The Delphi Podcast
The Delphi Podcast
Jeffrey "Jiho" Zirlin: Ronin Goes Permissionless
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Join Piers Kicks as he hosts Jeffrey "Jiho" Zirlin of Sky Mavis for an exploration of Ronin's evolution from Axie Infinity's scaling solution to becoming the premier gaming chain, now on the cusp of going permissionless with an impressive ecosystem of curated titles.
🎯 Key Highlights
▸ Journey from Axie to Ronin infrastructure
▸ Analysis of curated publishing strategy
▸ Discussion of play-to-earn evolution
▸ Insights into game economy design
▸ Vision for permissionless future
▸ Perspective on traditional gaming integration
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🧠 Follow the Alpha
▸ Piers's Twitter: @pierskicks
▸ Jeffrey's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffzirlin
🔗 Connect with Delphi
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🎧 Listen on
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/62PR1RigLG2YN5Pelq6UY9?si=18ac7ccf36ab4753
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-delphi-podcast/id1438148082
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9Yy99ZlQIX9-PdG_xHj43Q
Timestamps
00:00 - Introduction
01:01 - Ronin History
04:42 - Publishing Strategy
08:24 - Ecosystem Growth
11:20 - Market Timing
14:47 - Community Building
17:24 - Founder Selection
22:26 - Infrastructure Vision
26:12 - Token Innovation
29:57 - Play-to-Earn Evolution
34:18 - AI Integration
39:27 - Future Vision
42:16 - IP Integration
46:36 - Builder Advice
51:23 - Development Stories
54:17 - Metaverse Outlook
57:16 - Gaming Favorites
59:44 - Book Recommendations
Disclaimer
This podcast is strictly informational and educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any tokens or securities or to make any financial decisions. Do not trade or invest in any project, tokens, or securities based upon this podcast episode. The host and members at Delphi Ventures may personally own tokens or art that are mentioned on the podcast. Our current show features paid sponsorships which may be featured at the start, middle, and/or the end of the episode. These sponsorships are for informational purposes only and are not a solicitation to use any product, service or token.
You're now plugged in to the Delphi Podcast. Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Delphi Podcast. Today I am delighted to have Jho on the show of Sky Mavis, developers of Axi Infinity, very much the team that kind of gave the activation energy to this entire sector of gaming and uh kind of kicked it all off. So, JHO, it's a pleasure to have you here. Uh, excited to dig in.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, thanks for having me, man.
SPEAKER_01Um, yeah, super excited today to be digging into all things Ronin and uh, you know, some exciting upcoming developments in terms of things going permissionless, but wanted to kind of uh stage set for those that somehow may not have been following along for kind of the broader arc of the Ronin legacy. Like, maybe we can just take a step back and you can give us uh I know it's been quite a wild journey, but maybe you can give us the super high level of like, you know, way back starting with Axie, uh, all the way through to where we are now. Like, what are some of the kind of key milestones as you see it? Um, maybe you could kind of just, yeah, fill us in on that broad arc to kind of stage set for people before we dig in.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, for sure. So the story of Ronin really starts with Axie Infinity. And so Axie is obviously gone on to make quite a name for itself. It's in the Guinness Book of World Records now as the number one NFT project by all-time trading volume. But once upon a time, it was just this idea of a creature collecting battling game on Ethereum. Uh basically, many of the early team members, founders, community members met while playing Crypto Kitties and kind of had this idea of a game that could really show what a blockchain-powered game could be. But so yeah, you know, we or this all started out in 2018. But while we built out Axie, we, you know, realized that one, uh, Ethereum was not built uh to accommodate gaming. And that two, like a lot of the tools and infrastructure that we needed to build a blockchain game hadn't been created yet, right? So uh we actually had the experience of trying to build uh Axie on a very early Ethereum scaling solution called Loom Network. This might be like a blast from the past for some people, but this was uh this was like kind of state-of-the-art uh scaling technology back then. They had uh Georgios working on it, it seemed very promising. Um, but it didn't, it just didn't really work out, right? So we kind of learned this lesson that hey, you don't want to build your startup on top of someone else's startup. Um so we decided, hey, no one's gonna be able to build a gaming chain like us because we're basically the only Web3 game developers uh that have uh had this experience um of building for a live community. So we decided to do it ourselves. Uh and yeah, we built Ronin to be the gaming chain that we needed for Axie. Um and so when we deployed Axie to Ronin, Axie uh experienced exponential growth. It's you know what I like to say is Axie was the first game to experience the Ronin effect, right? So within six or nine months of deploying um Axie onto Ronin, Axie went from 19,000 DAU to 2.8 million DAU and basically generated a billion dollars in revenue. And so uh yeah, so that's you know, that was the story, that was the story of Axie and Ronin in the beginning. Um and then I think the next chapter, right, is you know, obviously there's there's a bear market, everything is uh got uh uh you know a bit uh uh deflated. Um, but there were teams that were interested in now building on the Ronin networks, saying, hey, we know that this infrastructure accommodated axes exponential rise. That's more than you can say for basically any other uh blockchain. Um and right, this team, right? They probably have a lot of insights on uh what went well, what didn't go well, right? A lot of basically insights into how to run a live economy, how to actually operate a web3 game. Uh so one of those teams uh was pixels. Um so pixels, I think that's really like the second inflection point where Pixels deployed onto Ronin from Polygon went from 5,000 to a million plus DAU, uh generated a ton of revenue, were able to get onto uh become a Binance Launchpad project. Um so I think that was like the second uh major inflection point that was you know November 2023, uh roughly, um, and and a couple of months onward. I think that was the second inflection point that then brought in the second generation of amazing builders, teams like Fable Born, um Forgotten Rune Runiverse, um, Cambria, what have you?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Um so yeah, I'm curious then, like what was that sort of initial um phase like, you know, we often talk about in the games industry where people like nailed the killer product right and then pivot into building out a sort of platform or infra layer as well, right? Steam and Half-Life 2, you know, Epic Games with Fortnite. Um like, you know, what what did that early period look like, I guess, in terms of saying, okay, you know, we've kind of proven we validated this, like talk me through the like decision to, you know, kind of like the curated approach when you guys were initially looking at it, like what were those early conversations in 2023 like? Like what were the kind of things that you were looking for? Um, and yeah, would love to just get a bit more about your kind of thinking on how you were going to navigate this. Like it's a pretty big deal, right? Like the next sort of title that you launch make a big push on. And obviously, there was, yeah, um, huge success in doing that with pixels, but we'd love to understand a bit more about the thinking at the time and so we can sort of track how that's evolved.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, sure. I mean, so basically, when we decided to go get into basically the business of publishing games using our infrastructure, we had a fork in the road to choose. Would we right kind of spray and pray, um, give out a lot of grants and you know, just basically take a lot of shots on goal? You can make the argument, right, that that sounds like the smarter approach, right? Don't pick winners. Game industry is a hits-driven business, right? Like just uh make sure that you have enough shots on goal that a few uh land. We decided to go with a different approach. We felt like we had the ability to pick winners, having been a winner ourselves, um, that we felt like we could pick teams that had the right combination of technical ability, leadership, uh, web three uh incentive understanding. Um, and that was also right, like what we felt like we had to do because we weren't gonna be able to compete with some of these huge other chains that were that had these uh you know ecosystem funds that were in the hundred almost like in the billions of dollars. Why? Because they're not like gaming uh specific, right? So we felt like our approach had to be quality over quantity. Um and I think that had a lot of like important implications down the line. Um so yeah, we chose to go with like a smaller number up front uh of teams, and that we would basically work uh really heavily uh and have take a hands-on approach uh with these teams. Um and so that's what we did, right? Like so we worked heavily with teams like Pixels, um, helping them right like with their go-to-market, uh teach uh, you know, answering questions around incentive design and and um basically releasing a token, things like that. Uh so that was our strategy. We felt like it was uh right for us, uh, where you know we felt like we had this very specific knowledge and right we could basically anoint um, you know, a few uh good teams um and see, hey, are our hypotheses working? Are we able to um actually venture into this games publishing business? And you know, so far it's worked works uh worked so far, but now right, like we're now on the precipice of maybe the third inflection point, uh, which is the opening up of Ronin, where we go from this curated approach and where we're basically only working and having a a certain number of uh teams that we really believe in deploy on Ronin to now just right let letting it rip, right? Where it's become too much work and to try and like control all this entropy of right, like basically making it so that every single team that wants to deploy on Ronin would have to talk to us and kind of go through some sort of a vetting process. Um, you know, we fe we feel like we're now be we've now become the bottleneck, and it's time to remove ourselves as that bottleneck and just uh see what happens uh as we open up the network.
