Xai Gaming Token Hits All-Time High, Ronin Still Recovering After Founder’s Wallets Drained

Tokens tied to a couple of prominent blockchain gaming networks have made major moves over the last day, as the token of Arbitrum layer-3 network Xai continued its recent rise to set a new all-time high price—while Ronin recovered ground after a co-founder’s wallets were hacked.

XAI pumped overnight to set a new peak price of $1.51 on Friday morning, but has dipped since to $1.35. Even so, it’s up over 6% on the day and 37% over the last week alone. It’s one of a few prominent gaming tokens to push to new all-time high marks in recent days, including tokens for Heroes of Mavia (MAVIA), Parallel (PRIME), and the Beam network (BEAM).

Xai’s token debuted in January and has nearly doubled from its debut price, according to data from CoinGecko. The latest jump comes after Xai revealed plans to debut token staking rewards next week, with first details gradually being revealed via Twitter.

The token launched with an airdrop to early network supporters and select NFT holders, and at today’s peak price, the 125 million XAI from the airdrop was collectively valued at about $189 million. Arbitrum is an Ethereum scaling network.

Meanwhile, the RON token of gaming-centric Ethereum scaling network Ronin is gradually regaining since plunging last night, after the personal wallets of network co-founder Jeff “Jiho” Zirlin were compromised and drained of millions of dollars’ worth of crypto.

Some 3,250 ETH ($9.5 million) was pilfered from Zirlin’s wallets and funneled through coin mixer Tornado Cash to obscure their movements. Zirlin confirmed on Twitter late Thursday that he had been the victim of the attack, which immediately impacted the price of RON.

“This has been a tough morning for me. Two of my addresses have been compromised,” he tweeted. “The attack is limited to my personal accounts, and has nothing to do with validation or operations of the Ronin chain. Additionally, the leaked keys have nothing to do with Sky Mavis operations.”

Ronin representatives further affirmed that the attack was limited to Zirlin’s personal wallets and did not affect the network itself, its bridge to Ethereum, or developer Sky Mavis—the creator of the Ethereum gaming chain and the game Axie Infinity. Ronin’s bridge was previously exploited for $622 million worth of crypto in 2022, but affected users were ultimately repaid by Sky Mavis.

RON fell from a price of $3.16 to $2.74 in a matter of minutes following Thursday’s attack. It has partially recovered since and popped back above the $3.00 mark multiple times, but currently sits at $2.90 per CoinGecko. It’s down 9% on the day, but is about even over the last week.

The token has seen sizable gains in recent months amid the rise of Pixels, a retro-style social farming game that has helped attract hundreds of thousands of monthly active users to the chain. The PIXEL token launched on Monday, generating more than $1 billion worth of trading volume in less than a day to become one of the 10 most-traded coins in the world that day.

Edited by Stacy Elliott.

Editor’s note: This story was updated after publication to include details on Xai staking rewards.