The State of Crypto Gaming: A Playbook for 2026 and Beyond with Jiho from Axie Infinity

The ghost of 2021 still haunts the crypto gaming narrative. Most people hear the term and picture a speculative, unsustainable Play-to-Earn bubble that has already burst.

They're looking at the past. The on-chain reality of 2025 tells a different story.

To get the real alpha, we sat down with a legend who has seen it all: Jeffrey “Jiho” Zirlin, co-founder of Sky Mavis, the powerhouse behind Axie Infinity and the Ronin Network. We combined his insights with our on-chain data to create a definitive guide on the real state of Web3 gaming.

As Jiho himself said after seeing our data:

"Asaf and Addressable have compiled one of the most interesting data sets in Crypto for marketers. Data-driven experimentation will get Crypto beyond the current echo chambers, was a joy to sit down and chat!"

This isn't another list of trends. This is the new playbook.

The First Rule of Crypto Gaming: The Market is a Season, Not a Straight Line

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One of Jiho's most crucial insights is that Web3 growth is cyclical, and smart teams must act accordingly.

"Web3 is more like a seasonal business where it's like during the bull market, it's kind of like the holiday season. There's a land grab... And then there are bear markets where it's like, okay, if it's really hard and expensive to acquire users right now, where am I investing my resources?" - Jeffrey Zirlin

The takeaway is clear: user acquisition costs fluctuate wildly with market sentiment. Winning teams don't just build; they time their growth sprints. In a bear market, the focus shifts from mass acquisition to building a core, high-conviction community. In a bull market, it's about scaling aggressively to capture the new wave of attention.

Beyond Play-to-Earn: The New Sustainable Models

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The old model of simply paying users to play is dead. The conversation has matured to focus on real revenue and sustainable player-funded economies.

"Right now, if you look at which tokens are performing well, it's tokens that are able to have buybacks, and buybacks are typically a function of are you able to generate revenue? So then the question becomes what revenue models are working for Web3 Games?" - Jeffrey Zirlin

The most promising new models are built on deeper engagement:

• Risk-to-Earn: Games like Cambria are pioneering this model, where players pay to enter a seasonal competition, and the prize pool is distributed to the winners. It’s a sustainable, player-funded economy.
• Guild Systems 2.0: Guilds are making a comeback, but with a twist. Whales are encouraged to pay for others to play, creating a system where high-value players subsidize the ecosystem in exchange for a share of potential winnings.

The On-Chain Truth: Your Players Are Not Who You Think They Are

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During our interview, we presented Jiho with our on-chain analysis of the Axie/Ronin community. The data revealed a surprising truth: the number one interest of his audience isn't just gaming; it's "Trading and Market Analysis."

"A lot of the people that were onboarded into Axie and Ronin were people that had only been trading on Binance before... Web3 gamers are traders, they're speculators, that's part of their persona. Teams that don't understand that and just think that they're normal gamers, they're going to have a hard time." - Jeffrey Zirlin

This is the most critical insight for any builder in the space. You are not marketing to traditional gamers. You are marketing to a new generation of sophisticated, on-chain investors who see your game as part of their broader financial activity.

The Future: Gamified DeFi and the On-Chain Social Graph

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So, where is this all heading? According to Jiho, the future is about blurring the lines between gaming and finance.

"What's missing with Ronin DeFi is actually a gamification layer on top of it... Gamers love rituals, they love routines. They respond really well to incentives for certain actions." - Jeffrey Zirlin

The ultimate vision is a universal questing layer for Ronin, where playing games and using DeFi protocols builds a user's on-chain reputation. This creates a rich, data-driven social graph of gamers that developers can then use for hyper-specific targeting. Instead of wasting money on broad ads, you can directly reward and incentivize users based on their verifiable on-chain history.

This is the power of a wallet-first approach, and it's the future of crypto gaming. At Addressable, our platform is built to provide this on-chain intelligence, turning anonymous wallets into rich user profiles that you can understand and engage.

Get started with Ronin:

https://wallet.roninchain.com/app

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https://roninchain.notion.site/ronin-wiki

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