SPEAKER_01I'm curious, is there some element of like um obviously sort of trade-offs come with this? I mean, you working so closely with this teams, with these teams had the added benefit of, you know, you guys are able to sort of invest in them, like, you know, uh basically capture some upside from like their individual successes as well. Like, is that something you guys worry about being diminished now, or are you still looking to kind of um work very closely with a particular kind of golden cohort or whatever? Would love to understand how that piece has evolved because I know for a long time you guys are able to, you know, um basically come on pretty attractive terms in terms of engaging these teams early and help, you know, king make them, as you say, anoint them. And uh yeah, curious how that piece is evolving.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'm glad you bring this up because this is something that we want to be really clear on is that even though we're opening up Ronin, we will still be investing in and publishing certain select teams that we think are really great. It's just that, right, like there will be more of a ability to almost audition as well for this direct publishing relationship by just being on Ronin and gaining traction on Ronin before you kind of get on our radar. Whereas in the past it was like, hey, get traction on you know some other chain, Polygon, what treasure, whatever. And then uh if you do well there, uh you can come over. Um I think it's just it's gonna be a little bit different and more open. And I just I think just better for Ronin if that kind of trial period happens on Ronin. But we will still be uh you know in investing in in publishing games because you know, a lot of the value add that we bring as game publishers is not just, hey, like you guys are you guys are whitelisted to deploy on Ronin, right? It comes with the advisory on uh you know token go to market, uh, you know, using all of our channels, right? We have we have uh millions of emails, right, that we don't we don't people don't necessarily know about know about this or talk about it enough. But uh, you know, we have millions of emails, right, from uh over the years that we're you know able to leverage uh for these games as they start to as they come on the the chain. And those are the types of things, right? There are certain like basically benefits that only direct publishing games um have access to.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. And and so you kind of touched on this notion that there's you know, you guys felt like you were becoming a bit of a bottleneck with this created approach, and there was a ton of sort of demand to open up. Like I'm curious, um, yeah, whether there's anything beyond that that you can touch on to answer the kind of like why now, right? Obviously, you have this like, I mean, a ton of projects that I'm insanely excited about. We're on a spaces last week, right? Touching on a few of them. I think you have an incredibly strong cohort, which are a really cool blend of like representative of each sort of genre that's gonna do what I think is gonna do really well, uh, you know, in the Web3 gaming space. But yeah, what like the why now question? I'm curious because obviously we've had a lot of teams building throughout all of these years, like lots of things that are meant to be coming to market now. Was it like a function of something in broader like market structure that you guys were seeing with a number of projects coming out as well? We'd love to understand a bit more about, yeah, why now early 2025 was the time to pull the trigger on this?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I think I think for us, right, we're we're seeing that, you know, with the new administration, uh, there's this golden window to really seize the moment. And right, that, you know, I think the the rationale that just makes sense to us is like if Sky Mavis applied to build on Ronin today, would they make it? Um if the next Sky Mavis, right, it's like maybe a team that isn't super experienced but um you know has something interesting or unique, you know, we we feel like our ability to screen everything, just right by you can basically just by the sheer number of applications that we we have to screen. Um right, that's like one metric that's going uh you know through the roof. I think also, right, like market environment where you know we're anticipating a very strong H2. Um, I think like H it's look right now, like Q1 um maybe looking a little bit dicey, but you know, I think H2 uh we should start to see Bitcoin dominance um trending down. And you know, that that would uh we would basically like we're we're uh predicting. I would say uh that basic, you know, we'll start to see like as rates start to come down, the uh the spread between the federal funds rate and like basically yield on Ethereum should start to diverge. That basically uh starts to get more uh uh on-chain uh TBL um in the Ethereum ecosystem. I think like hope hopefully basically contributes to a decreasing Bitcoin dominance ratio, uh better, better for alts, better for gaming, right? Historically, what you saw uh is gaming season, right? The very exponential phase of gaming season happen from May 2021 to November of 2021, right? So that'd be like basically H2 and kind of line up with that. And um, yeah, we haven't really seen like the perfect market structure for gaming yet, um, which I think is you know good um in some ways, um, where you would basically want to see you know Bitcoin um having gone on a huge run and and and and starting to make uh you know trend towards 40% um uh dominance, where it's right now I believe like 61, 62% uh BTC dominance was really, really high and not indicative of you know the end of a bull market or anything like that.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Well, uh, inshallah, let's see. Um excited for all of that, for all of that to come. One of the other pieces I'm uh curious on as well is like you guys kind of you know wrote the playbook in terms of you know uh bringing a community along for a ride, right? There's a ton of people that you know had tremendous success uh within your ecosystem. It kind of evoked this insane loyalty and evangelism. I think that's part of why, you know, we've seen this continued success into Ronan Wright, where um all of your early curated mints, things like that were complete sellouts, right? Everyone was like hungry for the next thing because they trusted you guys to deliver on, you know, uh, you know, it basically the creation aspects and bringing more strong products into the ecosystem. I think we've continued to see that, right? Like you see these projects that come in and launch and do their mints and stuff is is going really well. Like um, you know, there's this concept that as you this this notion that as you kind of go permissionless and open up, it's like more people kind of competing for the same pool of players. Um I'm curious like what your take on that is as you know, more projects come into the ecosystem. And as you know, with crypto broadly, like you know, attention scarcity, trying to play these games is hard enough. Like uh, how do you think about that um within the Ronin ecosystem, you know, in the absence of huge new player growth?