The native token of the Ethereum-based Ronin Network, RON, continued its recent upward trend on Wednesday, reaching a nearly two-year high at $2.89, as reported by CoinGecko. With a 5% increase on the day and a 57% surge over the past 30 days, Ronin, an Ethereum sidechain tailored for crypto games, has witnessed growing popularity and momentum.
Part of this momentum is attributed to the success of Pixels, a social farming game that migrated from the Ethereum scaler Polygon last fall. The play-to-airdrop campaign of Pixels, rewarding top players with PIXEL tokens, contributed to the increased user activity on the Ronin Network.
The recent surge in RON’s price is also linked to events in the Axie Infinity ecosystem, a NFT-based monster-battling game developed by Sky Mavis, which originally integrated Ronin in 2021. Axie Infinity launched its seventh in-game competitive season, named “Epic Era,” offering significant rewards in AXS and SLP tokens, collectively valued at about $175,000.
Moreover, a rare NFT monster from Axie Infinity was sold for 105 Ethereum, approximately $246,000 at the time of sale, contributing to the surge in RON’s price. This particular Axie NFT, known as Agamogenesis, was initially sold for 6 ETH in 2018.
Axie Infinity experienced substantial success in 2021, becoming a major player in the NFT space with billions of dollars in trading volume and millions of active players. However, challenges arose in early 2022, impacting the play-to-earn economy, and the Ronin network’s bridge to Ethereum was hacked for $622 million. Despite these setbacks, Sky Mavis repaid affected Ronin users and has continued to enhance the Axie ecosystem, gradually incorporating more third-party game studios into the network.