On August 15, Ronin announced its transition from an Ethereum sidechain to an L2 solution. Just five months ago, Ronin was merely a sidechain expanding its DeFi business and integrating gaming and consumer Dapps. Why did it suddenly embark on this return journey?

Four years ago, Ethereum’s scaling roadmap was still in its early stages. Ronin stated that the situation is now vastly different. Ethereum has made a "triumphant return," with transaction costs and speeds reaching unprecedented ideal levels. As the underlying infrastructure for popular Web3 games like Axie Infinity, Ronin’s strategic shift not only marks the "resurgence of Ethereum’s hype" but may also signal the evolution of gaming blockchains toward greater maturity and scalability.

The Former Winner

The Ronin network originated in 2021, developed by the Sky Mavis team, and was tailor-made for the blockbuster game Axie Infinity. At the time, high gas fees and congestion on the Ethereum mainnet were pain points for gamers, leading to the emergence of Ronin as a sidechain offering low-cost, high-throughput transactions.
At its peak, Axie Infinity attracted millions of players, with Ronin’s daily active users exceeding one million, driving the global popularity of the "Play-to-Earn" model.

However, the good times didn’t last. In March 2022, Ronin suffered the largest hack in history, losing $625 million in assets. This incident exposed the shortcomings of sidechains in terms of security and decentralization, and many believed Ronin would fade into obscurity.

Yet the Sky Mavis team demonstrated remarkable resilience. By upgrading its validator mechanism, transitioning to a Delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) consensus, and collaborating with institutions like Binance, it successfully restored the network. In August 2024, Ronin also persuaded a white-hat hacker to return $10 million worth of ETH, preventing further losses.

By 2025, Ronin had re-emerged, with daily active wallets stabilizing at nearly one million, and games within its ecosystem like Pixels, Lumiterra, and Fishing Frenzy remaining active. According to its official website data, its on-chain DEX trading volume has reached $9.41 billion, NFT trading volume totals $6.47 billion, its total TVL has risen to $750 million, and wallet downloads have hit 31 million.

The Growing Limitations of Sidechains

The catalyst for this transition lies in the limitations of the sidechain model. With the rapid development of the Ethereum ecosystem, sidechains, while offering independence, often sacrifice security sharing and liquidity integration with the mainnet.

The Ronin team explicitly stated in its announcement: "Ronin is returning to Ethereum as a Layer 2." This decision is not a whim but reflects industry trends. In 2025, multiple Layer 1 chains like Celo and Cronos migrated to L2 architectures, highlighting L2’s advantages 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 transition will leverage zero-knowledge proof (zk) technology to build a zkEVM (zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine), which will not only maintain compatibility with Ethereum but also significantly reduce transaction costs and latency.

Ethereum’s Triumphant Return

A key reason for Ronin’s decision to return to Ethereum and transition to an L2 solution is Ethereum’s strong recovery in Q3 2025, with ETH stabilizing above $4,600 in mid-August, nearing its all-time high.

The renewed market confidence in Ethereum is also attributed to the explosive activity of its ecosystem.

According to DefiLlama data, Ethereum’s mainnet DeFi Total Value Locked (TVL) has exceeded $94.552 billion, far surpassing Solana’s $10.828 billion, maintaining its dominance in the DeFi market. This vibrancy provides Ronin with a vast user base and liquidity pool, ensuring that post-transition gaming assets can circulate within the broader Ethereum ecosystem, achieving higher adoption rates.

Moreover, Ethereum’s future technical roadmap further enhances its appeal to L2 projects. Following the Dencun upgrade in 2024, the Pectra (Prague-Electra) hard fork in Q1 2025 was successfully deployed, significantly improving network scalability, reducing fees, and optimizing staking mechanisms. Looking ahead, Ethereum plans to advance the Fusaka upgrade by year-end. Fusaka, the first major upgrade after Pectra to truly focus on underlying performance optimization, includes multiple core Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs). Fusaka will significantly increase blob capacity, allowing Layer-2 rollups (like Arbitrum and Optimism) to process more data and reduce fees, enabling transaction throughput to reach tens of thousands of TPS.

Additionally, post-upgrade, node operating costs will decrease, and hardware requirements will be lowered through Verkle trees and PeerDAS, fostering greater decentralization—including the development of mobile and light-client ecosystems.

For Ronin, this appeal means transitioning from an isolated sidechain to a thriving "modular" ecosystem, bolstering its long-term competitiveness in the Web3 gaming space.

Migration Completion in Q2 2026, Token to Launch New "Proof of Distribution"

Regarding specific transition details, Ronin plans to complete its migration in Q2 2026, using Polygon’s Chain Development Kit (CDK) as the foundation. Ronin will benefit from Ethereum’s robust security and decentralization, with transaction speeds increasing by 12 times.

This speed boost is critical for games like Axie Infinity, enabling smoother NFT trading and in-game economic activities. Additionally, developers will greatly benefit. Ronin will position itself as "Ethereum’s gaming engine," attracting more third-party builders to deploy custom L2 chains. New projects like Cambria Duel Arena, Fableborne, and Angry Dynomites have already emerged within the ecosystem, leveraging L2’s DeFi integration for seamless fusion of gaming and finance.

Notably, post-migration, RON token rewards will also incentivize builders through a new "Proof of Distribution" model.

In recent years, RON rewards have flowed to Governing Validators and Regular Validators to incentivize network security. After this upgrade, RON rewards will go to Governing Validators and Contributors. This will strengthen the incentive link between builders and users, initiating a new virtuous cycle centered around the RON token.

Sky Mavis co-founder Jihoz once said, "Ronin is the Nintendo of the crypto world." As the migration progresses, Ronin may reignite hope for blockchain gaming.