Jiho, X Hall of Flame

Most people think successful crypto bros are all about flashy watches and Lambos. But for the co-founder of Web3 tentpole title Axie Infinity, nothing beats insects and butterflies.

“I grew up collecting insects and fossils. My dad collects butterflies as well. So I love to be out in nature,” Jeffrey Zirlin, better known as “Jiho,” tells Magazine during an interview in the Philippines. The co-founder of Sky Mavis and Ronin Network credits his unique fascination with rare bugs and natural creatures for drawing him to Axie Infinity.

He came across the Axie NFT project just a month after it launched in 2018, loved the look of the unique creatures, and joined the founding team, helping turn it into one of the biggest Web3 titles to date.

“That’s part of what drew me to Axie, right? Because I discovered Axie as a community member, and I was a biology champion growing up.”

A character based on Zirlin and his unique hobby features in the laid-back adventure game Pixels, which has become Ronin’s most popular title by active users.

“I’m in Pixels, the game, and I have a butterfly now,” he laughs. Zirlin is used to the spotlight, though, and has built up 515,300 followers on X.

“A lot of my close friends are from the Axie community as well; I think Web3 is a great way to make great friends with like-minded ideas,” he says.

When he’s not being the insect version of Doctor Dolittle, Zirlin says he’s into lifting weights and shooting hoops in his downtime.

How did Jeffrey Zirlin grow his X following?

Zirlin joined X in June 2018, when no one really “cared about NFT gaming or Web3 gaming.”

“I got my first 5,000 followers by tweeting about Ethereum protocol issues,” he says.

He regularly sparred with Ethereum miners over the switch from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake.

“There were miners back in the day who were against the transition, right? I was like, no, you guys are stupid; you guys are being greedy,” he says.

“I was just a new user of Ethereum, so I kind of made some noise that way,” Zirlin adds.

It was his DeFi content that blew up his follower count. “I was making content about Uniswap, for example, MakerDAO, a lot of it blew up last cycle, where I think I went from maybe 50,000 to, you know, hundreds of thousands in a year,” he says.

“This is proof that things can change in an instant, and you know, a narrative can flip on a dime,” he adds.

At Axie Infinity’s peak in 2021, with over 2.8 million daily players, fans of the game flocked to Zirlin’s X account for Axie updates.

He was always on top of things and quick to share anything new happening with the game.

What type of content does Jeffrey Zirlin do?

Zirlin’s content mixes “hot takes,” his views on the Web3 industry, and the occasional life advice.

He feels a responsibility to speak up for the community and stay in the loop to break things down for his half a-million followers.

“I think it is unfair to expect the community to help if you’re not leading by example,” he says.

“I try to lead by example, by performing the behaviors that I would like to see,” Zirlin adds.

Zirlin says he’s “definitely more public-facing” than Sky Mavis’ other co-founders, Trung Nguyen and Aleksander Leonard Larsen, which lets them focus on “more important work.”

When it comes to content he enjoys, Zirlin prefers anything “different from what you typically see on Crypto Twitter.”

“This guy Desire from Kind of Guild makes absurdist, Neo surrealist Web3 gaming content, where it feels like a fever dream,” he says.

“That’s an example where it’s something that’s outside the box, rather than just sharing information or sharing updates,” Zirlin adds.

Predictions for Jeffrey Zirlin?

Zirlin’s bullish on gaming in 2025. When asked how crypto investors will know which game’s crypto token will rack up the most gains, his answer is pretty straightforward:

“The way to think about it is the token of the breakout game and the token of the chain that the breakout game is on,” he declares, adding fairly shamelessly that he believes those games “will be on Ronin.”

One thing he says has changed since the last cycle is that gaming has “become less of a speculative asset.”

While a lot of crypto projects were just concepts at best during the last cycle, Zirlin says it felt like games needed to be fully fleshed out for investors to take the crypto token seriously.

“Because in the last cycle, gaming was also known as almost the most speculative thing, right? That was always our argument: why are you guys trying to hold gaming to a higher standard than the rest of the space? It is very unfair.”

“But now things seem to be resettled,” he claims.

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Ciaran Lyons

Ciaran Lyons is an Australian crypto journalist. He’s also a standup comedian and has been a radio and TV presenter on Triple J, SBS and The Project.