<p>Sky Mavis, the company behind the popular play-to-earn game Axie Infinity, has poached a director from Jump Capital to serve as an evangelist of its Ronin blockchain.</p> <p>Previously a director of market development at Jump Capital, Kathleen Osgood has joined Sky Mavis as a director of business development. While the role is a commonplace one within an organization, the hire by Sky Mavis points to its broader ambitions beyond Axie Infinity, which became one of the most visible titles of the play-to-earn phenomenon last year.</p> <p>Osgood plans to ramp up Sky Mavis's efforts to draw in game developers to Ronin's blockchain ecosystem. Ultimately, the push by Sky Mavis — which raised fresh capital at a <a href="https://pitchbook.com/newsletter/sky-mavis-lands-150m-series-b">multi-billion valuation</a> last year — could make the company associated with serving as a broader infrastructure play versus simply acting as the backbone of Axie, which has seen <a href="https://www.theblockresearch.com/data/nft-non-fungible-tokens/gaming/gaming-nft-trade-volume">activity fade</a> according to data collected by The Block Research. </p> <p>"<span style="font-weight: 400;">Sky Mavis' vision for Ronin is to become the industry standard for blockchain gaming," Osgood told The Block in a message. "I’m super excited to find ways to collaborate with the broader gaming industry to create an ecosystem that shares a massive user base, community-owned protocols, applications, and deep asset liquidity with the goal of enabling the next generation of blockchain game developers to unlock their creations."</span></p> <p>Osgood brings financial technology experience to the role, which in addition to expanding Sky Mavis's presence among gamers, studios, and developers could help drive its efforts in decentralized finance.</p> <p>"However, on the DeFi side of things, our community base is so strong that we are beginning to funnel our users into a wide variety of DeFi services," she told The Block. </p>