Ronin, the blockchain that powers Axie Infinity and more than 70 other games, completed its transition from an independent sidechain to an Ethereum Layer 2 on May 13, 2026. The migration executed at block height 55,577,490 following roughly 10 hours of planned network downtime on May 12. The new architecture runs on Optimism's OP Stack, placing Ronin within the same technical family as major Ethereum scaling networks. Ronin described the move as "the largest state migration in history."

The migration caps a multi-year security overhaul that began after hackers drained $625 million from Ronin's bridge in March 2022, an attack attributed by the US Treasury to North Korea's Lazarus Group. That breach was possible partly because Ronin's original Proof of Authority design relied on only nine validators, five of which were controlled by Sky Mavis itself. In April 2023, Ronin took an intermediate step, migrating from Proof of Authority to Delegated Proof of Stake as part of its staged security hardening effort. With this latest move, the chain now settles on Ethereum's consensus layer rather than depending on its own smaller validator pool.

Tokenomics Overhaul Accompanies Technical Shift

The infrastructure change arrives alongside significant adjustments to how RON, the network's native token, is distributed. Annual emissions drop from approximately 45 million RON to 5 million RON, a 9x reduction that cuts the inflation rate from above 20 percent to roughly 1.2 percent. Ronin describes this as the lowest emission rate in the chain's history. An additional 90 million RON previously reserved for passive staking rewards has been moved to the Ronin Treasury, which already holds more than 890 wETH in reserves. The NFT marketplace fee also rises from 0.5 percent to 1.25 percent, giving the treasury a recurring revenue source tied to trading activity.

RON was trading at approximately $0.109 at the time of writing, giving the token a market capitalization near $84 million on a circulating supply of around 770 million to 788 million tokens. The token had gained roughly 30 percent in the month leading up to the migration and was up about 7 percent over the preceding week, according to CoinMarketCap data. Token prices reflect market conditions as of May 13, 2026, and are subject to change.

Passive staking rewards are being replaced by a new program called Proof of Distribution. Rather than paying validators simply for locking tokens, the model routes monthly incentives totaling 410,000 RON toward builders who drive measurable activity on the chain. Allocation is based on metrics including gas generated, total value locked, user retention, and off-chain mindshare.

Ronin said in an official post on X: "The more value you drive to Ronin, the more rewards you get."

One early participant, Craft World, received approximately 40,000 RON per month under the pilot. Developers can register contracts at pod.roninchain.com to participate. Two grant programs are also available for builders entering the ecosystem: Ronin Forge Innovation Grants offer up to $50,000 in RON for traction-stage projects, and Lightning Grants provide up to $20,000 in RON for early-stage minimum viable products.

Southeast Asian Users Face Practical Changes

Ronin's user base is concentrated in Southeast Asia, where Axie Infinity became a significant income source during the pandemic years, particularly in the Philippines. At its peak, the game reached 2.7 million daily active users, and its NFT marketplace recorded $4.2 billion in all-time trading volume, a figure recognized by Guinness World Records. The chain reports 31 million wallet downloads globally, with the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand representing the bulk of that figure. Venezuela was also among the countries with the highest daily active users at the game's peak, reflecting how broadly the play-to-earn model spread across emerging markets beyond Southeast Asia.

For those users, the migration requires no manual action. Staking positions transferred automatically, which reduces friction for participants who are not technically sophisticated. The drop in inflation carries more lasting significance. In markets where players hold RON as part of a broader savings or income strategy, reducing annual supply dilution from more than 20 percent to around 1.2 percent changes the long-term economics of holding the token.

A separate initiative that predates the migration but sits on the same roadmap involves integrating a Philippine Peso stablecoin called PHPC onto the Ronin network. Sky Mavis is working with Coins.ph, the Philippines' largest crypto exchange and a Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas-licensed operator, on a system that would allow PHPC payments at more than 600,000 merchant QR terminals. A payments pilot covering saving and spending functions had been confirmed for Q4 2025; the current regulatory and operational status of that pilot had not been independently verified at the time of publication. The PHPC model is also being watched as a proof of concept for similar local-currency stablecoin integrations in other markets. In Africa, play-to-earn communities in Nigeria and South Africa have shown sustained engagement with Ronin-based games, and the PHPC framework has been discussed as a template for instruments such as a Nigerian naira-backed stablecoin. In India, Ronin's adoption of the OP Stack opens potential interoperability with other OP Stack networks, which may lower technical barriers for Indian developers building on the chain.

Architecture and What Comes Next

The new technical stack brings together Optimism's OP Stack for the core rollup framework, Conduit for sequencing, EigenLayer's EigenDA for off-chain data availability (a service with theoretical throughput of up to 1 million transactions per second), and Flashbots for 200-millisecond block times with a roadmap toward sub-100-millisecond confirmation.

A future phase is expected to add ZK validity proofs via a system called Boundless Kailua, which would enable faster finality on withdrawals. Faster finality matters in gaming contexts because players moving assets between Ronin and Ethereum mainnet must currently wait through a challenge period before funds are released, a standard characteristic of optimistic rollup architecture.

Sky Mavis has positioned the move as a return to Ethereum's orbit after five years operating independently, describing Ronin's role as "Ethereum's gamification engine." The company pointed to Ethereum's growing institutional momentum as part of the rationale for the timing. "Gaming will always be in our DNA," Sky Mavis said in its announcement, while also signaling plans to expand into decentralized finance, social applications built around game mechanics, and consumer AI.

Whether the infrastructure upgrade translates into broader user growth will depend on how quickly developers adopt the Proof of Distribution model and whether the Philippines payments initiative, originally targeted for Q4 2025, secures the regulatory clearance needed to scale.