronan is less reliant on Axie than it was in the past.
We now have things like Moku, Cambria, Pixels, Ragnarok, right?
You have a bunch of other stuff on the chain and things that are substantial and have their own communities.
But, you know, I think Axie still has a special place in people's hearts
yeah absolutely in the especially in the in the whole existing um crypto community everyone knows
about axie right it's like a sleeping a sleeping giant you know but people might forget about it
but i think if and when things pick up again people will remember how well known axi is right when when
when things start going when things are going right for atia's legacy and all that the the
simple renown of it and the hopefully the people that come back because of it will will speak for
itself right so yeah now the community questions um i asked people what they what they needed to
hear from you.
The one I got the most, I think, was like, what's the,
we'll get it right out of the way, is like,
what would you say the plan is and what is to be expected
like post L2 migration?
What's the next chapter?
I think, honestly, it will be up to the products.
So, yes, I think there are some cool things that we can implement at the protocol level, right? Like, oh, let's do some really interesting governance proposals, right? Oh, can we do the honor system, right? The player reputation system. these because the builder score is actually going to be kind of like developer reputation right but
we still i think potentially would need a user reputation uh system so we're taking a look at
uh at that as well so those are i think some of the things at the protocol level to be honest
um but i do think that right ronin is a chain for everyday people. Yes, it's very gaming centric,
but the reason that we choose gaming
is because that has a way of being very relatable to everyday people.
So it will be after the migration,
a lot of it will be making sure that our winners are winning and that we're continuing to attract new winners to the chain at the product level, right? So that can be games, games like Moku, Cambria, Bambleborn, Pixels, Ragnarok. But it could also potentially be applications that are a good fit for everyday
people, right? So that could be, oh, stablecoin, remittance, transfers in emerging markets,
right? Because if you're building a blockchain app for Filipinos, obviously, you're going to
want to be on Ronin, right? A blockchain app for people in Peru, Venezuela, Brazil,
not for people in Peru, Venezuela, Brazil, Ronin is a great fit, right? So our specialty is not just
in terms of gaming, it's that our specialty in gaming has also allowed us to have this
kind of geographic, regional, almost socioeconomic tint to the people that we have on the chain and the people that we can onboard to the chain.
Yes. And this, like, actually, your answer makes me think of the previous topic we were on.
And it also ties it together with Orr's question in chat, which is, will, like, Axie Classic and Axie Origin have builder scores, for example, or game scores or whatever?
builder scores, for example, or game scores or whatever?
If Axie Classic and Axie Origin pick up or do good and pick up,
will those games also get an allocation potentially?
Basically, if the people are speaking by which games they're
playing and Axie Classic has played a lot,
how would that go, let's say?
Let's see.
So I think so builder score theoretically would be at the developer level.
But theoretically, right, like maybe the proof of distributions rewards for that could go maybe to the Axie Treasury, right?
Or maybe they could just go to the runningin Treasury because SkyMavis builds those games, and we said that SkyMavis' rewards from that system would just
go straight to the Treasury because you don't want to be
seen as benefiting from it in that way, in a way other than
through our holding of the Ron token.
But then if that happened, it wouldn't directly help
the game in that moment, right?
Let's say people wanted to, with their wallet,
with their on-chain activity,
wanted to signal that they want more funds,
more development funneled back into those games.
Would that be a possibility, right?
How would that work?
This is a good question, to be honest.
We've been thinking about how do we...
It seems like people want us to work on Origins or Classic
or want someone to work on Origins or Classic.
But the problem is these games are not profitable to work on,
if that makes sense.
But if the community just wants someone to build it,
maybe someone could get paid to build it,
whether that's a different developer or us.
The problem is that Origins and Classic,
it's not something that makes a lot of business sense
to work on or to continue adding new features to right now.
And then I think a lot of the community know that,
but that's where if the on-chain activity was high enough
that the new proof of distribution,
whatever that run amount would be,
would suddenly make it at least breakeven or profitable.
Yeah, these are all good questions.
These are all good questions.
Yeah, kind of.
And then it's like, does Axie just have one, right?
Or do the individual Axie titles have one?
Because even in SkyMade, it's really hard to do the attribution.