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I mean I think that's a sign of people projecting the current uh situation to go indefinitely into the future. Whereas, you know, we've had experience with these zero-to-one inflection points where something gets invented um through pressure and competition and uh teams innovating that then uh gets the space to the next level, right? Um that was like SLP and play to earn with Axie, um VIP system with pixels. Uh so the way that I see it is that the more good projects and the higher shipping velocity of quality economic experiments with these in-game economies, obviously, right, like the games are getting better. We know that the games are getting like a lot better every year, basically almost month by month. Uh, but the thing that will likely unlock the next uh crazy hyperbolic growth moment that brings in net new uh users will likely be related to some sort of uh token incentive uh refinement. Um so I think like, you know, for us, we want Ronin to be home to the most sophisticated experiments uh in Web3 gaming incentives. Um and right, the more teams we have, like the more teams we have shipping out unique experiments and designs. Um, you know, I think that's just gonna help everyone and um get more data and and you know, more this is like a chance where it's like more shots on goals. When goal when it comes to these economic experiments, that's what gets us to like the next uh kind of zero to one moment.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Yeah, makes sense, makes sense. Um I just see like, you know, I'm in some ways concerned uh when we look at the broader gaming market, right? Which feels a little jaded, right? There's like only so much liquidity that's like aping every new thing, and uh seems what like um somewhat dilutive and a bit PvP at the moment. Some of these recent launches that we've seen, not necessarily on Ronin, but just broadly. And so uh it's something I'm tracking, but you know, certainly uh big big believer we're gonna see a strong uptick in this, and the products are here now, like when the next wave of you know broader attention comes into this space. So definitely, definitely feeling good on that front. Um, I'm curious then, like as times evolved and you've learned more working from these teams. Like I said last week when we were chatting that I really think Ronan has kind of nailed this, you know, like very token literate teams, kind of more like mid-core casual stuff. We've seen some really amazing products coming out. Um, but like what are some of the key traits that you are looking for in founders of gaming projects these days? Like, what are the things that seem to have ticked the boxes and have delivered success so far? Would love to understand, yeah, how how those insights of yours have evolved.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, sure. I mean, there are certain characteristics that we look for in the founding teams, right? It could be the founder, if there's one, or the founding team in general. Um I I tend to think that having at least two, uh maybe uh very, very highly incentivized uh team members, whether they're founders or executives, um, is helpful. Um but yeah, you know, generally we're looking for uh founders that have uh great leadership skills, right? So people say we need like a guy who's in the trenches or a good at community building. I think that actually what you really need is someone who understands how to lead people, um uh someone who understands how to communicate expectations to underpromise and over-deliver, um, someone who can set a direction for the entire community to basically get in line and and and move in one common uh unified step. Um so you know, I think I think that's important. Uh we're also looking for teams that have at least someone on the founding team that uh has uh technical chops because right, like you don't want people who are just selling air, right? Like you could you could have someone who's really great, great leadership skills, but if they don't actually have the ability uh to deliver what they're uh you know, the the deliver the vision that they're setting, right, that that gets into dangerous territory, right? So basically, right, like teams that can build and teams that can sell. Um and that's actually that's really that's very, very, very uh rare uh to find in in and founders, especially Web3 gamer founders, where there's they're either like typically, you know, great at uh you know building games or more on the technical side, or to like kind of you know, just salesmen, right? But it's it's hard to find uh either founders that are both or uh founding teams that have both um kind of evened out uh amongst them. Um so yeah, I think like you know, teams that you either want them to have uh you want also like some well balanced uh some balance, right, between Web3 experience as well as uh the ability to actually make games. Um so you know, you have uh teams like Fable Born are are pretty rare and and awesome when we find them where it's like, hey, they've been familiar with crypto for a while, but also have uh tons of tons of experience building uh you know mobile free-to-play games. Um that's something uh pretty rare, but when we see that, uh see something like that, uh our eyes light up. Um Luke, right, is another founder that comes to mind where he has an engineering background, but he's also great at on he he studied computer science, economics, right? So he has an understanding of incentives, uh, he's great with the community. Um so yeah, I I it's kind of like that's what we've seen to be working.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Um no, very very excited for for Fableborne. I gotta say, Fablebourne, yeah, love Cam, love what he's doing. Um yeah, I was stoked to see, you know, go into go into token launch and turning on some of those sort of like growth uh flywheels as well. Um, you know, already the the kind of play test and all the metrics around this thing of being insane in the absence of that. So uh I need I needed to come back, man.
SPEAKER_00I was playing I was actually playing so much that my wife was my wife was acting was watching me and she said that I was so good that she was like really impressed. I was like, I don't think I'm you know I was I wasn't I wasn't that amazing, but it's like interesting that that game when women watch you play that game, they think that you're really good uh at playing games uh really uh relative to other uh other games out there, right? Because I guess it's like you have to have like you know some dexterity, you're like you're dodging a ton of stuff. You look like you're a really good gamer if you're like decent, I guess. At paper.
SPEAKER_01That's that's funny. That's why she's your wife, I suppose. Hype beast wiping you up there. I love that.
