Axie Infinity, the champion of play-and-earn

Axie Infinity (AXS/USD) led the charge in 2021, the year blockchain games went mainstream. Axie is evidence of the massive potential for the integration of blockchain technology in gaming.

The integration of games and the blockchain gave rise to play and earn, a new niche in gaming. Nansen Research analyzes Axie Infinity’s lucrative model in a press release, shared exclusively with Invezz.

What is play-and-earn?

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In essence, it’s where gamers can make money playing games. While gaming has always generated economic value, only developers capitalized on it until recently. Now, players not only take advantage of intangible factors like entertainment and a sense of accomplishment, but also have control over in-game assets like NFTs and cryptocurrencies.

Players are free to cash out or trade whenever they want. This is in stark contrast to traditional gaming, where real world trading is usually a violation of the terms of service.

What makes Axie Infinity unique?

Axie Infinity is a play and earn, turn-based card game, which features NFTs and cryptocurrencies. Players interact with digital pets known as Axies. In-game items and Axies are NFTs. The game’s native tokens are Synthetic Love Potion (SLP) and AXS.

Players can sell their tokens for fiat and trade their Axies. Selling tokens for local currency allows players to monetize their gaming experience.

The Axie team

Axie was developed by Sky Mavis, which was co-founded in 2018 by Trung Nguyen (CEO), Aleksander Leonard Larsen (COO), Jeffrey Zirlin (Growth Lead), Tu Doan (Art Director and Game Designer) and Viet Anh Ho (CTO). Its head office is in Vietnam.

An incentive to achieve perfection

Developers charge a fee on breeding Axies, market trading, and other in-game activities. This encourages them and players to focus on creating the best game possible. In 2021, the game generated over $1.3 billion in revenue. Transactions on the marketplace exceeded $4 billion in this time.

The team decided to reduce breeding fees, which resulted in a substantial drop in daily revenues on and after December 21, 2021. However, the decision contributed to the popularity of the game. It has over 2.8 million unique addresses, which collectively hold over 11.1 million Axies.

Almost all of those addresses hold at least 3 Axies, the minimum number required to play the game.

Addresses with 4 or more Axies doubled in 6 months

The number of addresses holding 4 or more Axies has been rising steadily, from around 8% of all addresses on August 20, 2021 to 16% of all addresses at present. As Axie prices declined over that period of time, this change is likely due to players being able to buy more Axies to make different teams.

Game structure

Axie Infinity runs on top of the Ronin network, an Ethereum (ETH/USD) sidechain also developed by Sky Mavis. This sidechain stores all of the game’s assets: SLP, AXS, and NFTs like Axies and virtual land. SLP is analogical to gold in World of Warcraft.

Recently, the developers cut its supply, leading its price to skyrocket. SLP is the in-game currency that players can earn. It’s different from AXS, which functions more like company stocks. AXS holders have governance rights and can vote on proposals. Players who rank in the top 300,000 of all players in the arena mode can earn AXS in-game.

Getting started with Axie

To get started with Axie Infinity: you must create a wallet, buy your first set of Axies, open an in-game account, and download the game. Axie Infinity’s marketplace is only compatible with the Ronin wallet. You trade Axies on the marketplace in Wrapped Ethereum (WETH).

You deposit ETH into your Ronin wallets via the official bridge, which is one of the most active bridges in the crypto space. It ranks third with 111,000 total depositors and fourth in terms of total volume transferred ($15.3 billion).

Deposits are also possible by buying ETH directly from the wallet using USD, EUR, or another fiat currency via Ramp. It doesn’t work in every country though.

If you have ETH on Coinbase or another exchange, you can send it to your MetaMask wallet and bridge it over to the Ronin network using their official bridge. You can also use a Binance account to get assets on the chain.

How to open an in-game account with Axie

After signing in with Ronin, you can open an official in-game account under the user profile on the marketplace. In the current version of the game, you can play in two game modes: Adventure and Arena. You can also breed Axies. To play in the game modes, you must have a team of 3 Axies. You choose the desired team before entering the game modes.

How to breed digital pets

To create new Axies, you breed two existing ones along with the required amounts of AXS and SLP tokens. You can’t breed an Axie more than 7 times or with an Axie from the same parents.

The number of Axies bred peaked at just under 100,000 on September 24, 2021. There were 5,300 new Axie holders at that time. Since then, the number has dropped and is currently hovering around 6,500 Axies a day.

Can you play for free?

People who are unwilling to make a financial commitment will find scholarships a temporary solution. After the highly anticipated V3 update, also known as Axie Infinity: Origin, starter teams will be given out to new players.

This will let them try the game out before spending money on it. The major upcoming update will revamp a significant portion of the game, with updates to graphics and game mechanics.

Major upcoming events

Land gameplay is expected to come out later this year, introducing new gameplay possibilities. Players of Axie Infinity will be able to take part in real-world PvE battles and group strategic battles, making the game more social. They will start creating their own unique experiences on top of their land as well as exciting new ones for other players.

In line with Web3 principles, Sky Mavis introduced a program to fund community builders that are interested in working on Axie Infinity-related projects and mini-games. This gives the community an opportunity to play a role in the growth and development of Axie Infinity, giving rise to new game modes for other players to explore.