Top Podcasts
Jiho Zirlin Of Sky Mavis, The Creators Of Axie Infinity And Other Decentralized Applications And Services
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably already heard of Axie Infinity. Chances are you might even know its creator, Sky Mavis. But there is a lot to Sky Mavis nowadays than Axie Infinity – even though Axie in itself is already a huge topic to unpack. In this episode of Edge of NFT, co-founder Jiho Zirlin joins the crew to talk about the latest projects they have been working on now that Axie is on its fifth year. The highlight of this discussion is Ronin, a rogue samurai-inspired network that the guys at Sky Mavis envision to be the go-to place for Web3 game developers to launch their products and games and to grow their communities. Jiho also gives us an update on the Axie universe, where there are now multiple Axie games to choose from. Plus, for our hot topics, we welcome Bob Ras, co-founder of Sologenic, who gives us a sneak peek of their newest project, Coreum, the first EGB blockchain providing fast, cost-efficient, and scalable infrastructure for enterprises. Tune in to learn more!
Listen to the podcast here
Jiho Zirlin Of Sky Mavis, The Creators Of Axie Infinity And Other Decentralized Applications And Services
This is Jiho. I’m a Cofounder of Sky Mavis and I’m on the Edge of NFT.
NFT curious readers, stay tuned for this episode to learn how Sky Mavis, the crew behind Axie Infinity, is taking their samurai-inspired network Ronin to new far-off regions of creativity, how our guest applies the concept of 100% responsibility and demonstrating it by personally connecting with this OG community and how the Core Mainnet launch will go off like a rocket ship at Outer Edge LA.
NFT LA 2022 was a blast. It was also a blast-off in a giant plume of bright burning rocket fuel Web3. NFTs, blockchain, decentralization and a suite of immersive new tech developments have exploded onto the cans of life. Outer Edge is the theme of the 2023 event, dedicated to those of you building with us at the outer edges making the future happen.
The community-centric gathering returns to LA on March 20th to 23rd, 2023 to uplift creators and technologists through interactive experiences, discussions and presentations and entertaining surprises that transport participants to the outer edge of what is possible when we co-create a new paradigm embracing the decentralized web, AI, extended reality and more. To register, attend or learn how to co-create an experience, head over to OuterEdge.live. The events are being organized by our edge of company and us Founders here at the Edge of NFT. We will see you there.
This episode features Jiho, the Cofounder of Sky Mavis, the Creators of Axie Infinity, the largest NFT gaming ecosystem with over two million active Axie holders. As Chief Growth Officer, Jiho’s mission is to grow both the community and economy of Axie, a community-led digital nation that invites gamers to learn Web3 technology while building a decentralized world together. Sky Mavis, the developer behind the hit NFT game Axie Infinity, is gamifying the blockchain. Jiho, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me. It is a pleasure.
It is an honor to finally have you on the show. We had you as one of our featured opening speakers for Outer Edge LA, formerly NFT LA, in 2022. It was nice to run into you at EatDenver and catch up a little bit on everything you guys have going on. It has been a wild year for all of us. Sky Mavis is an amazing game where people have the ability to build player-owned economies. There will be places where they can live, work, play and experience life in a digital format that feels very surreal through digital nations. How did this concept come into being?
A bunch of the Cofounders of Sky Mavis were CryptoKitties players. I met Trung and Aleksander playing CryptoKitties way back in 2017. A common element for us is that we were people that weren’t interested in crypto or blockchain when it was about money and speculation. All of the Founders of Sky Mavis were all gamers. We grew up gaming and collecting. Aleksander is a big Magic: The Gathering player. I grew up collecting fossils, insects and Pokemon cards. Trung is the CEO. Masamune is the artist that gave life to Axie. They used to create card games and cards that they would give out to their classmate in Vietnam.
