State of Ronin Q1 2025

Key Insights

• Ronin goes permissionless. On Feb. 12, 2025, Ronin launched Open Ronin, marking its transition from a closed, gaming-centric chain to an open, permissionless blockchain. The upgrade enabled unrestricted smart contract deployment across DeFi, infrastructure, and consumer applications.
• OpenSea integrates with Ronin. On March 25, 2025, OpenSea integrated Ronin, enabling marketplace support for Ronin-native NFTs. Within the first week of launch, the platform recorded over $400K in trading volume from Ronin collections.
• Tama Meme drove onchain activity. Tama Meme, a meme token launchpad launched in January 2025, accounted for more than 90% of smart contract deployments on Ronin within its first 20 days.
• Fableborne attracts $21.0 million in presale commitments. Fableborne conducted its Kingdom Raffle event, drawing over 15.4 million RON (approximately $21.0 million) in total contributions.
• Compound deployed on Ronin. Compound is a decentralized lending and borrowing protocol That launched on Ronin. It allows users to earn yield on their crypto by lending it or unlock liquidity from their assets by borrowing against it.

Primer

Ronin is a Layer-1 blockchain developed by Sky Mavis to address scalability challenges in Web3 gaming ecosystems, particularly for Axie Infinity. Initially using a Proof-of-Authority (PoA) consensus model, Ronin transitioned to Delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) in 2023 to improve decentralization while maintaining efficient transaction processing. The 2024 Goda Upgrade further enhanced decentralization with Rotating Validators and separated block production from finality voting. Designed with developers in mind, Ronin is fully EVM-compatible, supporting tools such as Remix and Hardhat for streamlined integration. Future plans include the adoption of Zero-Knowledge (ZK) rollups, enabling game studios to scale with dedicated blockspace while maintaining unified liquidity on Ronin’s L1. As well as adopting Chainlink’s CCIP. The adoption of CCIP enhances the security of bridged assets and simplifies cross-chain token transfers. CCIP’s capabilities include programmable token transfers, cross-chain messaging, and future-proof scalability, offering developers seamless interoperability and additional use cases such as cross-chain NFTs and DeFi applications.

For a full primer on Ronin, refer to our Initiation of Coverage report.

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Key Metrics

Performance AnalysisFinancial Overview

Overall, Ronin's financial metrics declined QoQ. Marketcap saw a 40.6% decrease from $724.9 million down to $430.3 million. A key metric worth noting is the circulating supply, which increased by 65.4% QoQ. The circulating supply increased from 374.4 million to 619.4 million. Ronin updated how RON’s circulating supply is reported to improve transparency and align with its published tokenomics. Previously, ~23.8% of the total supply was held in genesis multi-signature wallets, and smart contracts that were not included on tracking platforms like CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap. Although unlocked, these tokens weren’t counted as circulating. In Q1, Ronin migrated these tokens into new multi-sig wallets to ensure they were properly classified, which brought external data sources in line with the whitepaper and improved visibility for the broader market.

Market Cap and Price

In Q1 2025, RON token experienced heightened volatility, closing the quarter lower on a QoQ basis. Ronin’s market capitalization declined 40.6% QoQ, falling from $724.9 million at the end of Q4 2024 to $430.3 million by the close of Q1 2025. This contraction mirrored a corresponding drop in RON’s token price, which fell from $1.94 to $0.69 over the same period.

Despite the overall downward trend, on Jan. 30, 2025, Ronin’s market cap briefly surged to $943.0 million, a move likely driven by token trackers' ability to properly track the circulating supply of Ronin.

Network Overview

Ronin experienced a broad pullback in network activity during Q1 2025, with key indicators, including active addresses, total transactions, and holders, declining on a QoQ basis. Total transactions experienced a 33.3% decline QoQ, with transactions coming down from 128.2 million to 85.5 million. RON holders declined 64.7% from 252,000 to 89,000. Notably, bridge users and transactions increased QoQ, with users increasing 35.9%, going from 9,000 to 12,200.

Usage

Ronin’s active user base declined in Q1 2025. Daily active addresses fell 30.3% QoQ, decreasing from 955,500 in Q4 2024 to 666,400 by the end of March.

Activity levels fluctuated during the quarter, with a notable peak on Feb. 9, 2025, when daily active addresses reached 881,000. This increase coincided with the launch of Kuroro Beasts: Wilds Alpha, the announcement of Ronin Market’s NFT Trading Contest, and the introduction of marketplace features, including collection offers.