SPEAKER_00She's not always like that, right? Sometimes sometimes she'll be like, oh, this game is boring, or right, or she'll just stop watching, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there you go. The the other one in on Ronan that I'm super excited about is Cambria. I love what those guys are doing. I think it's uh yeah. Um, we've been talking about the old you know, on-chain runescape thesis for so many years, and uh Cambria's uh yeah, I mean Ben is Ben is crushing it on that front. So yeah, very excited to see what comes of that. Um yeah, I guess we kind of touched on then like yeah, sort of what you're looking for in founders for the ecosystem. I guess I'd also be curious to get your perspective on like from almost the founder's view, you know, what are they looking for in an ecosystem, right? Like um obviously, you know, you guys were sort of so early to this gaming like uh thesis. You guys obviously delivered an a main uh an insane product, have a ton of learnings that comes with that. But like, I mean. Yeah, how are you guys looking to sort of like um more you know longer term kind of differentiate in this very saturated infrastructure landscape? You you may have seen that last year there were like more gaming chains launched than products, right? Which is just an insane reality that that we've been confronted with. So yeah, I'd love to understand just your your view on that kind of trend and like you know, if you're a founder approaching this now, like, you know, what what are you looking for and how is Ronan looking to stand out?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, sure. I think founders come to us uh for a variety of reasons. I think foremost is our expertise uh and how we can help with distribution. Uh this is like two in two ways, right? One is obviously just advice and sharing our learnings. Um and then uh, you know, the second way is right just leveraging all of our different channels and basically all of the mini platforms that uh are kind of vertically integrated to make up Ronin, right? Whether that's discovery through the Ronin wallet, the Mavis Marketplace, our millions of emails, right? Our socials, right, all the founder, founder channels. Um those are kind of right the mechanical elements that make up the Ronin effect. And I think they're also looking for very responsive uh DevRel, to be honest, right? Where it's like, hey, right, uh a lot of this stuff they're gonna need to ask questions um, you know, when when they're building. Um so it's like how right how scalable can you make that, right? For some of our, right? Like this is also a reason that having a direct publishing relationship with us with us is helpful, right? Because like obviously our engineers and and devrel people can be like, you know, way more uh give way more attention to them. Um but um you know, I also think that our docs uh are pretty good and getting better every day. Um but so I think that's another thing, right? Is like the chain infrastructure needs to work. And if they're they have questions, they want to basically get handheld a little bit uh, you know, uh when it relates to basically getting it up and running. So um I think that those are the I think those are uh you know the big things. I think another uh thing is around basically around token stuff. Um, right. So I think this is also why, right, like uh we worked to well together, right? Where it's like, you know, we love teams that are working with Delphi because we know that you, you know, they're also getting another uh pair of eyes uh on their token design, helping with the token go to market and stuff like that. Um so yeah, I think like game economy design, token design, um, you know, advice on listing strategy, things like that. That's you know, that's another uh you know key aspect that people are looking um at from basically our publishing and you know um yeah from our publishing side of things, right? So there's kind of right like some things that everyone can get on on Ronin just by being on Ronin, especially once Ronin opens up, and then there are certain things right that you have to be a bit closer to us, um you know, to to go through basically the publishing uh platform I'm offering uh to really get like full uh access to.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. And then I guess just additionally one thing that like for a period of time seemed to govern every single conversation I was having with founders when we had, you know, I used to refer to it as the grant wars, like these big ecosystems that had a ton of cash that were just chucking around like pretty insane incentives for teams to come over and try and like you know, do BD that way. I think that's since kind of um uh recessed a bit. Um, but would love to understand, like, yeah, just any any of like high-level thoughts on that kind of period that we saw, and also how does that translate into now? Like, I think most people have really wisened up about like you know how and when grants could and should be used, but like what does that look like for you guys, especially going permissionless now? Like, how do you how do you think through all of that?
SPEAKER_00I think we were in a very good position to sidestep that battle. Uh why? Well, one is like we didn't have the cash uh to to be able to fight that war and have some asymmetric advantage, so we decided not to to fight it and to choose another way of of winning. Uh so it was, you know, by necessity. Two, from experience. Uh we once upon a time, right, Axie was that game that was searching for a chain. And we realized, right, that if you choose based on any other factor other than, hey, this is this is the chain that's gonna make me a commercial success, right? It's like, what are you gonna do? Like you're gonna optimize for a couple million dollars, maybe $10 million, and uh maybe not, and but also be faced with a chain that's not fit for gaming, not fit for your project community, and and also maybe be your potential downfall, right? Like we got offered $10 million grants from EOS, right? Imagine if we had imagine if we take the taking those for Maxi, right? Good thing. And and other and many other chains that are, you know, I won't mention because they're still around or whatever, right? But we've gone through that and we were like, hey, like this is this sounds like right, like, okay, we can de-risk ourselves for a year or two. That maybe sounds nice uh if we're afraid, but you if you live and make your decisions out of fear, you're not gonna be able to get that huge outcome, which right any founder should realistically be uh aiming for.
SPEAKER_01Totally. Um, no, makes makes sense. And as I say, glad to see that that's uh evolved somewhat.
SPEAKER_00Um that's not to say, right, that we, you know, that's not to say that we don't have grants, right? Obviously, we have grants, we will make investments, right? But uh we're not looking to compete in size or right, like we're we're looking to compete in terms of what we can do uh and provide to make your game a success, right? We want Ronin to be the best place to build, grow, monetize Web3 games, and offering huge, crazy grants, right? That's not uh, you know, that that's not uh that's a false requirement, right?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely makes sense. Um we touched on a few games that you're kind of excited about, a couple specific ones earlier, but um, yeah, I think like zooming out a little bit, you know, what what are some of the kind of themes or trends you're seeing around, you know, where kind of crypto gaming is um that you're excited by, right? Like whether that's you know thematic genre stuff or or or you know some of this AI infusion. I'd love to know some stuff that you're seeing in the market or that you're looking for in the market that's exciting you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, I think things that we're bullish on are like minimum viable MMOs. Uh right. So it's like basically Web3 gaming has been a thing for about four or five years now, right? So it's like we and we from the beginning have known that MMOs just make sense. Uh, but it takes some time, right? It takes some time to to build one out. So it's kind of like my like little pet phrase is minimum viable MMOs. We're starting to see some of them get on the market, we're starting to see some of them uh do volume. Um so that's your you know, forgotten runiverses, your uh Lumiteras, your Cambrias, um, for example. Uh you know, next is kind of the yeah, like mobile mid-core, maybe like our ARPGs. Um, right, Fableborne comes to mind where it's like uh mobile, so it's gonna be very accessible to our to our uh user base. Um it's gonna have like short, punchy uh uh sessions. Yeah, so like mid-core ARPGs, uh games that are gonna have like uh you know 10 to 15 minute, uh perhaps even shorter uh you know session times, really snappy uh play sessions. Um but also right like having this ability to have like some sort of uh uh progression system that allows for like syncing of tokens. So um so those are some of the so that's you know that's what we're kind of seeing right now. Um, you know, I'm I'm personally right like less bullish on um yeah, well, I'm not gonna say what I'm less bullish on, but yeah, I I think that that those specifically uh you know I also think that like browser, browser-based games, right? Cause uh uh are are uh have an in interestingly good position, right? Where it's like very accessible. You can play it on both a phone or a desktop. Um and yeah, you're able to play some of these like you know kind of relatively basic MMOs out of out of out of browsers now.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. I I guess kind of like following on from that as well, I'm curious um also what you're seeing in terms of some of the kind of token innovation and different approaches to managing that side of things with these sort of like on-chain game economies. Like um, yeah, what are some of the things that you're seeing that people are trying that you know seem to hold promise? Some of the stuff that you know stood out to me, even around like, you know, Fable Born, for example, having these more sort of like time-boxed events, right, which give you much more control over like, you know, uh inflation adjustments, all these kind of things, things like seasonal wipes, you know, we're starting to see people tinker with with these types of things more and more. But yeah, curious what you've seen across the breadth of you know the the kind of Ronin ecosystem that's uh interesting to you right now.