All of us are collectors and gamers. When we learned about NFTs, it was like, “This is something that speaks to the right part of our brain. It is speaking to the collector and gamer in us.” We are lucky to learn about CryptoKitties quite early on and start asking questions like, “What is next? What does the final form of this look like? What does a Web3 game or NFT game that is using the technology to its full potential look like?” This journey has been about trying to answer that question. What does a player-owned economy look like? What are the benefits of tokenizing in-game assets? How can you create a Web3 game that is scalable, fun and decentralized? These are the things we have been collectively working on and pushing forward.
You mentioned that CryptoKitties was a moment for you. It is a moment for Jeff and I. Zach, our Head of Outer Edge LA, was hosting a casual meetup with Mack, one of the Founders of CryptoKitties, at one of those dive bars in Venice, California, around that time. This was after CryptoKitties blew up the internet and Ethereum.
This is a group of guys having fun. They were still figuring out what they wanted to be when they grew up. It is interesting to think about how your and our journey went down, where we are like, “This is exciting stuff.” We want to talk about this stuff all the time. Axie Infinity comes up. We started this show in March of 2021 and the journey continues.
We have talked about Axie quite a bit on the show. It has been a shining example of some of the most innovative things going on in Web3 and NFTs. Kudos on achieving that from a state of curiosity and fun, which is cool. Can you tell us a little bit more about Sky Mavis features of the platform in addition to being the user-first platform that it is?
Everything that we build, we build with the intention of being able to introduce the world to crypto through something fun, nostalgic and user-friendly. Axie is the number one NFT project by all-time trading volume, at $4.2 billion and we have onboarded millions of people to Web3. For 50% of Axie players, Axie was the first thing they have ever done within crypto.
We also have started building out the infrastructure needed to make a game like Axie. That has been realized through the Ronin Network. In the early days, we were building on Ethereum. It is like CryptoKitties and a lot of the projects you see. Transaction fees were quite high. Anytime there was a lot of excitement on the network and Web3, you have gas fees that started to spike. We are pricing out a lot of the types of activities that are needed for a game.
We have built our infrastructure called Ronin. The idea is that we use this infrastructure to scale Axie to millions of players. It is battle-tested and proven to work so we can also use Ronin and provide it to game developers that also want to leverage this technology and scale their games. Not only can we provide the infrastructure but we also have this audience on the Ronin Network that is excited about other experiences they can interact and get started with.
We have onboarded people interested in trying out these games. A key differentiator with what we have built is we have this super active community that understands Web3 gaming and has already onboarded people to this technology. Fifty-five percent of our players were onboarded by friends and family. This is a community that understands how to explain the benefits of Web3 to people. When we talk to game developers, they are interested in having this commingling or cross-pollination of our community with the community around the games they are looking to build.
You keep using the word Ronin. I had to google it. I want to break down what Ronin is in your world. This sounds like something I have heard before. It is a wandering samurai who has no lord or master. Is that related to what Ronin Saigon Testnet is all about? Tell us about the migration to DPoS and how all these things fit together.
Ronin is a samurai without a master. It represents how Ronin has allowed us to take the destiny of our products into our hands. That is also what we are looking to provide to other game developers and builders through the platform.
Sky Mavis: Ronin is a samurai without a master. It represents how Ronin has allowed us to take the destiny of our products into our own hands.
Who needs a master? We should all be free to do what we want and live our future destinies. That is a cool concept.
There is this aspect of rebellion against the existing systems and structures inherent to Web3. The naming of Ronin is a nod toward that.
Can you tell us a little bit more about the update of the Saigon Testnet migrating to DPoS and a little bit more about what those are and why that is important?
Ronin is officially migrating to DPoS and we are launching RON Staking. The Ronin community has been asking for two main things. They have been looking forward to RON Staking, which is the ability to lock up or stake your tokens to help validate the network in return for rewards. They have also been asking for new games on Ronin. Finally, we are launching RON Staking and simultaneously announcing these new game studio partners that are being onboarded onto the network.
Users first is always a good way to develop and progress. It is much appreciated on that. In terms of this going on, you said, “It is a response to user demands.” Any other reasons why this is important, that this is a direction maybe internally or for the long-term growth of everything you are working on?
