Bitcoin's been stuck at 77k, can BTC still pump?

Honestly, the day Ronin dropped that announcement, I was sitting on the throne scrolling Twitter. When I saw 'zkEVM L2', I almost dropped my phone in the toilet—it's not that the tech is mind-blowing, but my 300+ Axie legacy group went ballistic.

You ask me what a legacy player is? It's those from the 2020 wave who made a bit of change playing Axie, then the game went cold, and now I've got a bunch of rare pets and broken gear in my wallet that I can't sell and can't be bothered to list. I've had them on OpenSea for half a year, and nobody's even sniffed at them; the Gas fees are pricier than the items. I’ve always thought these NFTs are just cyber dust collectors, taking up space for no reason.

As a result, this change on Ronin has turned a coffin into a mystery box.

Let me tell you about something that really hit home for me. Back in the day on Ronin, if you wanted to play other games, you had to move your assets over. The cross-chain bridge process was a nightmare: set up a wallet, switch to Ronin, buy RON, authorize, wait for confirmations... A new user coming in would spend ten minutes just on tutorials. Even I found it annoying, so how would a noob who only knows how to buy U on Binance handle that?

Now it's all good. Ronin has turned into L2, and transferring ETH, USDC, or even your monkey penguins from the mainnet is as smooth as sending money on WeChat. I tried out a newly released shooting game yesterday, and the USDC from my mainnet wallet worked seamlessly—just two taps the whole way. It's like going to an internet café where you used to have to get a card, load money, and find a machine, but now you just sit down and scan to get started.

But what really keeps me up at night is something else.

For us old-timers with all that broken gear, it used to be dead weight. If you had a rare Axie skin, you could only look at it in Axie—other games wouldn't give a hoot. But now that Ronin's gone L2, all the on-chain data is open. New games can directly check—who holds what NFT, how much USDC is in their wallet, all clear as day.

What does this mean? It means that this old farmer can take a limited-edition pet from three years ago and claim a unique character in a new game. That pet has been sitting in my wallet untouched for three years, and now it suddenly transforms into a 'Genesis certificate'. There's a small team making card games that directly airdropped hidden cards to addresses holding old Axie gear, and when I went to claim it, I almost cried—it felt like finding an old diary from elementary school and having the teacher say, 'This is great, let me help you publish it.'

What's even wilder is that those scientists are getting in on the action too. Just think about it: a scientist with hundreds of thousands of U in their wallet, while a farmer is stuck with valuable gear they can't sell. The scientist could lend U to the farmer to buy new gear and farm for gold, and they'd automatically split the profits—ain't that on-chain lending? Before, you'd need a special protocol for that, but now any game on Ronin can just bake in that logic. In a group I'm in, some folks have already started a grassroots initiative for 'gear collateral loans in U', paying back interest with tokens generated in the game.

I've thought about Luke's RORS logic for a while. Don't jump in looking to scalp the noobs; first, ask yourself what you're bringing to the ecosystem. What's smart about Ronin's move? They didn't force a new concept; they just turned themselves from a gated community into a bustling street. More people come, but the trash projects die faster. Players aren't dumb; they'll vote with their feet on whether a game is fun and if the assets have long-term value.

So my strategy is pretty straightforward right now: no rush to launch tokens, no rush to recruit new players. First, I gotta liquidate that pile of old gear in my wallet and see which new games are willing to take it. If you've got any old Axie stuff, there's a game launching next month called xxx where you can just hop in and claim a hidden skin—couldn't even dream of this before.

This change on Ronin is a game-changer. It ain't about flashy tech; it finally gives folks like me, sitting on a pile of 'junk' from back in the day, a glimmer of hope to turn things around.

PS: If you're a scientist looking to collaborate on some gold farming, hit me up. We can chat about how to get those farmers' gear and U rolling together. #pixel $PIXEL @Pixels