Hoops Game ‘Rumble Kong League’ Ditches Avalanche for Ethereum and Ronin

Rumble Kong League, a mobile basketball game with ties to NBA superstars Steph Curry and Paul George, has announced plans to migrate its game to the Ethereum sidechain Roninand leaves behind plans to move forward Avalanche.

Ronin is a prominent gaming chain that plays host to popular games such as Pixels and Axie Infinity. The developers of the Rumble Kong League cited Ronin’s 17.2 million wallet downloads and 18.9 million RON token holders as reasons why the migration is “big” for RKL.

“This is not just a partnership, it is a blow to the future of RKL and our holders,” the project said posted on X (formerly known as Twitter).

Rumble Kong League initially announced plans to launch its 3v3 basketball game on Avalanche in August 2023 as it looked for a blockchain to help scale its game. The project still exists “onchain Avalanche integration” listed among the “next” items in the publicly available roadmap items, but that integration will now take place on Ronin instead.

As part of the migration, the project is expanding the game’s soft launch on iOS and Android to welcome Ronin users, while doubling current in-game FAME rewards, which will eventually be redeemable for on-chain tokens when FAME will launch later in the first quarter.

The migration from RKL to Ronin is the first in the blockchain’s attempt to “open up” Ronin through an operation titled “Operation Leviosa,” who wants to welcome more applications, games and decentralized finance apps to the sidechain. Ronin is currently a closed ecosystem operated by creator Sky Mavis, but will become permissionless and open to all builders in February.

The Rumble Kong League game offers 3v3 basketball competitions where players compete against other users of the app. The project was first launched in 2021 as a collection of 10,000 NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain.

Penny Jar Capital by Stephen Curry invested in the Rumble Kong League and launched brand Curry Flow digital sneakers with Under Armor for the game. Meanwhile, Paul George is something of one public ambassador for the gameand has contributed to initiatives through his Paul George Foundation. The game has done collabs with well-known sports brands such as Attitude And Gatorade.

Edited by Andrew Hayward