Transactions

Daily transaction count declined 46.7% QoQ, falling from 1.4 million in Q4 2024 to 950,000 in Q1 2025. Daily fees also decreased 56.9%, from $4,500 to $2,800 over the same period. Despite a broader decline in active users QoQ, Ronin maintained a relatively high base of network activity, with multiple days exceeding 1.0 million transactions.

NFT marketplace volume

Ronin’s NFT marketplaces delivered mixed results in Q1 2025 since the introduction of OpenSea. With divergent trends across its two primary platforms: Axie Marketplace and Mavis Market.

Axie Marketplace, which primarily facilitates trading of Axie Infinity assets, recorded $49,000 in volume, marking a 31.5% QoQ decline from Q4 2024.

In contrast, Mavis Market, Ronin’s general-purpose NFT marketplace, posted $60,100 in volume, achieving a 6.7% QoQ increase. This growth suggests rising demand for non-Axie NFT assets, driven by emerging projects such as Kuroro Beasts, Lumiterra, and Ronkeverse.

OpenSea

On March 25, 2025, OpenSea launched full integration with the Ronin blockchain, enabling marketplace support for Ronin-native NFTs. To mark the rollout, OpenSea and Ronin co-hosted two free mint events, Jin and Ronke, which were accessible to users interacting with the new integration.

In the first seven days following launch, NFT collections on Ronin recorded more than $400,000 in volume on OpenSea. The integration introduces a new distribution channel for NFTs on Ronin. For OpenSea, the collaboration provides access to a gaming-oriented user base that engages frequently with NFTs linked through gameplay.

New Contracts

On Feb. 12, 2025, Ronin transitioned to a permissionless smart contract model, allowing any developer to deploy applications without prior approval. This marked a shift from Ronin’s curated ecosystem to an open development environment. The impact was immediate: during the permissioned phase in early Q1, Ronin averaged just 2.9 new contracts per day. After the transition, daily deployments surged 1,113.2% to 35.5 contracts, reflecting a sharp increase in developer activity and signaling early traction in Ronin’s permissionless era.

Ecosystem and Development OverviewTotal Value Locked (TVL)

Ronin’s DeFi ecosystem experienced an increase in native TVL while the price of RON declined, leading to a decline in USD TVL. TVL in native terms rose 30.2% QoQ, increasing from 71.6 million to 93.2 million RON. However, USD-denominated TVL fell 53.3%, declining from $138.6 million to $64.7 million. The discrepancy is primarily explained by a sharp drop in RON’s price, which fell from $1.94 to $0.69, a 64% decline, over the same period.

Tama Mart

On Jan. 21, 2025, Tama Meme launched on Ronin. Created by Hantao, founder of Moku HQ, the platform introduced a fair-launch framework for speculative token creation. Users can deploy meme-style tokens that remain tradable within Tama Meme until reaching a predefined market capitalization threshold. Once that threshold is met, the token’s liquidity migrates to Katana DEX, and the associated pool is permanently locked.

In its first three months, Tama Meme recorded over $244,300 in cumulative trading volume, indicating early interest in lightweight speculation and experimental token creation. The launch introduces a new dimension to the Ronin ecosystem, which has historically focused on gaming and utility-driven assets. Tama Meme creates a permissionless outlet for experimentation, potentially increasing engagement from speculative user segments.

Ecosystem and Network expansionSunflower Land

In celebration of Ronin’s permissionless launch, the Sunflower Land team enabled full Ronin support for their game in February, allowing its players to start their farming adventures on Ronin. To commemorate the event, Sunflower Land airdropped 100 limited-edition NFTs (Bronze VIP Starter items) to early Ronin adopters in its community, rewarding users who provided their Ronin wallet addresses.

Pirate Nation

On Feb. 12, 2025, Pirate Nation, a fully onchain RPG originally built on Arbitrum, announced its expansion to the Ronin blockchain. Known for its free-to-play design and fully onchain mechanics. To commemorate the launch, Pirate Nation introduced a Ronin-exclusive NFT mint, offering players new in-game collectibles.

Ragnarok Landverse Genesis

In March 2025, Ragnarok Landverse launched on Ronin, opening access to Rune Midgard. As a blockchain-integrated extension of the Ragnarok Online franchise, the Landverse introduces an onchain MMORPG. A key feature of the rollout is the MAX Points Play-to-Airdrop campaign, which ran until March 31. Players earn MAX Points through gameplay progression, presale participation, and trading activity. These points can be redeemed for ZENT tokens, used to unlock in-game content, and integrated into Land NFT mechanics. Each account is capped at 3,000 redeemable points.