There hasn’t been this clear, obvious leader or winner when it comes to, “Is there an obvious place for me to come and launch my Web3 game? Where can I launch my game? What blockchain can I launch my game on that is going to allow me to get this golden cohort of users?” We think there is a huge opportunity to be seized where we can make Ronin the facto go-to chain of choice for game developers looking to launch, bootstrap and get an initial community.
We know that this can work. We have used it for Axie. We have hundreds of thousands of players looking for new products and experiences to interact with. The Axie IP might not be for everyone who is even in our ecosystem. There may be players within our ecosystem who are better fits for other types of IP. One analogy I like to make is, if Axie is our Mario, what will be our Donkey Kong or Zelda? What does Super Smash Bros. look like? Mario would never have gotten as large as it got or grew to be if there weren’t other IPs adding right to this universe and adding new player archetypes into this ecosystem.
There is a RON Staking component to this. Can you break that down for us? As you think about the future of a lower-risk environment, we can be more defensive towards hacking. How are you thinking about staking in this ecosystem?
RON Staking is a big upgrade to the network because it allows for this migration to delegate proof-of-stake, which allows for there to be actual tokens locked up, securing the network, allowing for there to be more validators and a more decentralized network, which makes the network more secure. That is the main point behind delivering on RON Staking.
It is similar to CZ and a lot of folks in the industry. There is a strong push for decentralization whenever possible.
It needs to be very purposeful and methodical. Ethereum is the most decentralized possible but there are gradations or different levels of decentralization that make sense for different types of products.
Can you tell us a little bit more about your roadmaps moving forward, maybe some big news and how it is developing?
It makes sense to break this question up into two sections. There is the Axie side and the Ronin side. Let’s talk about Ronin first. On Ronin, we want to make it the go-to place for Web3 game developers to launch their products and games and to grow their communities. We are focused on being able to build out the capabilities to launch these games on Ronin and have them scale their communities. That means having an in-house NFT marketplace. We have launched RON Staking and we are announcing these different game studios. A lot of it on the Ronin side is like, “What are all the tools? What are all the products we need on Ronin for these game developers to be able to launch and grow their games?”
On the Axie side, one thing that may be surprising to the viewers is there are multiple Axie games you can play. We have Axie Infinity Origins, which is the latest version of the card battler. That is what everyone knows about when they think about Axie. We also have Axie Infinity Homeland. It is a land-based game where you can build up a city or a village and harvest resources, that type of experience, which you can access by owning land. In 2023, we are looking to open it up to non-landholders through a delegation creature. It would allow people to lend out their land. We are improving those core experiences.
We also have Axie games that are being built out by third-party developers, such as Axie Infinity Raylights, which is being built by Quick Save, a finished game studio. We have experiences like Axie Doll, which is built by the community. It is a lot like Survivor.io if you are familiar with that but Axie based. If you go to App.AxieInfinity.com/games, you will be able to see this entire library of content that is starting to fill out around the Axie Universe.
There is a lot to build. We are focused on expanding and flushing out the infrastructure side of things while continuously adding content to this universe we are developing on the Axie side. They go hand in hand. More content and users also provide more of an incentive or reason for game developers to launch their IP on Ronin to build on top of Axie but also to launch other IP on Ronin to tap into that experience or community.
That is exciting when you think about the potential of all the games. In my head, I’m like, “Is there an NFL version of Axie where you can start throwing touchdowns to your characters.” In all honesty, there is a lot of lore that goes into building a universe like this and a lot of co-creation. How do you look at Axie from an IP perspective? How people are branching off to it? It must be exciting, like a dad having grandchildren.
2023 is the fifth year of Axie. Every year, it gets crazier. It has been amazing to start to see the community become more independent and responsible for the success of the universe.
Sky Mavis: This is the fifth year of Axie in 2023. Every year it gets crazier. It has been amazing to start to see the community become more independent and responsible for the success of the universe.