SPEAKER_00So some things that I'm seeing is teams getting way more dialed in when it comes to uh measuring uh basically like uh ROAS, right? So it's like basically return on token spend. Uh so it's like, okay, you're emitting tokens. What are you getting? You're getting some right social engagement, mind share, uh, you know, some revenue. Uh, and you're ideally you're able to basically emit these tokens in a way that maximizes the future market cap of your token. Um, so I'm I'm starting to see teams get really scientific with this. Um you know, we actually did you know have made a lot of progression on the Axie side, right? Because remember, we still keep continue to tinker and learn with Axie and bring that those types of learnings to the rest of the Ronin games and kind of vice versa, right? There are a lot of things that we learned from pixels that we implemented in Axie that improved its economy. Um, so I think that's another like amazing like aspect of Ronin ecosystem is like right the knowledge sharing. It's almost like early Silicon Valley where you have this Ronin mafia of founders that are all uh performing these economic experiments, and it's like, hey, like right, like we'll we'll if we if we invent something or if we come up with something, we're gonna share it with you. Uh and there's the right the understanding that it that it goes both ways. Um so I think yeah, just really getting really dialed in on uh on uh basically return on token spend. Um, you know, we're seeing more uh variations of the play to airdrop um as well. Uh, you know, I think as you mentioned, right, like just the the very time-boxed events, um, dynamic NFTs, right? So I think like I I saw uh I was I was I was pleased to see like Fable Born having like kind of the upgradable land. Um so that's something actually that we you know we we made with Axie where you know Axes now uh can be upgraded over time. Um and you in order basically you need to burn tokens to make them more powerful, more beautiful, and able to earn more. Um and you know that that's this that's a mechanic, right, where that we're starting to see, right? Because like it used to be right that uh NFTs were about like breeding, right? So it's like you would earn tokens and use them to breed, and you just have this a kind of horizontally expanding uh base of NFTs. Uh, but I think like the future, you might still have those types of mechanics. Um and I think they still work in certain games, but I'm I'm very more interested in like vertically, vertically uh vertical progression of NFTs, right? Where you're basically earning tokens and using them to make your existing NFTs more powerful. Uh, I I'm pretty sure right that uh Fableborn will be doing stuff like that, you know, once they have the the loot system out and you can basically earn equipment for your for your avatars. So I think that's gonna be a game changer as well. Uh because right, there's no real like character progression system aside from the XP, which I guess has been getting wiped uh anyway, right? So I think that's gonna be like a game changer for Fableborn. It's like kind of related to the enthusiasm that I have for uh those types of dynamic progression systems for NFTs in general. We haven't seen anyone tip uh we haven't seen one of those like really, really be like the game changer or some kind of hyperbolic growth uh catalyst or lever, but uh those right, those are the types of mechanics that we need, right, to make these game economies more resilient and and kind of less uh uh prone to market fluctuations.
SPEAKER_01I love that. I'll definitely definitely keep an eye out of things that affect. Uh I also, yeah, want to want to get your view on like, you know, just updated most recent thoughts on sort of like play to earn as a category, right? Like a lot of people love to do the whole you know, play to earn things over, but I think we're still seeing, you know, a ton of enduring success and activity and excitement from lots of lots of different founders around this. So we'd love, yeah, would love your high-level view on that and then kind of kind of have a follow-up I want to dig into as well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, play to earn is evolving, it continues to evolve and get better on the running network. Uh, right, like we went through the whole play to airdrop phase, right, which is really just play to earn, just uh with kind of like predetermined amounts and a predetermined uh time window. So, you know, uh I I see uh play to earn getting uh better uh with every iteration. Um teams are getting you know a lot more data, um, they're getting a lot more smarter with how they're distributing these incentives. And I mean, why would you question play to earn when right there are teams that are airdropping 50% of their supply on the on day one, right? It's like um it's you know, from first principles, right? It's like, okay, if if nobody mines Bitcoin, Bitcoin is dead. Therefore, we're emitting uh mining rewards, right? Same thing with the game, right? It's like nobody's playing your game, then you're dead. Therefore, right, like we're uh emitting these rewards. If no one's making content for your game, right? If no one is like thinking long term, uh so it's just a better way of sharing upside in a project uh with your player base, with your golden cohort, mate, right? Like eventually it's not gonna be right that, you know, eventually you're it's not gonna be that like every single generation of user that plays this game is definitely gonna be able to have a huge outcome, right? That's not how it's gonna be. But uh, I think Web3 Gaming, the play to earn is really about like uh allowing your golden cohort to uh grow with you and to uh basically dedicate more of their life uh to the game, right? That was the thing that we saw with Axis. Like there were people who were just able to justify to their friends and family members why they were spending so much time on the internet because of this. They would have played for probably for you know, a lot of them would have played uh for free. But the fact that they were able to get us get a little something out of it, right? It's like helps when you're negotiating for you know video game time with your wife, right?
SPEAKER_01Totally. I love that. I love that framing. Um, yeah, one of the things I'm also curious to your view on is like one of the areas that I like you know is starting to warm up with seeing so much like on-chain experimentation around the whole like agentic piece of things, right? Um, I haven't yet seen like the huge, strong like you know, products where that's like being firmly integrated with games, but obviously people are working on it and there's lots of exciting stuff happening. You know, um Tin from Cypher's a great example of someone that's like you know really building this kind of into the game design itself. Like, yeah, I'm curious how something like that um you know eventually intersects with this notion of you know emissions and rewards and trying to get people aligned right because I feel like either yeah, either that can happen inadvertently or people can try and build it into the game itself and have like you know your agents basically participating in a similar fashion, and then the whole strategy becomes you know who can optimize and prompt and manage this portfolio of agents as well. Like, yeah, just curious for any of your thoughts on that, because I think it's quite an interesting area that I'm excited by uh and is still very early days.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, I I think that you're we're thinking in the same similar direction where I think the most interesting line of opportunity for these agents in game is for them to be like quest uh masters, right? Where uh instead of uh you getting like some predetermined uh line of questing or whatever, uh you know, you're basically getting an agent that is going to be giving you quests and deals that are really catered to your player archetype and your reputation. Um and so yeah, I think like basically around like giving out quests and giving out rewards as well as like balancing these economies, I think like that's um I think where some of the fertile ground is. Um I think well, yeah, we'll just need to see some to see some uh experiments out there. You know, like I think like to be honest, the first version of this would be hey, you have this quest system, just like maybe like set some uh right, have some AI, right? Some relatively primitive AI that's kind of like auto-balancing it or whatever. And then okay, boom, you just take that quest system and uh put it inside the brain of some NPC that's in the game. You give it a text wrapper or whatever, an LLM, um, and then people are able to interact with that agent rather than having to navigate outside of the game to go to the on-chain questing platform, right?
