How do blockchain games overcome network congestion? The popular blockchain game Axie Infinity uses the Ethereum sidechain "Ronin".

Ronin is an Ethereum sidechain developed specifically for blockchain games in Axie Infinity, focusing on reducing user game costs and improving response speed.

(This article is authorized to be reprinted from Chain News, the original title is "Ethereum Layer 2 Ecology Update: StarkWare Completes Financing, Optimism Postponed, Hermez and Aztec Go Live," original article here)

When decentralized applications seek scaling solutions, different types of applications have different needs. The current scaling solutions are mainly designed for general Layer1 high-speed mainchains or Layer2 Rollups designed for DeFi applications, but a more suitable solution is: developing dedicated blockchains for specific application needs, which we call application chains. The development paradigm of application chains that adapt to the habits of mainstream internet users and provide a better user experience will become a trend. We believe that application chains will experience explosive growth in the future.

Axie Infinity is based on this concept and has developed a dedicated Ethereum sidechain, Ronin, for its blockchain game. By transferring major operations from Ethereum to the application chain, user costs have been reduced by several orders of magnitude; response speeds have increased; and the Ronin wallet integrates a payment gateway, significantly reducing the deposit threshold. By deploying the application chain, the number of Axie Infinity users has exploded in the past two months, with daily active users (DAU) jumping from 38,000 at the end of April to 252,000. We see Axie Infinity as a successful example of an application chain. Therefore, we translated this article to share with readers.

From the early days of Axie Infinity, we have been passionate about bringing fun gameplay and sound economic design to the world of blockchain games. Our community has seen tremendous growth, and we have started some truly novel experiments around true ownership and earning in games. With this growth, we observed the main pain points of our community when playing Axie.

One issue that has always been a thorn in our side is the congestion on the Ethereum network. Network congestion is a tricky beast—Gas fees have been low for months, but then they spike again, causing our economy to stagnate.

Scaling Axie with Ronin

In order to achieve our second, third, and fourth-degree relationships (our friends, friends of family, family) for Axie Infinity, Axie needs a long-term solution where players can economically, quickly, cheaply, and seamlessly play the Axie game. We need it to be fun and easy.

This is why we are announcing our work on Ronin today—a specialized Ethereum sidechain developed for Axie Infinity. Ronin is a samurai without a master in the Japanese feudal society, representing our desire to take control of the destiny of our product.

Benefits for Axie Players

Ronin will allow us to elevate the accessibility of Axie to a new level, allowing us to welcome the next generation of beast trainers, philosophers, and adventurers to Lunacia.

Ronin will bring:

• Fast and seamless transactions, almost instant confirmation.
• Significantly reduced Gas fees. Furthermore, Gas fees can be retained by the community for tournaments and prizes, as opposed to being paid to Ethereum miners.
• The ability to withdraw Axie assets back to the Ethereum mainnet (eventually).
• Simplified new user onboarding process through a custom wallet solution.
• A blockchain explorer for increased transparency and data accessibility.

Why We're Building This

We believe that a one-size-fits-all scaling solution that caters to all aspects is not feasible. When it comes to scaling solutions, every product, every community has different needs. Additionally, current scaling solutions are often designed for DeFi use cases or simple asset exchanges, while the demands of the Axie community are more complex (and fun!).

We believe that to address the toughest challenges in our community, we are worth the extra effort to build solutions. A strong example of this is our internal Axie marketplace. While Axies are traded on various NFT exchanges, 97% of the trading volume is done through our marketplace. While we believe in the ideals of Web3.0 being open and collaborative, we also believe that no one will dedicate as much attention, thought, and intuition to a product serving our community as we do.

Security and Consensus

To help secure Ronin, we have recruited all-star partners from the traditional gaming, cryptocurrency, and NFT token space as validators for our network.

We will announce the Ronin validators closer to the launch.

The Future of Ronin

The following information comes directly from Sky Mavis CEO Trung:

"We are very excited about the possibilities that Ronin brings. While it is still early days, Ronin will evolve over the years to serve the spirit and ethos of blockchain gaming. On the technical front, we are also exploring various solutions to further strengthen and expand the scale of Ronin. For example, zKSyncs looks promising, but it may take time until it can be used in a production environment—especially for NFTs and games."

As Vitalik himself just mentioned today (Translator's Note: June 30, 2020), the current implementation of layer 2 is "largely limited to payments and DEX." We are interested in contributing to sustainable scalability for NFTs on Ethereum—an area that has not been given enough attention. Loom Network's shift away from NFTs has also accelerated our plans to control long-term scaling strategies.

For those interested in learning more about the exciting state of Ethereum scaling, we recommend this excellent overview by Anthony Sassano: Ready Layer Two – The Daily Gwei #11.

What This Means for Your Axies & Land

Our plan for current Axie Infinity assets (Axies, Land, Land items) is to migrate them to Ronin by the end of this year (Translator's Note: completion expected by the end of April 2021). The Sky Mavis team will handle the migration for users, but users can also choose to do it themselves if they prefer. We will redeploy all significant Axie-related smart contracts on Ronin. This will also be an opportunity to upgrade our existing contracts to make the Axie user experience more intuitive.

By depositing Axies in smart contracts on Ethereum. When Axies are within the contract, they will be usable on Ronin.

Once we approach the actual event, we will write a detailed blog post about the migration.