Written by: 1912212.eth, Foresight News
On August 15, Ronin announced its transformation from an Ethereum sidechain to an L2 solution. Just five months prior, Ronin had only announced the expansion of its DeFi business and integration of games and consumer Dapps; why did it begin its return journey overnight?
Four years ago, Ethereum's scalability roadmap was still in its early stages. Ronin stated that the situation has changed dramatically now. Ethereum 'king returns.' Transaction costs and speeds have reached unprecedented ideal levels. As the underlying infrastructure for popular Web3 games like Axie Infinity, this strategic shift for Ronin not only marks the resurgence of the 'Ethereum craze' but may also herald an evolution of gaming blockchain towards a more mature and scalable direction.
Former Winners
The origins of the Ronin network trace back to 2021, developed by the Sky Mavis team, specifically tailored for the phenomenon game Axie Infinity. At that time, the high gas fees and congestion issues on the Ethereum mainnet had become pain points for gamers, and Ronin emerged as a sidechain to provide a low-cost, high-throughput trading environment.
At its peak, Axie Infinity attracted millions of players, with Ronin's daily active users once exceeding 1 million, driving the global popularity of the 'Play-to-Earn' model.
However, good times did not last long. In March 2022, Ronin suffered the largest hacking attack in history, resulting in asset losses of up to $625 million. This incident exposed the shortcomings of sidechains in terms of security and decentralization, leading many to believe that Ronin would decline.
However, the Sky Mavis team demonstrated remarkable 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 convinced white-hat hackers to return $10 million worth of ETH through communication, avoiding further financial losses.
In 2025, Ronin has risen again, with the daily active wallet count stabilizing at over one million, and games like Pixels, Lumiterra, and Fishing Frenzy remain active within the ecosystem. According to data from its official website, the total on-chain DEX trading volume has reached $9.41 billion, total NFT trading volume has reached $6.47 billion, and the current total TVL has risen to $750 million, with wallet downloads reaching 31 million.
The limitations of sidechains are becoming increasingly apparent.
The catalyst for this transformation lies in the limitations of the sidechain model. With the rapid development of the Ethereum ecosystem, sidechains can provide independence, but often sacrifice security sharing and liquidity integration with the mainnet.
The Ronin team clearly stated in the announcement: 'Ronin is returning to Ethereum, becoming Layer 2.' This decision is not a whimsical thought, but a trend of the industry. In 2025, several Layer 1 chains such as Celo and Cronos are migrating to L2 architectures, highlighting the advantages of high TPS (transactions per second) while inheriting Ethereum's security.
According to data from the Ethereum Foundation, L2 solutions have increased the overall network TPS to over 100,000, driving global adoption. Ronin's transformation will leverage zero-knowledge proof (zk) technology to construct zkEVM (zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine), which can maintain compatibility with Ethereum while significantly lowering transaction costs and delays.
Ethereum's comeback
One key reason Ronin chose to return to Ethereum and transform into a Layer 2 solution is the strong recovery of Ethereum in Q3 2025, with ETH stabilizing above $4600 in mid-August, nearing its historical high.
The market's renewed confidence in Ethereum is also due to the explosive activity within its ecosystem.
According to DefiLlama data, the total locked value (TVL) of DeFi on the Ethereum mainnet has exceeded $94.552 billion, far surpassing Solana's $10.828 billion, still maintaining a dominant position in the DeFi market. This level of activity provides Ronin with a large user base and liquidity pool, ensuring that game assets can circulate in a broader Ethereum ecosystem post-transformation, achieving a higher adoption rate.
In addition, Ethereum's future technological roadmap further enhances its attractiveness to L2 projects. After the Dencun upgrade in 2024, the Pectra (Prague-Electra) hard fork in Q1 2025 has been successfully deployed, significantly improving network scalability, reducing fees, and optimizing the staking mechanism. Looking ahead, Ethereum plans to advance the Fusaka upgrade by the end of the year, which is the first significant upgrade focusing on underlying performance optimization after the Pectra upgrade, containing several core Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs). Fusaka will significantly increase blob capacity, allowing Layer-2 rollups (such as Arbitrum, Optimism) to process more data and reduce costs, helping transaction throughput reach tens of thousands of TPS.
Additionally, after the upgrade, the cost of node operation decreases through Verkle trees and PeerDAS, and the device requirements are lowered, benefiting the network's decentralization — including the development of mobile and light client ecosystems.
For Ronin, this appeal means a shift from an isolated sidechain to a thriving 'modular' ecosystem, enhancing its long-term competitiveness in the Web3 gaming space.
Migration will be completed in Q2 2026, and the token will be launched on the new 'Proof of Distribution'.
In terms of specific transformation details, Ronin plans to complete the migration in Q2 2026, using Polygon's Chain Development Kit (CDK) as the foundation. Ronin will benefit from Ethereum's strong security and decentralization, with transaction speeds increasing 12-fold.
The speed enhancement is crucial for games like Axie Infinity, allowing players to conduct NFT transactions and in-game economic activities more smoothly. Additionally, developers will benefit immensely. Ronin will position itself as 'Ethereum's game engine', attracting more third-party builders to deploy custom L2 chains. New projects such as Cambria Duel Arena, Fableborne, and Angry Dynomites have emerged in the ecosystem, utilizing L2's DeFi integration to achieve seamless integration of gaming and finance.
It is worth mentioning that after the migration, the staking rewards of the RON token will also reward builders through the new 'Proof of Distribution' model.
In recent years, RON rewards have flowed to Governing Validators and Regular Validators to incentivize them to ensure network security. After this upgrade, RON rewards will flow to Governing Validators and Contributors. This will strengthen the incentive connection between builders and users, launching 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 rekindle hopes for blockchain gaming.