SPEAKER_01Totally, yeah. Excited, excited for all to come. I think we'll see uh quite a few examples of this, you know, uh hopefully not too late into the year. Um I know several projects starting to starting to look at things from that perspective. Um so yeah, I guess, you know, obviously nailed things with Axie with the Ronan launch, um, you know, had this initial sort of 2023 going into 2024, tan momentum with this first cohort, you know, really kind of uh illustrated the Ronan effect, extends beyond Axie to all the world. Um, you know, now you find yourselves with this really strong cohort that is sort of all coming to market, you know, play tests or live in the next few months of this like very curated approach. Now heading into the permissionless phase, as as you're kind of anticipating, coinciding with you know favorable market setup for gaming broadly with all these products coming to market as well. Like playing this forward a bit, you know, I I know it's a dangerous thing to do in crypto. Um, but yeah, what does what does Ronin look like in like two to three years in an ideal scenario for you guys from here?
SPEAKER_00So yeah, we like to think of Ronin as king of the gaming chains. Um we would like uh yeah, I ideally we continue to to you know do really well uh within the Web3 gaming sector, um, have dominant amount of mindsh uh mind share as well as liquidity and uh player numbers. Um But yeah, hopefully maybe maybe there's also other chains, right? Like because if we're the only ones, um that might mean that the market, you know, that the market is still relatively small. Um, you know, I I would want to see some uh really interesting advancements when it comes to uh play to earn um and uh token emissions. I feel like there's still a lot to be uncracked, uh kind of unraveled there or uh unleashed. Um so I and I and as I said, right, I I suspect that how we get to the next level involves right evolution of these uh token incentive models. And yeah, you know, I I I would want to see multiple games, right? And the you know, Axie got to a seven-digit uh user base, right? Like was with Pixels. So like, you know, Axie and Pixels both hit millions of uh DAU. I would want to see right games in the eight digits, right? 10 million plus. Um I would want to see Ronin uh you know in the top uh uh most used blockchains globally by basically every almost every uh metric that you look at, right? Right now we're the fourth most used blockchain in 2024 uh by active, you know, uh unique active addresses. I would also want us to be up there when it comes to TBL, uh uh volume uh transferred on chain, uh, you know, number of significant or non, you know, I guess non-zero uh transactions. Um so yeah, I I think you know we're doing well when it can comes to engagement, but I would also want to see us um you know, basically up there with the Titans um when you know when it comes to like things like T T VL and uh and volume transferred.
SPEAKER_01So I love that. I I'm also curious for your view on like um I feel like you've got this brilliant audience of people that are really, you know, really leaning into the sort of on-chain pieces available that really want to, yeah, like fully embrace crypto gaming as opposed to the more sort of lighter touch economy integrations that we might see with a more like quote unquote triple A approach. Um you you you probably know I'm a bit of a uh guns in a fanboy with OTG and what they're trying to do. Like, how much of um what you'd hope to see in the next few years also stems from like you know, more traditional publishers or traditional IP kind of wading in? Because I feel like you guys kind of are validating all of your stuff independent of that. So just curious on your view of that overall. Because obviously we've got some big stuff like Maple Story, even e Frontier, and now stuff like OTG as well. Like um, yeah, curious how much of that is part of what's uh interesting to you guys or exciting.
SPEAKER_00So we are uh we have we have a few bets in this direction, mostly uh around uh the Ragnarok uh online uh universe, right? So uh we have Ragnarok Landverse, which is basically the classic Ragnarok MMO, which is like enjoyed by millions still. Um, but I think they're doing something really unique and interesting where it's like, hey, they're just they're opening up one or two, they're just opening up NFT servers, right? So it's like, hey, you want to play the old classic Ragnarok or whatever? You don't like NFTs? Like, it's okay, like you can just go play on the normal server, you don't have to do anything, nothing has to change for you. But hey, if you want to experiment um and you know, potentially and potentially experience some of the benefits of crypto and and and web 3 blockchain, you know, try out this new server. Um so uh so yeah, you know, that's that's an experiment kind of in that direction that we're really excited about. And I have some inklings that this will work because I heard I've heard anecdotally that uh actually Ragnarok guilds is one of the ways that uh a lot of people got onboarded to Axi last cycle, right? People would be uh talking within their Ragnarok guilds and be like, hey, we're also playing this game. Uh and uh there's actually a famous streamer named Myrtle in the Philippines. Uh she does like stuff with Blizzard, right? She's like a mainstream streamer, right? Um, and uh TikToker. And it was actually her, and she was actually running a Ragnarok guild. It was her scholar, who was her like guildmates who basically onboarded her, right? So a lot of these things, right, that um we'll hopefully see more of in the future with like basically just like traditional normal Web 2 gamers, normal or uh streamers. Streamers, right? A lot of this has happened uh on Ronin, but primarily right in Southeast Asia and the Philippines. So um I it will it will happen. Yeah, I think it takes the right like market conditions, the right IPs. Um, but yeah, you know, so that's what that's one thing to keep an eye out for, is basically like the Ragnarok uh universe. We have Ragnarok Monster World, which is more of like a mobile play, a mobile, mobile game, kind of like uh Tower Defense, kind of like Clash of Clans. Or Clash Clash Royale, and then uh yeah, and then we also have Landverse, which is basically gonna be like NFT servers of the classic uh Ragnarok.
SPEAKER_01I love this approach. I I was pitching RuneScape on the same thing some time ago, right? You have like your serverless, uh especially if you have game worlds or economies that are very much adjacent to like real world trade. There are some kind of secondary gray markets, right? Like if you have you know a new server where whatever whatever, you have like a stat white, but it says like, you know, it's a real money trade world or like an on-chain world and basically allow people that are playing games that you know already have a sort of like proclivity or tendency towards having you know some material dollar value to in-game economies and stuff where people understand this stuff and alongside that give them the ability to test this stuff out and like understand the ownership and the kind of economic agency without having to go and trade outside of the games. Like, I think that's an incredibly powerful onboarding. Um still working on it, still working on the RuneScape Fun. But I think that would be really cool. Excited to keep an eye on that in the Ronin ecosystem.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think that that approach with the right, the kind of parallel servers, it's like a Gresham's law when it but with servers, right? It's like, oh, if you know, the harder money, the harder items are on one server, like you know, theoretically people would migrate over, right?