Even when we have all of the perfect data,
it's really hard to figure out what game is driving what volume.
Yeah, yeah, that's true.
In a lot of cases, right?
Yeah, like if somebody buys a
collectible actually what game were they playing yeah exactly you don't know what to attribute it
to rather than other than maybe looking at that specific address mapping into an email mapping
into what game yeah yeah and what if they're playing multiple games but who do how do we know
which one they're yeah that's why's why I think in some ways,
in some ways it's easiest to just attribute it at the IP level.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I mean, it's going to be...
These are good problems to think about in the future, right?
If it's that much attention is going back to these games,
these are going to be good problems to handle, right?
Next question. I mean, it's tied also with like the post L2 migration These are going to be good problems to handle, right? Yeah.
Next question.
I mean, it's tied also with the post L2 migration, all of that.
Should we be expecting any new partnership announcements?
As many leaks as possible are encouraged.
New partnerships? We always have new partnerships. always have you know yeah i guess it's it's an open question
so what i'm seeing right maybe a comment that i'll make here is that people are seeing that
right cambria and moku are doing well and fable warren obviously they had like a weird situation recently, but you know, that kind of that trifecta was,
has been creating a kind of a bit of a new flow of demand
and builders reaching out.
Yeah, even just to go back to our previous question,
when I see somebody in China asking,
what can we expect from Axie treasury being in the hands of the community soon? That would also be a more direct way for people to
divert more funds, let's say, more actively, more, that would be easier to do, right?
Yeah, we're going to start staking the ETH, right? So the idea is for the, not not us like it's for the uh the right the the the axi treasury to start staking
uh the eth that's in there so i think around 2800 so that'll be the execution of one of the
previously passed governance proposals and then my my understanding right it's like i'm not one
to i'm like the town builders want to pass the constitution because theoretically once you pass the constitution they can set up councils to do a lot of things really quickly and related to things like the treasury so that's my understanding of what of what's happening uh right now on the governance front right so The good and the weird thing about governance is it's not really up to me.
It's not totally in my hands.
A lot of it is in the hands of the community.
Yeah, fair enough.
I guess another one of these questions that I got asked was like,
can you tell us more about the utility of AXS in ATIA's legacy and
in the terrariums? Is there anything, what comes to mind when you think of that?
So for both of these situations, for both of these experiences, we want to set the foundation
really strong. Like we want to set the foundation really strong.
Like we want to make sure that these are enjoyable experiences that can generate revenue.
They're generating revenue then to me.
Right. It's like token utility has gone more towards like Hyperliquid.
What is Hyperliquid's token utility is like primarily based on the fact that they generate revenue and use that revenue to buy back
the token right so to me generally right it's like we need to make these games fun we need to make
these games have uh deep uh reasons to interact with the economy uh and to right generate
significant transaction volumes and then once once you have these things happening it's very easy to
significant transaction volumes.
And then once you have these things happening,
it's very easy to divert value to the token.
Do you have a playtest number in mind
where we will start testing out AXS utility?
I'm not exactly sure.
Yeah, maybe my estimate would be like four or five.
OK, there you go.
I mean, yeah, that's an exciting thing too.
We have to, it starts with that, right?
Okay, okay.
Another question that was asked was like,
what can you tell us or what's the state of the recovery
of the hacked funds to this date?
So, you know, I think the only thing that I can say is, yeah, that we continue to make progress on it.
And that we're in contact with the FBI on it.
And yeah, I think, you know, they want to move faster on it.
And I think, like, you know, the new administration is obviously been more friendly
to crypto. So I think they're moving faster on stuff like this. And, you know, it's significant
and it's a significant amount of money. I believe the last time that we publicly said
a number was like maybe 30 mil. And I think that's when uh bitcoin was at 60 60. let me let me just check what to see what i said
to see what was that
yeah And when you say they like that they're they're in a hurry you mean like law enforcement and stuff
like that right as like the new that they're in a hurry to or not in a hurry but that they want
things to move faster as when you say they was was it them? Yeah, yeah. So I mean, these reclamation processes can take a while,
but it seems like there's some, yeah, it seems like-
I'm able to move things forward.
Yeah, so that's always like a good thing that's looming in the background
is potentially good news, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Another catalyst at the right moment for good things to happen.
