While scrolling on my phone in the afternoon, I came across a picture that said Ronin's daily active wallet has returned to a high level. It looks quite lively, but when I clicked in to take a closer look, the majority of the active addresses were contributed by a game called Pixels.

A project supports a data panel for a chain, this scenario is too familiar.

Axie used to support Ronin like this back in the day. During the peak period in 2021, Ronin's daily active users, transaction volume, and locked assets were basically all reliant on one project, Axie.

Later in March 2022, it was hacked for $625 million, users fled, and the economic model collapsed. Ronin was on the verge of being abandoned. The fate of the entire chain fell alongside one game; this lesson should have been profound enough.

But now@Pixels Pixels has reached the same position again.

Pixels was not developed by Sky Mavis itself; it originally ran on Polygon and only migrated to Ronin in October 2023, when daily active users were only 3000.

After migrating here, it caught the market trend, and daily active users surged to the million level, directly pulling Ronin back from silence. During early 2024, Ronin's user growth rate was faster than Solana's, mainly relying on Pixels.

The problem is that Ronin does not have only one game like #pixel . Games like Wild Forest, Mechanical Arena, and Axie Championship are also running, but none can compare to Pixels in terms of user numbers.

The quality of the chain's data largely depends on the performance of a single project, Pixels.

$PIXEL The situation of the token itself can also explain the issue.

The historical highest price was $1.02 in March 2024, and it is now around $0.0075, having fallen over 99%. Currently, only about 15% has been unlocked, with 85% still to be released, and it is being released every month.

On April 19th, over 91 million coins were just unlocked. For a coin at this price level, continuously and steadily pouring out makes it hard for the price to see any improvement.

Speaking of Ronin itself, the locked amount is 95% lower than before the bridge was hacked in 2022. Although it is promoting a layer two transformation, planning to shift from sidechain to Ethereum's zero-knowledge proof rollup, aiming to complete it within 2026, such a major change in underlying architecture itself carries risks. If Pixels' popularity drops during the transformation period, Ronin's data will immediately look bad.

This symbiotic relationship appears to be a win-win on the surface: Pixels needs a cheap and fast gaming chain, while Ronin needs a star project that can attract users.

But the tighter the bond, the greater the concentration of risk. If Pixels runs into problems, such as player loss, economic model collapse, or if it migrates to another chain one day, Ronin will retrace the old path after Axie. Conversely, if Ronin encounters issues during the layer two migration process, Pixels' player experience will also be affected.

Ronin's response is to try diversification, bringing in more games, conducting cross-game activities, and launching a reward mechanism for distribution proof to attract more developers.

The direction is correct, but so far no other project has come close to the scale of Pixels. The official statement claims that over 1000 teams are developing on Ronin, but whether a next hit can emerge is unknown.

I played Pixels for a while before, the idle farming setup, and the experience is better than many chain games, at least it feels like a proper game.

However, as you play, you will find that most people come in for the airdrops and rewards; it's hard to say how many truly stay because the game is fun. When these people take what they need and leave, whether daily active users can maintain high levels is a very realistic question.

I won't touch this coin right now.

The price is low enough, but the token release will continue for a long time, and the chain itself is also in a transformation period. If you are optimistic about the direction of chain games, you can first observe the progress of Ronin's layer two migration and whether there will be a second viable project besides Pixels. The fate of a chain should not be tied to one game, but that is the current state.

The above is just my personal opinion and does not constitute any investment advice!