SPEAKER_01I love that. I love that. Yes, uh, let's uh let's see, fingers crossed. Excited to see more, to see more on that front um for some of these big IPs that can bring over, you know, mega audiences. Um yeah, I I guess um, yeah, would love to kind of ask you just some some sort of higher level questions as well, like um, you know, obviously being ahead of a ride from Axiom to Ronin and kind of all the all of the sort of stuff you guys had had to navigate along the way. Like, um curious if you have anything you can share just in terms of like reconciling, you know, a bit more like long-term thinking around building an ecosystem in a game versus kind of the you know um ADHD nature of this market where you have a lot of short short-termism from market participants. Like, it's been epic to watch you guys kind of weather various storms and build, you know, build this epic trajectory for Ronin. Like, yeah, curious what you can share just for for people interested and perhaps for other builders uh who are you know having a dark night of the soul because gaming's been a little challenging of late.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, do planning, do company planning, whether that's one year planning, right? I mean, at the beginning it's probably gonna be like one month, two months, three months, uh, one year. Uh but I think that was something that we you know started doing in 2019. Um at that time it felt late. Uh, but we do like, you know, some sort of uh annual structured-ish uh planning cycle with you know something like akin to OKRs or what you know, whatever you want to call it. Um so I don't know, that's maybe like some, you know, I'm gonna try to give boring advice because I feel like that's something I usually give like weird advice. So yeah, I think like do do definitely do company planning. Um yeah, you know, don't don't just get kind of courted by the new shiny object, right? Don't like don't don't be uh don't chase the herd, don't try to chase the meta. Um, you know, I we saw this right with the everyone like migrate trying to do telegram games. Um yeah, I think telegram games are cool, but I think like a lot of people like put way too much of their uh hopes and dreams uh on them after seeing like one or two successes. Um so don't yeah, don't get farmed like that. Um so yeah, I mean for us, you know, whenever we go through hard times, it's just like okay, how do you you know buckle down and just right just make go on a winning streak of making the right the right move uh you know X number of times in a row, right? Um and yeah, I think like you know, you need to have like you need to go to the gym, right? You need to like you need to like have a supportive friends and family, maybe a significant other or wife, or or something like that, right? Um it's it's it's important in in this space to basically have like a strong mental base because you're gonna be getting like a lot of like pressure from everyone, from investors, from the community members, community members much worse um than than than the investors. Investors you typically pretty chill. Um but from from you know angry community members, from you know, very excited uh community members. Um so yeah, just you know, be sure that you know, for us, like one thing that we learned was early, you have to make sure that people don't have expectations of you that are impossible. Um, and that basically you uh align on what people should expect of you. When someone knows what to expect of you and you are aware that they're expecting that and you're okay with it, that's actually called an agreement, right? So always like you know, say this to my team is like agreements over expectations, because expectations are it's like you're gonna it's almost impossible to win when you have all these right expectations that you can never meet, right? Um so it's like you should promise, right? Like people know what you're promising, right? And and be very explicit about that. Um yeah, I mean, I think like uh another thing, right, is like speed in this space you need to like be able to ship stuff and kill it and ship stuff and learn like really quickly. Um you know, even much more so than you maybe even in a traditional startup, to be honest. I'm not sure. I never I never really did a series, you know, too too large, but but it that the speed of shipping and iteration needs to be uh and learning it just needs to be uh astronomical. So yeah.
SPEAKER_01I love that. I love that. Some some good learnings in there. Um yeah, I think uh particularly agree on the you know um sort of just expectation management around shipping things. I think uh what I've seen over the last couple years as well is just like it's been I think a lot of these ambitious product roadmaps, like uh I think community was a bit naive.
SPEAKER_00Maybe the developers were too on like you know how Yeah, that that's what happens too when you have uh you know that's why I feel blessed, right? That we have uh, you know, a well-rounded founding team, right? Because if it was just me, like I wouldn't know, right? Like I'm not an engineer. Uh and so when I came into the space, I was like, I need to attach myself to a team that can really fucking build. Otherwise, I'm gonna sell something uh too well, right? Uh and I'm gonna get myself into a situation uh that I don't want to be in, right? So that was my number one thing when I got into the space. Like, I need to find a team that can actually deliver uh what we're uh you know talking about into the world.
SPEAKER_01I like that. I like that a lot. Um yeah, I'm also curious, you know, as a as a very experienced builder, you've been on this kind of crazy, crazy journey. Um I've been asking people of late what their favorite crypto learnings were, but I think people who have really been through it, uh, I I kind of want to ask, like, if you're if there's a sort of developer war story that comes to mind. Ours Technica did this series that I loved where they'd go and talk about, you know, in the traditional games industry, sort of crunch times, all this crazy shit where things went wrong. I mean, you know, I I think a couple of uh particular points come to mind in terms of in terms of your your journey that you've been on, like um with Ronan and and and with Axie and everything. Like, yeah, curious if there's a story that comes to mind that you can share as well for uh for you know other builders and and people curious.
SPEAKER_00I think like, you know, one of the hard things in starting any type of company is getting your first 100 users, getting your first, right, like one five 100 to 500 users. I think there's a lot of people who know how to go from like you know 10,000 to 50,000, 10,000 to 100,000. But I think like the number the people who know how to go from zero to one thousand is is kind of uh a much more select group. Um so yeah, in the early days, right? It's like in the early days we used to manually recruit people uh to play our game, right? So I feel like right now, like there's actually a lot of founders that should be manual trying to manually recruit gamers, right? They're just kind of like, oh there's no there's no players, there are no players, they're all on running or something like that, right? Um so you know, in the early days of Axie, it was like, okay, who might be interested in this thing? Okay, well, there's only other two other NFT projects, uh Decentraland and CryptoKitty. So let's right, like let's go into their Discord and manually uh bring you know bring them into ours. Um so we would like basically give axes out. Um we would give a lot of gifts. Uh we did a thing where every Decentraland landholder uh got free axes. Um, you know, the the top people, you know, we we ran like you know, we we pulled the data from CryptoKitties Discord to see who are the most active chatters. All right, let's get them all like in the in the Axie Discord, right? So kind of like this is almost manual. Right now, people try to do like vampire attacks like via incentives and airdrops or something or something like that, right? Whereas yeah, we're doing it like pretty, pretty manually, like in the trenches. Um so yeah, you know, that was all back in the days, right? 2018, where you know, I would look at the Google Analytics and it'd be one person on the site, and I'll close my tab and it's like zero. It was like literally I was the person on the site at 4 a.m. Um, so yeah, I think I think like, you know, that in and that approach to getting your initial users, that's not necessarily that's not like unique to web 3. That's something that Paul Graham uh has written about. So I would also say that a lot of people are like, oh, none of the old school Silicon Valley startup advice works. That's actually true. Like the writings from Paul Graham, like the very early web 2 era, like 2003 to 2006, like that golden age. Try to read like Paul Graham from back then. That's gonna be really helpful to uh Web3 builders. Someone I can't remember who it was, the early investor in OpenSea uh sent those over to us uh as a founding team when we were just like before we had even done our first fundraise. And I went through a lot of that, and yeah, you know, Paul Graham's advice. I think this is also my ebook. Uh Paul Graham's advice like really, really uh works for uh for crypto and and Web3.
SPEAKER_01Of that, yeah. He's got he's put out a ton of ton of brilliant writings over the years. Um, might need to digest them a bit more effectively with all of our new AI tooling these days. Um, but yeah, I I also wanted to ask, like, uh, where's your head at on all things the metaverse, right? Um obviously, this was this uh amazing confluence of forces that gave rise to to this kind of crazy run, like obviously within crypto, but way way beyond it as well. Um uh a lot of it was kind of hijacked and used for gimmicky stuff, but you know, I still think a lot of the core ideals and ethos um, you know, is 100% relevant in the kind of the world that we're heading towards. I think a lot of the sort of messaging that you guys adopted with, you know, XE and a digital nation. And I think more recently there's a lot of stuff that's been dropped in terms of um, you know, Balaji with the network state and whatnot and whatnot of this kind of world that we're working towards. Like uh, yeah, what uh what are Jiho's thoughts these days?
