In Brief:
- Ronin said in a post on its official X account that the network will get an upgrade next week.
- The post said it would lay out “what’s actually changing,” but no block height, start time or technical changes could be independently confirmed as of Sept. 30.
- This is the first upgrade Ronin has flagged since its May 12 hard fork, which moved the chain from an independent sidechain to an Ethereum layer 2 built on the OP Stack.
Ronin will upgrade its network next week, the team said on X.
“Ronin is getting an upgrade next week,” the network said in the post. “Here’s what’s actually changing”
Ronin is getting an upgrade next week.
Here's what's actually changing
The announcement didn’t give a block height, a start time or a downtime estimate. As of Sept. 30, no exchange notices about deposit or withdrawal pauses tied to the upgrade could be found.
How past forks played out
Exchanges have halted Ronin transfers ahead of past upgrades. For the May migration, OKX suspended deposits and withdrawals for all tokens on the Ronin network starting at 22:00 (UTC+8) on May 12, 2026. Trading of RONIN and related tokens continued.
Bithumb stopped RON deposits and withdrawals on May 11 at 9:00 a.m. UTC. Binance said it would handle the migration for users holding the token on its platform, so they didn’t need to do anything. It also said trading on RON pairs would continue while transfers were paused.
Players and ordinary users didn’t have to take any action in May. But validators and node operators had to update their software to stay compatible.
The May migration
Ronin’s last hard fork went live at block 55,577,490 on May 12. The network was down for about 10 hours while it switched from an independent EVM sidechain to an Ethereum layer 2 on Optimism’s OP Stack.
“All network transactions will be paused,” Ronin said before the fork. The pause covered transfers, swaps and game actions.
Optimism, Conduit, Boundless and EigenLayer supported the migration. EigenDA handles off-chain data availability, while Ethereum provides settlement and finality. Axie Infinity (official site) and Pixels resumed right after the switch.
The fork also changed the token model. Ronin moved to a Proof of Distribution model, which cut RON inflation from more than 20% a year to less than 1%. It also redirected 90 million RON from staking rewards to the treasury.
Marketplace fees paid to the treasury went from 0.5% to 1.25%. Governance moved to token-weighted voting, so RON holders now vote directly on treasury decisions, buybacks and DeFi initiatives. Ronin also made Uniswap v3 its canonical DEX and backed it with a $1.5 million liquidity incentive program.
Earlier upgrades
The network has gone through several scheduled forks. One hit at block 28,825,400 on Oct. 26, 2023. Another came at block 32,367,400 in February 2024, and Binance paused Ronin deposits and withdrawals on Feb. 26 for it.
The Cerastes upgrade went live at block 43,447,600 on March 17, 2025. It added fee burning and a buyback program funded by the treasury. Another network upgrade followed at block 46,557,383 on July 3, 2025.
Part of the reason for the layer 2 move was the March 2022 bridge exploit, when the Lazarus Group stole $625 million.
“Four years ago, we launched Ronin because Axie Infinity needed a faster and more efficient network. The time has come to plug back into the mothership,” the Sky Mavis team said at the time of the May migration.
