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, announced plans to migrate its game to Ethereum sidechain Ronin, leaving behind plans to launch on Avalanche.

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

“This isn’t just a partnership, it’s a slam dunk for the future of RKL and our holders,” the project posted on X (formerly known as Twitter).

Rumble Kong League initially announced plans to launch its 3v3 basketball game on Avalanche back in August 2023 as it sought out a blockchain to help scale its game. The project still has “onchain Avalanche integration” listed among items that are “next up” in its publicly available roadmap items, but that integration will now happen on Ronin instead. 

As part of its migration, the project is extending the game’s soft launch on iOS and Android to welcome Ronin users, while doubling the current in-game FAME rewards, which will eventually be redeemable for on-chain tokens when FAME launches later in Q1. 

RKL’s migration to Ronin is the first in the blockchain’s effort to “open Ronin” via an operation entitled “Operation Leviosa,” which seeks to welcome more applications, games, and decentralized finance apps on the sidechain. Ronin is currently a closed ecosystem controlled by creator Sky Mavis, but will become permissionless and open to all builders in February.

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

Stephen Curry's Penny Jar Capital invested in Rumble Kong League and launched branded Curry Flow digital sneakers with Under Armour for the game. Meanwhile, Paul George has been something of a public ambassador for the game, and has collaborated on initiatives via his Paul George Foundation. The game has done collabs with known sports brands like Stance and Gatorade.

Edited by Andrew Hayward