So there was, I think that covered a bit,
like mostly of the community questions that we wanted to do.
I was going to ask you one more question and then we can start wrapping up.
It's it's themed around like
Psychout's departure.
I wanted to get to obviously for as much as you can share.
What are your like, what would you say has changed the most with his departure?
What are your like, what would you say has changed the most with his departure?
Or how have things changed, should I say?
I mean, so, you know, we were, I think we were at a situation or we were at a crossroads right where not just within sky mavis but i think
within crypto people have to decide whether they want to like move on with their lives
or they want to double down and like really go in go all in and do the things that are
going to be needed to actually turn the industry around turn uh turn sky mavis around right
and turn Sky Mavis around, right?
So I think that was the situation that we had where, you know,
I think for Alex, he just had a kid,
which can be like a really life-changing thing I've heard.
And so he just had a kid, right?
He wanted to spend more time with his family.
He didn't want to do the thing that was needed,
which was to move to Vietnam and dedicate himself fully
to doing what was needed to, you know, get things back on the right track. And, and yeah, and but I
want, but I did, right. So for me, you know, I mean, it's hard to say, because it's a lot of it
has just been, I feel good, because I've come to Vietnam, I'm more hands know, I mean, it's hard to say because it's a lot of it has just been I feel good because I've come to Vietnam.
I'm more hands on. I see everything that's happening now and we have a much better view or understanding of what's what's actually happening.
So, yeah, I think that's I guess that's the main, you know, that's the main that's the main change for me.
I mean, that's the main change for me.
OK, if only.
Obviously, you know, obviously, you know, I grew up with Alex in a way, right?
Like when we started Axie, we were just like people playing Crypto Kitties in our pajamas.
Right. So when we, you know, when we started this journey, so we came like a crazy, you know, went on a crazy journey together.
And, you know, he's kind of stepping back.
He's still going to be involved in some ways, maybe at the board and stuff like that.
If only he had thought about replacing himself with an AI agent.
Did you hear about that on Ronin, like a CEO making an ai agent have you did did you hear about that on on ronan some like a ceo making an ai agent
i mean eventually eventually that will not be so far yeah it was just right unfortunate for that
particular situation where it's like you know that team has not been able to really
prioritize or strategize well, or they haven't been able to strategize well and they haven't
been able to execute well. So when you have a lack of ability to do the right things or do those
things well, then... Yeah, it's not a good recipe. Exactly. Yeah. So I think that's what happened there.
Relating to your previous answer, there was Orr's comment
He says, Ronan is G-host's kid.
We truly appreciate his dedication
to doing what's needed to bring us back.
I also remember the times in 2018 where Orr would come into the chat.
And yeah, I mean, in some ways, right, like we've gone through so many hard times, right?
Like, we were like, oh, how do you feel?
It's like, I mean, I don't know.
Like, this is probably one of the top four hardest times that we've been through in crypto in my life, I guess is what I can say.
hardest times that we've been through in crypto in my life is i guess is what i can say um that
you know i would say that you know 2023 was a hard year 2019 was hard 2018 was hard 2020 was also hard
so you know there have been it's it's usually crypto is very uh it's a it's a it's a it's usually crypto is very.
It's a it's a it's a it's a difficult thing, and that's actually also why. Right. The the rewards can be really high at times,
because it this thing tries to shake off as many people as possible
and get people to give up.
And yeah, you know, I'm betting I'm betting that, you know, by being resilient, by being anti-fragile, by making the right decisions, by being dedicated, by actually focusing on onboarding everyday people, by having the highest quality content, by making hard economic decisions, I'm betting, right, that that is going to be enough for us to once again experience
success and joy as a community. And I do believe that that will happen.
I mean, it's almost like you know the script of what I'm going to ask us. One of the closing
questions I was going to ask you was like, what are your predictions for Q2?
So like the very immediate future.
And answer that as it's purposefully ambiguous.
You can pick a direction.
You know, I believe that we will execute well on that we're going to execute well on the L2 migration and the TS legacy play test is going to go well.
You're still going to have Moku's Grand Arena season going on for a lot of this.
