Written by: 1912212.eth, Foresight News
On August 15th, Ronin announced its transformation from an Ethereum sidechain to a Layer 2 solution. Just 5 months ago, Ronin was only announcing the expansion of DeFi business and integrating games and consumer Dapps as a sidechain, so why did it suddenly begin its return journey?
Four years ago, Ethereum's scaling roadmap was still in its early stages. Ronin states that the situation is now very different. Ethereum is "making a comeback". Transaction costs and speed have reached unprecedented ideal levels. As the underlying infrastructure for popular Web3 games like Axie Infinity, Ronin's strategic shift not only marks the resurgence of the "Ethereum wave", but perhaps also signals the evolution of blockchain gaming towards a more mature and scalable direction.
Former Winner
The origin of the Ronin network can be traced back to 2021, developed by the Sky Mavis team, specifically tailored for the phenomenon-level game Axie Infinity. At that time, the high gas fees and congestion issues on the Ethereum mainnet had become a pain point for game players, and Ronin emerged as a sidechain, providing a low-cost, high-throughput transaction environment.
At its peak, Axie Infinity attracted millions of players, and Ronin's daily active users once exceeded 1 million, driving the global popularity of the "Play-to-Earn" model.
However, the good times did not last long. In March 2022, Ronin suffered the largest hacker attack in history, losing assets worth $625 million. This event exposed the shortcomings of sidechains in terms of security and decentralization, and many people believed that Ronin would decline.
However, the Sky Mavis team showed amazing resilience by upgrading the validator mechanism, shifting to Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) consensus, and collaborating with institutions like Binance to successfully restore the network. In August 2024, Ronin successfully persuaded white hat hackers to return ETH worth $10 million, avoiding further fund losses.
In 2025, Ronin has risen again, with daily active wallets stabilizing at nearly a million, and ecosystem games like Pixels, Lumiterra, and Fishing Frenzy remaining active. According to its official website data, its on-chain DEX total trading volume has reached $9.41 billion, NFT total trading volume has reached $6.47 billion, current total TVL has risen to $750 million, and wallet downloads have reached 31 million.
Sidechain Limitations Becoming Increasingly Apparent
The trigger for this transformation lies in the limitations of the sidechain model. With the rapid development of the Ethereum ecosystem, while sidechains can provide independence, they often sacrifice security sharing with the mainnet and liquidity integration.
The Ronin team clearly stated in the announcement: "Ronin is returning to Ethereum, becoming a Layer 2." This decision is not a sudden whim, but an industry trend. In 2025, multiple Layer 1 chains such as Celo and Cronos migrated to the L2 architecture, highlighting the advantages of L2 in inheriting Ethereum's security while achieving high TPS (transactions per second).
According to Ethereum Foundation data, L2 solutions have increased the overall network TPS to over 100,000, driving global adoption. Ronin's transformation will utilize zero-knowledge proof (zk) technology to build a zkEVM (zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine), which not only maintains compatibility with Ethereum but can also significantly reduce transaction costs and latency.
Ethereum's Comeback
A key reason for Ronin's choice to return to Ethereum and transform into a Layer 2 solution is Ethereum's strong recovery in Q3 2025, with ETH stabilizing above $4,600 in mid-August, close to its historical high.
Market confidence in Ethereum has also rebounded due to the explosive activity of its ecosystem.
According to defillama data, Ethereum mainnet's DeFi total locked value (TVL) has exceeded $94.552 billion, far surpassing Solana's $10.828 billion, still dominating the DeFi market. This activity provides Ronin with a massive user base and liquidity pool, ensuring that game assets can circulate in the broader Ethereum ecosystem after transformation, achieving higher adoption rates.
Moreover, Ethereum's future technical roadmap further enhances the attractiveness to L2 projects. Following the 2024 Dencun upgrade, the Pectra (Prague-Electra) hard fork successfully deployed in Q1 2025 significantly improved network scalability, reduced fees, and optimized the staking mechanism. Looking ahead, Ethereum plans to advance the Fusaka upgrade by the end of the year, which is the first major upgrade since Pectra truly focusing on underlying performance optimization, including multiple core Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs). Fusaka will significantly increase blob capacity, allowing Layer-2 rollups (such as Arbitrum and Optimism) to process more data and reduce fees, helping transaction throughput reach tens of thousands of TPS.
Additionally, after the upgrade, through Verkle trees and PeerDAS, node operation costs will decrease, device requirements will be lowered, which is conducive to a more decentralized network - including mobile and light client ecosystem development.
For Ronin, this attractiveness means moving from an isolated sidechain to a thriving "modular" ecosystem, helping its long-term competitiveness in the Web3 gaming field.
Migration Completed in Q2 2026, Token to Launch New "Allocation Proof"
In terms of specific transformation details, Ronin plans to complete migration in the second quarter of 2026, using Polygon's Chain Development Kit (CDK) as a foundation. Ronin will benefit from Ethereum's powerful security and decentralization, with transaction speed increasing 12-fold.
Speed improvement is crucial for games like Axie Infinity, allowing players to conduct NFT transactions and in-game economic activities more smoothly. Secondly, developers will benefit immensely. Ronin will position itself as "Ethereum's game engine", attracting more third-party builders to deploy custom L2 chains. Emerging projects in the ecosystem such as Cambria Duel Arena, Fableborne, and Angry Dynomites will leverage L2's DeFi integration to achieve seamless fusion of gaming and finance.
It is worth mentioning that after migration, RON token equity rewards will be awarded to builders through a new "Allocation Proof" model.
In the past few years, RON rewards have been flowing to Governing Validators and Regular Validators to incentivize network security. After this upgrade, RON rewards will flow to Governing Validators and Contributors. This will strengthen the incentive connection between builders and users, initiating a new virtuous cycle centered on the RON token.
Sky Mavis co-founder Jihoz once said: "Ronin is the Nintendo of the crypto world." As the migration progresses, Ronin may be able to reignite hopes for chain gaming.
