Week in DeFi: Lending Protocols Ship, a Bustling Cosmos and Proof-of-Innocence

Crypto News, April 28: Ronin Vows to Beef Up Security, and Zcash Co-Founder Reveals Himself

Podcast: Ukraine is Receiving Its Biggest Bitcoin Donation Ever

Ronin Network Offers Update After Record-Breaking $625M Hack, as $1M Bug Bounty Unveiled

Crypto News, April 22: Musk's Priorities for Twitter, Stolen Axie Funds Recovered, Ethereum Movie

## What Is Ronin (RON)?
[Ronin](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ronin/) is an [EVM](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/ethereum-virtual-machine-evm) blockchain specifically forged for gaming. Launched by Sky Mavis, the creator of Web3’s breakout title [Axie Infinity](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/axie-infinity/) which has generated over $1.3B in revenue, Ronin is the only blockchain proven to scale a single game to accommodate millions of daily active users and has processed over $4B in [NFT](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/non-fungible-token) volumes. Ronin optimizes for near-instant transactions and negligible fees that enable millions of in-game transactions to occur seamlessly, making it the leading choice for Web3 games. 

In its first nine months, Ronin has racked up 250,000 unique daily active addresses, $5 billion in [TVL](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/total-value-locked-tvl), over 2 million wallet downloads, and 15% of all NFT transactions on the market. Its [DEX](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/decentralized-exchange-dex) Katana is the second-most popular decentralized exchange by weekly active users and allows users to swap tokens within the Axie Infinity ecosystem. 


## Who Are the Creators of Ronin?

Ronin was created by [Sky Mavis](https://skymavis.com/), the team behind Axie Infinity and backed by top investors like Accel, a16z, Binance Labs, Animoca Brands, Paradigm, Libertus, Mark Cuban. 
Cofounders include [Jeffrey Zirlin](https://twitter.com/Jihoz_Axie) and [Alexander Leonard Larsen](https://twitter.com/Psycheout86).


## What Makes Ronin Unique?

Ronin is battle tested and scalable. In 2021 the Ronin processed 15% of all NFT trading volume and is the home of all Axie Infinity assets - Axies, Land, SLP and AXS. Ronin is second only to Ethereum when it comes to NFT sales by volume. While there are many other chains available, Ronin is the only platform proven to scale a single game to accommodate millions of daily users. 

Ronin is hyper optimized for gaming and cuts out the bloat found in other permissionless blockchains.  We put in effort to curate high quality apps and ensure there is minimal spam and high uptime for games.

Ronin is environmentally friendly compared to other chains. For comparison, one Bitcoin transaction uses as much energy as 695,505,316.31 Ronin transactions.

Ronin is backed by Sky Mavis, the creators of the #1 NFT project by adoption and all-time volume, Axie Infinity. Sky Mavis’ experience building and scaling Axie Infinity has given them unique insights into product development, community building, and go-to-market which can be leveraged by partners deploying on the network. Sky Mavis offers advisory support and grants to help reduce risk and improve odds of success for games looking to launch.

Ronin is secure. Due to Ronin’s massive traction and being pioneers in the space, Sky Mavis has been one of the first companies to face scaling roadblocks and security threats ahead of the rest of the market. In March 2022, Sky Mavis experienced The Ronin Validator Breach, where 173,600 ETH and 25.5M USDC were drained from the Ronin bridge. This breach was not due to a technical flaw, but a socially engineered attack by an elite group of hackers. This incident led Sky Mavis to become a fully antifragile, zero-trust organization.  Sky Mavis has implemented rigorous internal security measures to prevent future attacks. All code has been fully reviewed and optimized, with security experts auditing the entire architecture. Audit information and security upgrade details can be found here.  


## Related Pages:

Check out [Axie Infinity (AXS)](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/axie-infinity/)— the governance token for the Axie Infinity game.

Check out [Smooth Love Potion (SLP)](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/smooth-love-potion/) — the in-game token of Axie Infinity.

Check out [Wrapped Ronin (WRON)](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/wrapped-ronin/) — the wrapped ERC20 version of Ronin tokens.

Learn about what [the Metaverse](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/what-is-the-metaverse-an-overview-and-a-deep-dive-of-the-top-metaverses) is.

Get the latest crypto news and latest trading insights with the [CoinMarketCap blog](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/categories/blog).


## How Many Ronin (RON) Coins Are There in Circulation?

RON was launched through a pool on its native Katana DEX without any private sales conducted and will be distributed through an incentivized liquidity program. Issuance will be reduced every quarter, and the total supply of RON is capped at 1 billion and will be reached 108 months after issuance begins. 

RON is distributed as follows:

* Rewards (25%): staking and bridge incentives
* Community (30%): liquidity mining, content creation, rewards programs, grants, and hackathons.
* Team (30%): Sky Mavis
* Ecosystem fund (15%): grants, investments, and hackathons bringing game-changing content, applications, and tooling to Ronin.