Cambria Genesis is coming.
is coming fable war in season five and you know there are a couple of like new teams that are
Fable were in season five.
new teams new products that are also on their way to run it uh so yeah you know i i believe that if
we execute we're stalwart and we have everybody's support we stay unified as a community then
you know i think we're gonna feeling be feeling a lot better in Q2. I also feel like, you know, like one thing that I see is I feel like our relative position, right, is still quite strong.
It's not like I see anybody succeeding in Web3 gaining in any way that's kind of significant relative to us.
Yeah, fair enough.
So another thing that I want to say, is like new stuff we want new games right
i think like you know the idea that someone is coming to save us like some sexy new product or
new team i think that's a little bit overrated to be honest um and you know definitely you
you know new teams can help and new teams are interested in coming and
know new teams can help and new teams are interested in coming and
but i guess it's but yeah i will also say that it's not that's not a silver bullet
yeah because right now it's like who are who are these new teams right like there there are some
there are some good games outside of running um there are some good games outside of Ronin.
There are some good games outside of Ronin.
But we'll see.
It's also like, I also think that with vibe coding,
developers can come out of nowhere.
There are people on our team that are now developers that weren't developers two months ago.
You know, Jaxer?
Jaxer can make games now.
Yeah, I've been chatting with him. He's going all in on AI.
Yes, we kind of gave him a special role where he's the AI growth associate.
So he's coding a lot of different things for us.
a lot of different different things for us i mean he's actually saving us a lot of money
He's actually saving us a lot of money.
that's an interesting thing too is like we were able to uh save uh replace a lot of the services
that we're playing paying for right and with uh with some like new tools yeah and as an employee
in any business the best thing you can do for a company is save them money or make them money
right so that's good for everybody.
Making money is actually just as powerful as making money. Even more powerful sometimes,
because if you're saving money while doing the same thing, it frees up more resources.
Fable Melody. Fable Melody says he's becoming a dev and vibe coding is okay. Definitely.
Like, I actually think that's one thing that we need to start talking about more as an ecosystem, like a bit is like vibe coding.
I actually think that's one thing that we need to start talking about more is an ecosystem,
I think anyone can become a builder now.
Everyone's talking about like agents or whatever.
But really, the idea is that anyone can become a builder.
Anyone could theoretically make a game.
Anyone can make tools.
Anyone can make a lot of different things.
Yeah, I think like you may have have your own budding career in .
JOHN MUELLER 1, it also means that anyone can get a builder
score, right?
So it's not just the dev, because now everyone
can become a dev.
Anyone can build a product.
And then, yeah, what Xio is doing with AI,
like video and stuff like that, I think is really cool and really worth noting.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So just to wrap up, if there was anything, like a last thing you want to say to the community, it can be like an encouraging statement, like something that, you know, you know what to do.
You're really good at this. So what, like a message,
a message of a message of, of,
of that people can get behind for until you come back on the show in a few
weeks or in a couple of months.
I mean, I think that April is going to be a really fun month for us.
We have the migration coming up.
We got a Tia's legacy playtest. You know, I think also understanding that, you know, crypto has been hard.
You know, it's been hard for all of us. And I'm actually really proud of the community, right?
We can say that, oh, like sentiment is bad. But actually, you know, I actually think that, right, the community is finding things to rally around right because remember the difference
between us and everybody else is that when the market is bad we actually have a lot of fun things
to do together right we can play right we can play grand arena we can always always play axie
right whatever you fucking say about axie axie has what i don't even know how many
playable games actually has right now like four or five right
homeland classic origins you know and then you have the bound the bounding board system
jazzer was trying to get an axie doll up again um
i love that we have three rooms coming we have a tea legacy right so actually right like people talk about axie butie, but Axie has more games shipped than anyone else in the space.
So we have a ton of things to do together, right?
And we're only going to make it by having fun with each other, by hanging out, by enjoying the struggle.
And, you know, that's kind of, you know, that's kind of my mood right now,
where it's like back to basics, back to fundamentals. I've moved to Vietnam. I'm not
fucking leaving. Obviously, I'm fully dedicated. And, you know, I look, I look forward to
a year where I think we're going to be making a lot of structural improvements and changes for the
good both on tokenomics side and the product side and you know I in some ways right crypto kind of
feels like it did when we first joined the space so when I joined the space in 2018 and 2019, like everyone was very jaded on crypto, right?