Kuroro Wilds Alpha

On Feb. 5, 2025, Kuroro Beasts launched the open alpha of Kuroro Wilds, its free-to-play RPG and roguelite hybrid. The launch marks the first phase of a multi-event Play-to-Airdrop campaign, distributing 30.0 million $KURO tokens through gameplay, social quests, and referral incentives. Kuroro Wilds featured four story-driven missions, daily roguelite challenges, and real-time combat.

Fishing Frenzy

In February 2025, Fishing Frenzy migrated to the Ronin blockchain. The cozy RPG found success quickly on Ronin, logging a 300% surge in daily active users, 330K+ installs, and a ten times increase in revenue within two months, all during its alpha phase. Originally a Telegram mini-game, Fishing Frenzy rapidly scaled its onchain economy on Ronin, minting 110K NFTs and generating over 1.3M RON in trading volume. Leveraging Ronin’s developer stack and marketplace infrastructure, the team launched four NFT collections and introduced gameplay-driven reward loops via mintable items, VIP passes, and the offchain Frenzy Points system.

Sabong NFT

In January 2025, the Sabong Saga: Genesis NFT presale generated over 1.75 million RON in raffle ticket purchases within its first 24 hours. Sabong Saga is a collection inspired by the cultural heritage of sabong (cockfighting), which will later be adapted into a cockfighting game.

Fableborne Kingdoms Raffle Sale

In February 2025, Fableborne, a mobile-first action RPG, attracted over 15.4 million RON (approximately $21.0 million USD) in total contributions during its Kingdom Raffle sale. Marking it as one of the largest fundraising events for a game on the Ronin network to date. Developed by Pixion Games, Fableborne combines base-building strategy with real-time, isometric combat, enabling players to raid enemy islands, defend their own, and engage in multiplayer skirmishes.

$10.0M Ecosystem Grant Program

On Jan. 15, 2025, Ronin launched the $10.0 million Ronin Ecosystem Grants Program to accelerate developer activity following the network’s transition to a permissionless model. The program offers funding between $20,000 and $300,000 in RON, targeting teams building in gaming, DeFi, infrastructure, and consumer applications.

The initiative includes two primary tracks. The Builder Grant provides milestone-based disbursements of up to $300,000 for teams addressing key user needs or driving adoption. The Waypoint Gas Grant allocates $20,000 to projects integrating Ronin’s Waypoint infrastructure, which supports gasless onboarding. In addition to capital, grantees receive strategic support, including wallet placement, marketing exposure, builder-only Discord access, and ecosystem introductions.

DeFi Expansion and UpdatesRON circulating supply update

On Jan. 25, 2025, Ronin underwent an update to align the reported circulating supply of RON with its original whitepaper. Historically, a significant portion of unlocked tokens (~23.8% of total supply) held in genesis multi-sigs and smart contracts were not counted as “circulating” on trackers like CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap. To correct this, all unlocked tokens were moved to five new multi-sig wallets and relevant token tracking sources were notified so as to properly reflect the accurate circulating supply.

This action increased the reported circulating supply from ~38% to 61.9%, without changing the total supply or affecting the unlock schedule.

$13.0M Growth Initiative

On Mar. 20, 2025, Ronin announced it would be launching a $13.0M growth program in partnership with Alpha Growth. This initiative is aimed at bootstrapping onchain liquidity, funding developer incentives, and rapidly onboarding DeFi protocols into the Ronin network.

Compound launches on Ronin

Announced in late March, this collaboration marked one of the first major external DeFi projects to integrate with Ronin. Compound is a decentralized lending and borrowing platform. Together, Ronin and Compound allocated $1.0 million in rewards to incentivize early adoption on Ronin. This rewards program is designed to bootstrap liquidity in lending pools and encourage Ronin users to try out lending/borrowing services.

Ronin DeFi Blitz

In March 2025, Ronin launched the $3.0 million DeFi Rewards Blitz, a network-wide campaign aimed at deepening liquidity, onboarding new DeFi users, and increasing engagement with the network’s financial infrastructure. Developed in partnership with Merkl, the campaign introduced a dedicated Ronin DeFi Rewards Dashboard, allowing users to identify high-yield opportunities, provide liquidity, and claim rewards across supported protocols.