SPEAKER_00We're spending more time, we're spending more time online, right? Um So it's it's hard to say. Like obviously, like people got uh you know a bit carried away uh back in back in 21. Um so it's hard to really say how it will play out, right? Just like, oh, everyone thinks that AI agents, right, like need to go inside these games, but right now they're just like living on Twitter or something like that, right? That's kind of like basically what stage we're in, right, with the metaverse. It's like we're all living online already. We're just not like, right, it's just not we're not like perceiving it um in the way that, right, like, you know, we would think of uh, you know, with the with the metaverse. Um, but I think that's the initial, right, like fertile uh soil that's needed, right? It's just us spending more time online, spending more time on screens. Um, and then, you know, uh, and we're starting to develop the system of property rights, right? That's why, right? It's like, okay, we're spending more time online, we're getting system of property rights. Okay, like these are right, I think like the two of the uh you know core components that are gonna be needed. Um, you know, and then the VR space and headset space, I'm less familiar with, I'm and I'm less like a believer that that is one of the core requirements, right? I I kind of would challenge, right, that uh that is like a core requirement of the metaverse. I think like for me, it's just like when people are spending tons amount tons of their time online and having real socioeconomic connections with people all over the world, right? Um, to me, that's kind of like you know the early proto uh metaverse, and you know, we're and we're starting to see that emerge. Um and then uh yeah, you know, I think what what comes after that is, you know, we'll we'll have to see.
SPEAKER_01Indeed, we will. Uh what wanted to wanted to just hit on a few kind of like yeah, closing questions. Um what would you regard as the most impactful digital experience you've ever had?
SPEAKER_00Well, the first thing I ever did on the internet was play StarCraft with my uh cousins uh in Korea. So I think that was important because from an early age I knew that games could be a portal into a new technology. Um I remember yeah, StarCraft, right? Like using dial-up to play Diablo. Like I literally, if my dad had to have a work call, I couldn't play Diablo, so I'd have to go to my friend's house or just not play. Um, so yeah, I think those like formative early experiences with Battlenet, right? Because like think of Battlenet in 1997, 1998. That's literally the best thing that exists on the internet, right? That's the best application of the internet at that time, right? Like what is competing with it is like right, like very primitive versions of America online, right?
SPEAKER_01I love that. I love that. Um, and yeah, kind of kind of adjacent. What what is your favorite video game ever?
SPEAKER_00I would have I would have to go with like uh with vanilla, with vanilla WoW. That's the most most like slash played I have in anything. Um yeah, that was a special that was a special experience. Like I felt like I was raised by my WoW guild. So I played, I beta tested in 2003 um and and started playing right when vanilla came out. And I was one of the somehow I was one of the first four uh uh level 60 warriors on my server. Uh and then they're like, Yeah, we're running this thing called Molten Core, like it's gonna take a long time. Um and so I just joined up and somehow I ended up in like uh you know top the top uh horde uh guild um in vanilla and they were called overrated. Um so yeah, that that was like a formative experience for me. So I would have to say, I would have to say wow, like you know, some other runner-ups would be uh Ocarina of Time, um, which was just beautiful. And it was like my my second grade year was really defined by that. And then yeah, like you know, I my first game was Donkey Kong Country. So I remember like playing the hell out of that game as a as a child.
SPEAKER_01Nice dude, that's dope about your uh WoW career. P peaked early on. That's dope.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, like I always say that you know, if I ever, if I ever write like have time, um, you know, that's what that's my the the thing that I've sacrificed is not being able to write just like play some MMO um as much as I want.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they're uh amazing to get lost in. Um yeah, finally one is asked, what is the most impactful or important book that you've ever read?
SPEAKER_00Oh, book, book, book. Um, so yeah, I think I think this will be a good one. Um so this book that there's a book called The Mystery of Capital. It's by this guy named Hernando de Soto. He's a Peruvian economist. Um I actually know him. Um somehow, like you know, I I suppose I kept speaking about him on podcasts, and uh one of my friends was right, he was he was like, Oh, I'm gonna get to know him. And somehow like we manifested it to the full point where you know I've met him, I've I've been in his house. Um so he's a Peruvian economist. Basically, he specializes in property rights. So he wrote this book, The Mystery of Capital, which basically asserts that there is no such thing as capitalism, socialism, there's only property rights and lack of property rights. Um, and basically, right, like this manifests in, for example, South American countries, right? You you might think that it's a free market economy, but let's say you're a farmer and you know you you're doing well as a farmer, you know, you scrounge a little uh money together and you're now ready to build a factory, right? You want to uh do something else. Uh so you go to the bank and you say, hey, like, you know, I want to I want to start a factory, I need a loan, I have this amount of money, but I you know I can put my land up as collateral. They're like, okay, like, yeah, sure. Give us your deed. And then the founder is like, what? What is a deed? Like, no, I've lived on this land for generations. Or like, okay, like, well, you need to somehow get a deed. You go to the government and it takes, you know, you have to bribe them uh to basically get this deed, right? Or it takes years. Um, so he basically asserts that all these little right like inefficiencies and bureaucracies and red tapes um are actually the things that prevent capitalism from or free market economies uh from uh flourishing in uh a lot of emerging markets across the world. Um so what you know, why does why was this important to me? It's like, well, when I learned about NFTs, I was like, oh, this is just a digital deed. This is a right, this is property rights on the internet. Uh so even though it's just like crypto kitties at that time, I was like, okay, there's this is at least like actually more, has the potential to be more sophisticated than the economy than most of the economies on earth, uh especially though with the in developed markets at that time, right? So that's also helped me understand that probably like you know, the the countries that are gonna be using crypto on a day-to-day basis are very early on, uh before this whole thing is built out. A lot of that everyday user is probably gonna be in uh countries that lack sophisticated systems of property rights, which lo and behold, right, like the inflation rate in a country is highly correlated with their propensity to be interested in Web3.
SPEAKER_01Super interesting, man. I'll uh have to dig into that one. Um sounds sounds well worth the read. Uh well, Ju, it's been a pleasure having you on. Um thank you for sharing uh a ton of hard-earned insights uh from from spending years in the uh you know on the on the front lines of this whole gaming space. Um yeah, it's a pleasure chatting, pleasure learning from you, and uh very excited for all things Ronan as as you guys open up. Uh is there a date you can share yet? Or is I mean where where are we at on that front?
SPEAKER_00Well, it depends on when this will come out, but uh yeah, we're looking at like basically next week, and it's uh February 5th right now.
SPEAKER_01So okay, cool. Uh love it. Well, J Hank you once again. Looking forward to all to come later this year, and uh yeah, it's been a pleasure.
SPEAKER_00Awesome, man. Yeah, thanks for having me.
