Axie Infinity: Play-To-Earn NFT Game’s Sudden Popularity In The World

Source: Asia Crypto Today

The NFT gaming market isn’t something new that just popped out of nowhere. NFT-based games were introduced around 2017 with the release of Cryptokitties. Despite being around for some time now, NFT-based games didn’t receive much attention, not even Axie Infinity released in 2018 but it's practically ruling the market right now.


With the explosion in popularity of NFTs in early 2021 and hitting the mainstream, Axie Infinity also got its opportunity to rise above. Currently, with a market cap of more than $3 billion (as of writing) and reaching $1.1 billion in sales, it has certainly come out miles above its competitors and become the highest-grossing NFT project right now. So let's take a look at all that Axie Infinity’s about.


An Introduction to Axie Infinity


Axie Infinity is an NFT (non-fungible token) based game and was developed by the Vietnamese gaming studio, Sky Mavis. Since Nintendo’s Pokemon is the inspiration behind this game, Axie Infinity has a whole ecosystem of its own and features various kinds of small, rather cute, monsters called Axies that the players raise, breed, trade, and use to battle other players or teams, like Pokemons. 


Source: Republic World


Each Axie is an NFT item like many other in-game accessories and products and you can trade Axies for real money on the game’s marketplace. Having its own virtual economy, this game uses two ethereum-based cryptos, Smooth Love Potion (SLP) and Axie Infinity Shard (AXS), as its main in-game tokens. Like any other game currency, these tokens can then be used to breed Axies, buy lands, farms, etc.


Axies: Investment in Form of Cute Monsters


You are the owner of your Axie NFTs and can resell them and you can exchange the rewards you get in the form of crypto tokens for money. However, entering the game isn’t easy or cheap in the slightest and requires a much higher initial investment than your typical PlayStation or XBox game. 


A player cannot enter the game if he doesn’t have a min of 3 Axies. At the beginning when the game was just starting to get popular, the price of entry-level Axies was very low and you could start with $5 to $10. But as the demand rose, so did the price of the Axies and currently, it's around $200 to $300 each. You can buy the Axies from crypto exchanges like Binance, Kraken, and Huobi.


Source: Binance Research


The rarer the Axie, the higher its value, some even reaching thousands of dollars in ETH. In late 2020, a triple mystic named Angel (the most expensive Axie ever) sold for 300 Ether (ETH). At the time, the transaction was valued at $130,000. 


You’ll have to spend around $700 just to start the game and you might feel like it's too much for just some in-game characters. But remember that you have the ownership of all your NFT items in the game which can be sold for real money. So the Axies are your investment and they also generate tangible rewards as you play.


Source: Dappradar


A player can also start without spending money on Axies by borrowing them from lenders, known as ‘managers’ in the game. But nothing is free in this world. These managers are entitled to take some part, typically 30%, of the player’s earnings in exchange for lending their Axies. The players who borrow are called ‘scholars’. This is called an Axie Scholarship.


Just like normal cryptocurrencies, the value of Axies is also volatile. Their value can fluctuate depending on various factors such as their stats, body parts, and abilities. So the more you upgrade your Axies and the more abilities they have, the better chance you’ll have at winning the battles and earning rewards.


A Sudden Surge in Popularity


The game is totally based on the Ethereum blockchain with Ronin as its sidechain. Axie Infinity saw a sudden surge in its popularity in June 2021. Many people made steady money through the game. It has earned approximately $780 million in sales across 1.4 million transactions in the last 30 days or so. 


What attracts its players most is the game’s earning potential. On August 6, the developer announced on Twitter that they had surpassed one million daily active users (DAUs). During a seven-day period in July 2021, according to Sky Mavis, Axie Infinity generated more fees than either the Bitcoin or Ethereum protocol. 


Source: Cointelegraph


The majority of Axie Infinity’s daily active players, about 60%, are from the Philippines where it first rose to fame a few months ago. The game is much more popular with the developing countries who are even using it to earn enough revenue to subsidize their economies that were hit by the COVID-19. 


Players from markets like the Philippines and Vietnam, where the game mostly went viral, have earned $435 (SLP 1,500) per day from their Axies and some are even playing the game to run their households. Although the game is necessarily designed neither as a tool for investment nor as means of stable income.


In Conclusion


In normal gaming, players spend loads of money on buying assets and character upgrades but this money never comes back to them. They can’t use those assets in real life nor can they transfer them to other games. However, crypto games are different in this aspect.


Players do not profit from a game’s expansion other than having additional people to play with. But in NFT games, as the game network expands, the players are benefitted as well. All the rewards you earn are tangible and you can do as you please with them, even use them in the outside world. 


Currently, Axie Infinity has soared so high because of this very reason that it presently earns more protocol revenue than Ethereum and Bitcoin combined, as well as the next 11 highest-ranking dapps (decentralized apps). NFT games are making gaming as a career more viable and will surely become an even bigger trend shortly.


Written By - Sanjana Chaudhary


Post a Comment

5 Comments

  1. Thank you so much for explaining this game. I learned so much! very informative. It can change someone's lives. I love how play to earn games like Axie Infinity are introducing people to crypto.

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  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  3. Thank you for the info about the NFT game Axie Infinity. looking forward to it...

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  4. nice another information. thankyouuuuuu❣️

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  5. Thank you for the information :)

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