Refer to the Whitepaper for more info: https://docs.roninchain.com/basics/tokenomics


## Where Can You Buy Ronin (RON)?

RON is available on [Katana DEX](https://katana.roninchain.com/#/swap), [OKX](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/okx/), and many other avenues.
Refer to [Guide on Buying RON](https://roninchain.com/blog/posts/how-to-buy-ron)

If you want to learn more about how to start buying cryptocurrencies, you can read more in [our guide](https://coinmarketcap.com/how-to-buy-bitcoin/).

Ronin

Immutable positions itself as the first layer-two scaling solution for NFTs on Ethereum. According to Immutable, its blockchain does away with Ethereum’s limitations like low scalability, a poor user experience, illiquidity, and a slow developer experience. Instead, users benefit from instant trading and massive scalability while enjoying zero gas fees for minting and trading NFTs without compromising user or asset security.

Thanks to this technology, users will be able to create and distribute assets like ERC-20 and ERC-721 tokens on a massive scale. Chris Clay, the game Director of Gods Unchained, a project already building on Immutable, stated that Immutable allows Gods Unchained to implement a new meta-system that was previously impossible. In this fashion, Immutable aims to create a world-class experience for users and developers alike.

Immutable

The $BEAM token serves as the native crypto asset for the Beam network, a gaming network empowered by the Merit Circle DAO. Beam is an ecosystem where gamers and developers come together to shape the future of the gaming industry. One of its core components is the Beam SDK, which is a flexible software development kit that enables game developers to choose between a variety of tools that can be used to fuel and structure their in-game blockchain elements.

To interact with Beam, $BEAM is required. This is the native crypto asset used within the Beam network to pay for transactions. This not only includes transfers of assets but also involves all interactions with smart contracts on the Beam network, facilitating a seamless, immersive gaming experience.

Besides functioning as a gas token that fuels the Beam network, $BEAM is the heart of the governance of the Merit Circle DAO. This decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) was brought to live in early 2021 to revolutionize the gaming industry. The $BEAM token allows its holders to participate in governance of this DAO.

Beam

Echelon Prime

Celestia

Akash Network

Pyth Network

Pixels

Illuvium is an open-world fantasy battle game built on the Ethereum blockchain. Often touted as the first AAA game on Ethereum, Illuvium looks to provide a source of entertainment to both casual gamers and hardcore DeFi fans through a range of collecting and trading features.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Illuvium.

The world of Illuvium is inhabited by creatures known as Illuvials, who can be captured by players that best them in battle and nurse them back to health. From then on, they become a loyal part of the player’s collection and can be used when battling other adventurers as part of Illuvium’s auto battler gameplay.

The game is a fusion between an open-world exploration game and a PVP battle game. Players can spend their time exploring the expanses of the game world or building up their team of powerful beasts.

Illuvium has been in development since 2020, and is being built by a worldwide team of more than 40 individuals, including the co-founders; serial entrepreneur and early cryptocurrency adopter Kieran Warwick, and experienced game designer Aaron Warwick, who are brothers. (And who are coincidentally also the brothers of Kain Warwick, the co-founder of DeFi platform Synthetix).

The ILV token has a number of uses within the Illuvium ecosystem. It’s the main token used to reward players for their in-game achievements, entitles players to their share of the Illuvium Vault and is used for participating in the governance of the game via the Illuvium decentralized autonomous organization (DAO).

Illuvium

RenderToken (RNDR) is a distributed GPU rendering network built on top of the Ethereum blockchain, aiming to connect artists and studios in need of GPU compute power with mining partners willing to rent their GPU capabilities out. Conceived in 2009 by OTOY, inc. CEO Jules Urbach and launched in 2017, RNDR held its first public token sale in October of that same year, followed by a private sale period lasting from January 2018 – May 2018, wherein a total of 117,843,239 RNDR were sold at a price of 1 RNDR = $0.25 USD equivalent of token.
During the private sale period, early adopters were onboarded onto the RNDR Beta Testnet, where beta node operators and artists worked collaboratively with the RNDR team in building and testing the network, up until its public launch on April 27th 2020.

Render

Pendle

Injective is a blockchain built for finance. It is an open, interoperable layer-one blockchain powering next-generation DeFi applications, including decentralized spot and derivatives exchanges, prediction markets, lending protocols and more.

Injective uniquely provides powerful core financial infrastructure primitives that applications can leverage, including a fully decentralized MEV-resistant on-chain orderbook. In addition, all forms of financial markets such as spot, perpetual, futures and options are fully on-chain. The decentralized cross-chain bridging infrastructure is compatible with Ethereum, IBC-enabled blockchains, and non EVM chains such as Solana.

Injective also provides a next-generation, highly interoperable smart contract platform based on CosmWasm, with advanced interchain capabilities. Injective is custom built with the Cosmos SDK and utilizes Tendermint-based Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism, providing instant transaction finality with the ability to sustain lightning-fast performance (10,000+ TPS).

The Injective ecosystem includes 100+ projects and over 150,000 community members globally. Injective is backed by a group of prominent investors such as Binance, Pantera Capital, Jump Crypto and Mark Cuban.

