Ronin Launches Goda Upgrade — RON Price Risks Falling Below $2 Despite Rising Pixels Activity

• Ronin’s Goda upgrade went live on July 3 at 09:00 CET.
• The Ronin (RON) price risks breaking down below long-term support at $2.
• Can the upgrade bring attention back to Ronin and trigger a turnaround?

The Ronin price and activity both reached all-time highs in March. However, they have fallen nearly 50% since. An important upgrade went live on July 3, but until now has not had any noticeable effect on the price.

With RON at risk of falling to a new yearly low, will it finally begin a turnaround and move to new highs, or will it crash below $2, resuming its correction to new lows?

Ronin’s Goda Upgrade Goes Live

The Goda upgrade , set to go live on the Ronin mainnet on July 3rd at 7:00 UTC, introduces key improvements through the Trippp and Aaron hardforks. One key feature is the implementation of Rotating Validators . This will make the network more decentralized and encourage more participation by allowing all validators to earn rewards daily.

Every 10 minutes, 22 validators will be chosen to create blocks, and all validators can vote on which blocks are finalized, increasing security and active participation. This has caused speculation  among Ronin users that it can increase staking, in turn reducing the supply and triggering a price increase.

Another major improvement is making it easier to upgrade Axie and Land smart contracts . Currently, upgrading these contracts is difficult and requires a lot of resources. The Aaron hardfork fixes this by using the ERC-1967 Transparent Proxy standard, which allows future updates without the need for hardforks.

This new method saves time and resources and ensures the contracts can easily be updated with new features. Validators and developers need to upgrade to Goda to benefit from these improvements. Binance immediately announced  it would support the upgrade.

Ronin Chain Stats Show Growth

While Axie Infinity used to be the biggest game in the Ronin chain, it has been surpassed outright by Pixels . In the past year, Pixels has nearly 6 million users while Axie has slightly less than 9,000.

Also, the number of active addresses reached a new all-time high of 1.6 million in March, surpassing the 2021 all-time high of 1.1 million. Nevertheless, PIXEL still ranks outside the top 250 biggest cryptocurrencies while AXS ranks #90.

So, despite the decline in price, the Ronin blockchain  still enjoys activity similar to its peak. The only exception is that this comes from Pixels instead of Axie Infinity.

However, the area in which Ronin has not recovered has been its Total Value locked (TVL). Ronin reached its peak TVL of $1.48 billion shortly after its launch, the majority of it coming from the Katana decentralized exchange (DEX) , where users staked AXS and SLP to farm RON.

Interestingly, the reason for the decline in TVL is not attributed to the Ronin hack, which happened in March 2022 when the TVL had already declined to $84 million.

One of the reasons for the decline in TVL is the reduction in price of AXS, since TVL is measured by multiplying the number of tokens with their price. So, as the AXS and SLP prices fell, users started to leave Axie and in turn reduce their staking positions.

Nevertheless, it seems that the popularity of Pixels could cause Ronin and in turn Katana to make a comeback. However, it is worth mentioning that the PIXEL price is at an all-time low of $0.235.

A possible reason for the decrease in price is that PIXEL has a circulating supply of 770 million and a maximum supply of 5 billion. So, only 15% of the total supply is in circulation. Additionally, there is a five-year linear unlock  that releases 53 million tokens each month, in turn diluting the supply.

Will RON Price Bounce at $2?

The 3-day time frame RON price chart shows a decline since the all-time high price of $4.53 in March. This coincided with active addresses reaching an all-time high, as outlined in the previous section. Today, the Ronin price reached a low of XX but bounced slightly afterward.

The wave count suggests that RON is completing wave four in a five-wave increase. If so, it is currently at a level ideally suited for a bounce, created by the 0.618 Fibonacci retracement support level and the resistance trend line of a long-term channel.

So, if the wave count is accurate, RON could fall slightly lower toward $1.90 or possibly $1.80 but will reach a bottom soon and begin wave five. A breakout from the descending resistance trend line (dashed) will confirm this. The trend line exists since the all-time high.

The RSI and MACD cast some doubt to this possibility, since neither has generated any bullish divergence. However, the RSI is oversold, meaning that a notable bounce could occur soon. If RON breaks out, a target for the top of the fifth wave if at $6.10. The 1.61 external Fibonacci retracement of the previous drop creates this target.

Ronin’s Correction Could End Soon

The RON price has fallen since its all-time high in March. However, the wave count and price action suggest RON will bottom soon. The Goda upgrade could bring some much needed attention to Ronin.

Additionally, while Ronin’s flagship game Axie Infinity has not recovered to its previous bull market highs, Pixels has taken over as the most played game causing Ronin activity to reach a new all-time high.

A breakout from the descending resistance trend line will confirm the RON price has begun its fifth and final wave.