A bunch of Ronins hanging out and doing their thing.
Last question of this segment and we are looking forward to the next one to have a little bit of fun getting to know you better. Is anything else in the Web3 space beyond the Axie Infinity ecosystem that has captured your attention? You mentioned CryptoKitties. Is anything else you are keeping your eye on, taking a nod from or inspired by movements you find particularly interesting?
Something that we are interested in is the idea of upgradable or dynamic NFTs. One of the things that are important for the future of the Axie Universe is people can look at NFTs and tell how rich someone is or how expensive an NFT is. People should be able to look at an NFT and learn about what the owner has accomplished to learn aspects of their identity. That isn’t the case.
I’m excited about NFTs that can be upgraded over time. We are going to be doing a lot of experimentation with that in the Axie Universe. A lot of those learnings can also be applied to the games we are onboarding onto Ronin. We created this model, where for the first time, people were able to earn ERC-20 tokens with an ERC-721 non-fungible token. That was a net new invention.
What are the next net new inventions we will come up with that get NFTs and Web3 gaming to the next level? It seems like it will be up to us to create net new things that add zeros to the amount of traction that is out there. There has still never been an NFT that is notable with millions of users other than Axie. The space looks to us to provide guidance in terms of what are the new mechanics that projects should be playing around with.
Dynamic NFTs are an exciting area. We talked about it a little bit on the show. The autographs did something for one season with Tom Brady as his performance scaled. This is something we will be talking about at Outer Edge. No pressure at all but I do think the industry has looked towards what you guys are doing for inspiration and guidance as we all co-create together. I’m super excited about all these developments in your ecosystem. I will be watching closely to see what is next. I appreciate you sharing all this alpha with us.
Josh, did you get one of those? I feel like that is right up your alley but we are busy. You always get a chance to get that NFT.
I do own multiple Tom Brady NFTs.
Thanks a lot, Jiho, for all the intel and what has been going on with Axie. We finally got you on the show, which is cool. We have been talking about Axie since day one. The next segment is Edge Quick Hitters. We get a chance to get to know you a little bit better and a bit of your background, which has already been fun hearing the gamer background. There are ten questions we are looking for a short single or few-word response but you can feel free to expand if you get the urge. First question, what is the first thing you remember purchasing in your life?
Godzilla toy. I had to save up. I remember selling my toys as a kid to be able to buy a Godzilla toy I wanted at Toys R Us.
What was appealing about Godzilla? Was it the monster aspect?
I was always into dinosaurs growing up. I loved dinosaurs. Godzilla was this super dinosaur. I loved it. I watched the Godzilla movies in Japanese without subtitles. It was something I loved as a 4 or 5-year-old.
We took my five-year-old to a dinosaur museum in Kenosha, Wisconsin. It is right up our alley. They say, “There are two small groups of humans that know the most about dinosaurs on the planet. Those are 4 to 5-year-olds and the actual paleontologist that studied dinosaurs. Everybody else in between knows nothing.” You may have answered the second question. The second question is, what is the first thing you ever remember selling in your life?
Both of my parents are artists. I looked at art as a way to potentially make money. I used to make drawings of myself or war scenes. I would sell them to people in my class, school, teachers and tutors. I used to sell drawings when I was super young.
You had a large market. You didn’t sell them back to your parents, which is awesome. You are able to expand your market size there.
I also used to sell shark teeth. I used to collect fossils. When Pokemon came out, I used to level up my classmate’s Pokemon for money. I was making a lot of money as a child, to be honest.
It is all coming together. I see the path to Axie Infinity. What is the most recent thing you purchased?
The most recent thing I purchased is coffee.
I’m an almond milk latte guy.
I’m cold brew, no milk and sugar.
What is the most recent thing you sold?
I sold my USDC for ETH.
A lot of us made some conversions.
It is back to $1.
Thank you for having me on your show.
Thank you very much. It is my pleasure.
We will get to you later, Bob.
Thank you. Bye.