Injective’s core exchange module provides state-of-the-art capabilities including an advanced on-chain order book and matching engine for spot, perpetual, futures and options markets, resistance to Miner-Extractable Value (MEV) through frequent batch auction order matching, and zero gas fees for users.

Injective natively uses IBC and is highly-interoperable with multiple layer 1s, including, but not limited to, Polygon and Solana (through an upcoming Wormhole integration). It is also uniquely built to be interoperable with Ethereum, through its own decentralized ERC-20 token bridge, making Injective the first network within the Cosmos ecosystem to natively support Ethereum assets.

Smart contracts are implemented on Injective through CosmWasm, allowing for multi-chain smart contract transactions to occur seamlessly. Injective, however, is the only blockchain that enables automatic smart contract execution. This capability serves as a powerful building block for developers to create novel use cases that would not be possible on any other chain.

The use cases intended for INJ include but are not limited to: protocol governance, dApp value capture, Proof-of-Stake (PoS) security, developer incentives and staking. Further details regarding each of these use cases can be found below:

Protocol Governance: The INJ token governs every single component of Injective, including chain upgrades. Since its mainnet launch, the Injective community has actively contributed to governance, with all proposals passing through a DAO governance vote. The comprehensive governance page is available here.

Protocol Fee Value Capture: 60% of all fees generated from dApps enter an on-chain buy-back-and-burn auction to maintain the deflationary nature of INJ. The burn auction page is available here.

Tendermint-based Proof-of-Stake (PoS) Security: INJ is used to secure the Injective blockchain using a proof-of-stake mechanism. Validators and delegators can both participate in staking.

Developer Incentives: 40% of fees generated by users on dApps built on Injective go directly towards incentivizing new developers building on Injective which brings an ever growing funnel of builders to Injective.

Injective

SuperVerse

Axie Infinity is a blockchain-based trading and battling game that is partially owned and operated by its players.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Axie Infinity.

Inspired by popular games like Pokémon and Tamagotchi, Axie Infinity allows players to collect, breed, raise, battle and trade token-based creatures known as Axies.

These Axies can take various forms, and there are more than 500 different body parts available, including aquatic, beast, bird, bug, plant and reptile parts. Parts from each type class come in four different rarity scales: common, rare, ultra rare and legendary — and Axies can have any combination of body parts, making them highly variable and often rare and unique.

Each Axie is a non-fungible token (NFT) with different attributes and strengths and can be entered into 3v3 battles, with the winning team earning more experience (exp) points that are used to level up an Axie's stats or evolve their body parts. These Axies can be bred together to produce new and unique offspring, which can be used or sold on the Axie marketplace.

The Axie Infinity ecosystem also has its own unique governance token, known as Axie Infinity Shards (AXS). These are used to participate in key governance votes and will give holders a say in how funds in the Axie Community Treasury are spent.

Axie Infinity

Sui is a groundbreaking layer-1 blockchain platform designed to support the needs of global adoption by offering a secure, powerful, and scalable development platform. At its core, Sui leverages a novel object-centric data model and the secure Move programming language to address inefficiencies prevalent in existing blockchain architectures.

On top of strong technical foundations, Sui prioritizes user experience by eliminating barriers commonly associated with blockchain interactions. Through innovations like zkLogin, sponsored transactions, and programmable transaction blocks, Sui creates a higher standard for user experience within Web3 by ensuring applications are accessible and user-friendly.

Bittensor

Optimism (OP) is a layer-two blockchain on top of Ethereum. Optimism benefits from the security of the Ethereum mainnet and helps scale the Ethereum ecosystem by using optimistic rollups. That means transactions are trustlessly recorded on Optimism but ultimately secured on Ethereum.

Optimism is one of the biggest scaling solutions for Ethereum with over $500 million in TVL. It is home to 97 protocols, the biggest being Synthetix (SNX), a derivatives exchange, Uniswap (UNI), a DEX, and Velodrome (VELO), an AMM. Users can begin their journey on Optimism by adding the chain on their Metamask and bridging tokens like ETH to the L2. On May 31, 2022, Optimism conducted a highly anticipated airdrop of its OP token.

Optimism

Arweave is a decentralized storage network that seeks to offer a platform for the indefinite storage of data. Describing itself as "a collectively owned hard drive that never forgets," the network primarily hosts "the permaweb" — a permanent, decentralized web with a number of community-driven applications and platforms.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Arweave.

The Arweave network uses a native cryptocurrency, AR, to pay "miners" to indefinitely store the network's information.

The project was first announced as Archain in August 2017, later rebranding to Arweave in February 2018 and officially launching in June 2018.

Arweave

ORDI

Founded in 2017 and launched via IEO on Binance in March 2019, Fetch.AI is an artificial intelligence (AI) lab building an open, permissionless, decentralized machine learning network with a crypto economy. Fetch.ai democratizes access to AI technology with a permissionless network upon which anyone can connect and access secure datasets by using autonomous AI to execute tasks that leverage its global network of data. The Fetch.AI model is rooted in  use cases like optimizing DeFi trading services, transportation networks (parking, micromobility), smart energy grids, travel — essentially any complex digital system that relies on large-scale datasets.