Ronin Blockchain
In this section, we'll show you how DashArgos can be used to determine if the hyped activity on a blockchain is the result of organic transactions, or nothing more than an airdrop.
1. The Alleged Ronin Resurgence
On April 28, 2024, Sky Mavis co-founder and Chief Growth Officer Jeff Zirlin was on crypto-media Coindesk to discuss the recent rapid growth of activity on the Ronin blockchain.
Sky Mavis is infamously the creator of the Axie Infinity blockchain game, with AXS tokens soaring spectacularly before crashing when the game economics could no longer support the token price.
In his interview with Coindesk, Sky Mavis' Zirlin talked about the surge in activity on Ronin being the result of a game called Pixels.
2. Did Ronin's User Base Really Soar 700%?
Zirlin claims that Ronin's growth is "going parabolic" and that Ronin is now the second-most used blockchain in the world, which is quite a claim with "1.3 million daily active users" and "3 million monthly active addresses."
In a separate piece, Coindesk references Token Terminal to show the dramatic spike in Ronin's user base.
Token Terminal indeed shows a sharp spike in the number of transactions on Ronin, starting in December, and then increasing in a linear fashion thereafter.
But Token Terminal doesn't split out the transactions on the Ronin blockchain according to token, and Zirlin claims its all thanks to the Pixel blockchain game, but is it?
3. Breaking Down Ronin Activity
3.1 Which token did it?
Although Zirlin would have us believe the bulk of the activity on Ronin was generated by the PIXEL token, this is simply not true.
Let's take a look at the number of unique transactions for the PIXEL token on DashArgos.
DashArgos subscribers can interact with the dashboard here, read on otherwise if you do not have a subscription.
As can be seen from the chart above, there was a genuine spike in PIXEL token transactions (in pink), which picked up significantly from February 19, 2024.
But watch what happens when the SOUL token is overlaid on the same chart.
It's obvious when overlaid, the SOUL token's number of unique transactions (marked in yellow) completely overwhelms and drowns out the activity driven by the PIXEL token, rendering it more or less irrelevant.
Ok, but activity is activity, so isn't that a good thing?
3.2 What sort of activity is the SOUL token engaged in?
If the SOUL token was organic transactions on the Ronin blockchain, it could reasonably be argued that perhaps activity on the Ronin blockchain has genuinely taken off.
Sadly, it's not.
For transaction growth to be organic, you would expect to see both a large number of unique senders and receivers, thus driving activity on a blockchain.
From December 20, 2023, there was only one unique sender of SOUL tokens.
DashArgos subscribers can interact with the dashboard here, read on otherwise if you do not have a subscription.
As you can see, there's only one Unique From Address for the SOUL token which starts spitting out tokens on December 20, 2023, consistent with the Token Terminal's chart which shows the sharp uptick in transaction count at the same time.
And who was receiving these SOUL tokens?
DashArgos subscribers can interact with the dashboard here, read on otherwise if you do not have a subscription.
A whole bunch of addresses.
Now we have only one sender, and a whole bunch of receivers for the SOUL token, what does that sound like to you?
An airdrop - which is precisely what this was.
100% of the SOUL token transfers came from the null address - there was only one sender of SOUL tokens because it was a 4-month long airdrop of SOUL tokens.
3.3 No Economic Value
None of the SOUL token transfers represented any form of econmic activity and all of the volume of transactions generated from the SOUL token were from a project called CARV.
The official announcement for CARV started in December, and the transaction volume increase on Ronin is entirely a result of this activity.
Yet nothing in Zirlin's Coindesk interview mentions CARV or SOUL at all.
Looking at the data, you can see that the null address simply sprays out a bunch of airdrop tokens in tiny amounts to millions of addresses - an airdrop.
The data also supports the fact that no organic transaction activity is occurring on the Ronin blockchain.
Let's take a look at the number of "Unique To Addresses" that send any token other than SOUL on the Ronin blockchain.
DashArgos subscribers can interact with this dashboard here, non-subscribers please read on.
Even if we pick the most active day on Ronin, on February 19, 2024, there were 180,180 "Unique To Addresses" or unique receivers of tokens other than SOUL, and 140,474 "Unique From Addresses" or unique senders of tokens other than SOUL.
DashArgos subscribers can interact with this dashboard here, non-subscribers please read on.
We know that there's only one sender of SOUL tokens, so let's take a look at the number of receivers of SOUL tokens, which is 462,446.
Even on the most active day for the Ronin blockchain, February 19, 2024, a whopping 71.96% of all recipient transactions come from the SOUL airdrop.
It's even worse for outbound transactions, the single SOUL null address is responsible for 76.7% of all sending transactions on February 19, 2024.
3.3 Bold Claims Backed By Nothing
An airdrop is not economic activity - that would be akin to saying that a department store giving away its merchandise should be marked as revenue.
Which is why asserting that Ronin is seeing a resurgence because of blockchain gaming, or to quote the title of the Coindesk piece "Pixels Crypto Game Fuels Resurgent Ronin Blockchain" is misrepresentation at its very best.
According to the Coindesk pice,
"A single game has fueled Ronin's resurgence: Pixels. The low-fi farming game sees players set up plots of digital land and embark on quests in order to earn digital currencies. In the past month it has seen 1.25 million unique users plug in and play, per DappRadar."
While it's possible there were 1.25 million unique addresses playing the Pixel blockchain game, that number is completely overshadowed by the sheer number of unique addresses receiving the SOUL token in the airdrop.
Here are the unique daily receivers and a running total of the unique daily receivers for the PIXEL token in what can hardly be described as organic growth.
DashArgos subscribers can interact with the dashboard here, read on otherwise if you do not have a subscription.
Human gamers don't produce lines that smooth, bots do.
4. Putting It Altogether
You can analyze the activity on any blockchain (especially those which have been quiet for a long time) to determine what is causing the sudden surge in volumes.
4.1 Start by Investigating Volumes
For any given blockchain, start with "Explore" and then select the blockchain.
Hit the "Run" button and adjust the filter to the timeframe required. This will provide you with an excellent overview of which tokens are causing the biggest transaction volumes.
4.2 Follow Up by Investigating Tokens
Once you've narrowed down which tokens are responsible for the largest volumes, you can move on to determining whether there is organic transaction activity.
Presumably, a large number of unique sending addresses and a large number of unique recipient addresses should be indicative of organic transaction activity.
For any given blockchain, start with "Explore" and then select the blockchain.
Repeat the same process to see the unique recipient addresses by selecting "Unique To Addresses" and this will give you a good indication of whether the token activity is organic, a result of an airdrop, or likely to have been driven by bots.
Last updated