Boosted APRs were deployed across newly launched Katana v3 pools (including WRON, USDC, LRON, and WETH) as well as lending markets like Compound, with incentives structured to reward tighter liquidity bands and sustained participation.

Technical UpdatesProject Leviosa

On Feb. 12, 2025, Ronin transitioned to a permissionless blockchain, ending its curated allowlist model and opening smart contract deployment to all developers. Referred to as “Operation Leviosa,” the launch reflects a strategic shift aimed at scaling Ronin’s ecosystem through open infrastructure. By removing deployment barriers, Ronin enables game studios, DeFi protocols, and independent teams to build and launch applications without prior approval.

Sky Mavis described the move as the beginning of Ronin’s “golden age,” signaling a formal evolution from an Axie-centric environment to a general-purpose platform for more applications. Beyond a technical milestone, the shift reduces onboarding friction, supports multichain integration, and broadens Ronin’s utility across gaming, DeFi, and user-owned digital economies.

Ronin Developer Console

Alongside the move to permissionlessness, Sky Mavis introduced the Ronin Developer Console, a toolkit designed to streamline game and application deployment on the network. This console provides out-of-the-box tools such as simplified user account management, easy NFT collection listing, sponsored transactions, an in-game marketplace SDK, fiat-to-crypto onramps, and smart contract templates. By lowering technical hurdles, the Developer Console lets teams focus on game design and community building rather than bespoke infrastructure.

Ronin Waypoint

Ronin also implemented Ronin Waypoint, a sponsored transaction feature that allows one address to cover gas fees on behalf of users. This feature is strategically important for onboarding newcomers to Web3 gaming – it enables studios to make gameplay on Ronin feel as seamless as traditional games by removing the need for players to pay transaction fees initially. These efforts reflect Ronin’s push to optimize user experience and attract mainstream audiences to its ecosystem.

Chainlink’s CCIP

Ronin completed a key cross-chain integration in Q1 by incorporating Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) into its infrastructure. The CCIP integration bolsters the security of Ronin’s Ethereum bridge and connects Ronin with other chains. This means assets and data can move more securely between Ronin and other networks, which is vital as Ronin-based games expand and potentially interact with broader liquidity and user bases. (Notably, Ronin hinted that the first consumer application using CCIP would be the predictions market platform Forkast.

Cerastes Hardfork & EIP-1559 RON Burns

On March 17, 2025, Ronin implemented the Cerastes upgrade, activating the Venoki hard fork at block 43,447,600. The upgrade aligned Ronin’s execution layer with Ethereum’s Shanghai and Cancun upgrades and introduced support for EIP-1559-style gas fee mechanics. Most notably, it enabled a base fee burn model for RON, redirecting a portion of transaction fees to the Ronin Treasury.

This mechanism introduces improved gas fee predictability and establishes a sustainable funding channel for ecosystem initiatives. Under sustained high usage, the treasury could accumulate up to 3.0 million RON annually, equivalent to approximately 0.3% of the total supply, tying protocol activity to long-term treasury growth.

Cerastes also raised the maximum smart contract size to 32KB, allowing developers to deploy more complex applications without structural workarounds. Additionally, the implementation of the Path-Based Storage Scheme improves storage efficiency for node operators and validators by reducing redundant reads and optimizing trie access patterns.

Closing Summary

Q1 2025 marked a structural inflection point for Ronin, defined by the network’s transition to permissionlessness and early signs of ecosystem diversification. The launch of Open Ronin on Feb. 12, 2025, removed deployment barriers for developers, enabling an uptick in activity across gaming, DeFi, and experimental use cases. While overall network and financial activity declined QoQ amid broader market softness, the network’s foundational infrastructure advanced meaningfully.

Notable developments included the deployment of Compound, the launch of the $3.0 million DeFi Rewards Blitz, and the rollout of Tama Meme, which accounted for more than 90% of smart contract deployments within its first 20 days. Gaming momentum continued through activations by Fableborne, Fishing Frenzy, and Ragnarok Landverse.

Together, these developments underscore Ronin’s evolution into a broader application layer that supports games, DeFi, NFTs, and consumer protocols within a unified, low-cost framework. With permissionless infrastructure in place and capital programs like the $10.0 million Ecosystem Grants and $13.0 million Growth Initiative underway, Ronin enters Q2 2025 with a strengthened foundation for further adoption.