Because there was the whole ICO era and right, like basically none of the ICO projects at that point had really worked out or delivered anything.
So people were feeling very jaded about crypto.
I also feel that same pessimism now.
And, you know, at that time, that was the wrong fucking thing, right? It was,
it paid to be an optimist, it paid to believe in the future. And I generally think that's how I've
been able to do anything in my life, right? And that's not to say that I'm successful.
And not to say that even Axiomonin is the sole thing related to my
life right like i bought tesla when i was in 20 i bought tesla when i was in college and so i i
graduated high school in 2009 so i must have bought tesla in 2010 or 2011 because i was an optimist
because i believed in uh human potential and you know now, AI is kind of the very sexy thing.
And it used to be flipped, right?
Crypto was sexy, and nobody cared about AI.
But, you know, we're also learning about how these things go hand to hand.
And also, you don't necessarily want to be thinking with the crowd. So, so yeah, you know, I believe that the biggest market in crypto is still the market for everyday people. You saw this with semiconductors was just to build the computers that they
used to send people to the moon those were the only people using uh large-scale semiconductors
in like the 1960s when they first came out these are computer chips right eventually right compute
uh semiconductors or chips became something that were you that became used in all of the products that we use
as people on a daily basis but they weren't for consumers in the early days and that's how i feel
about crypto is that eventually the larger market for this technology is everyday people in everyday
life rather than just these niche financial use cases. And that's, I believe, where we specialize and we have more experience than anyone else.
So, you know, if we fail because we made a bet on that and we were wrong, you know, hats off.
You know, I that that wouldn't make sense to me.
So perfect.
Here, nothing leaving.
And. You know, I think, you know know we have an advantage to be honest right the
reason that we've been able to stick around for so long the reason that this community has been
able to stay together for so long is that when we have hard times or we have boring times we always
have something to do uh together right so you know i think for us the creators for the community
members i think right like the thing that you can do is figure out,
what are the most interesting things that are happening?
How do you share that?
How do you educate?
How can we help onboard a new audience to it as well?
Yeah, I think that's a perfect note to end things on.
So yeah, thanks for coming on
um it you've given the whole community like a lot of things to digest i always always love having
you on and i think also just even though a lot of the things we covered you've already tweeted about
already in articles i think sometimes um um a different a different medium and especially
through like through the podcast when you come on
it's a it is a great way to to like reach the people who haven't quite understood it myself
included right certain points so yeah thanks for coming on and uh i hope you had a good time too
so see you see you next time you come on all right yeah thanks for having having me. And, you know, I'll come back whenever you want.
Just let me know.
Yeah, perfect.
We'll definitely be scheduling that.
And then, yeah.
It's always so fun having G-host on because I was, I gonna be honest I was like really nervous having to like
solo host the show with Jihoz as a guest but as you can see it's it gives such banger answers
while also making me feel very reassured so all you have to do is like ask a few good questions
and then you just get really good uh a really good show or really good really good answers I feel
really good uh a really good show or really good really good answers i feel um and yeah i think
some things that stuck with me for today are when he the answer he gave about one of the thing that
he's most excited about for atia's legacy which is like the way he just gave the it was almost
like just a one-word answer like the word difficulty because it entails so many things it's
not just toggling the difficulty in game but it's like you need difficulty even for
for economics to work right you need skill in a game so i think uh it was it was just that's
the thing that sticks to me and also the discussion around uh the proof of distribution token which
even just myself personally helped uh understand it a lot more because i think a lot of the fuds
that might be circulating comes from people not quite understanding. And this is why mediums like this, I feel, are important.
I like it myself because I get to find out more about the chain that I'm on. And I hope that you
guys also learn some things and figure out some things and are able to get some answers to your questions. So yeah, thanks. Thanks, everybody for tuning in. We'll see each other next week at the same time.
We'll be announcing who the guest is. And yeah. Thank you. Thank you for coming in.
Thank you for tuning in and see you guys later! Thank you. so
I'm not a chance that I can't hear any of you fuckers right now and you actually are
Oh, shut up, fuck