What's Axie Infinity | What's with the hype?

Once upon a time, gaming was just something you do to unwind, relax and have fun. The cost to achieve this fun is your time, money, energy, and sometimes your sanity. The quest for fun could even prove to be costlier considering many people get addicted, spending lots of time, which can be a precious and expensive resource. In the traditional gaming industry, the winners are the developers and creators of games, as all money gotten from player purchases goes into their pockets.

Well, that’s about to end as Axie Infinity brings revolution and disruption to this space. Axie Infinity is being developed by Sky Mavis which is a technology-focused game studio founded in early 2018. The team consists of 40 full-time employees and has its headquarters in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

In this video, we will discuss what Axie Infinity is and why the hype and buzz surrounding them have been so loud recently.

Intro

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What is Axie Infinity?

Axie Infinity is a Pokémon-inspired universe where anyone can earn tokens through skilled gameplay and contributions to the ecosystem. Players can battle, collect, raise, and build a land-based kingdom for their pets. In simple terms, Axie Infinity is an online game where people earn as they play; players purchase NFTs of cute monsters and then battle them against each other. The fact you can earn as you play clearly differentiates it from a traditional game.

While traditional games don’t pay their gamers, Axie is a new kind of game that rewards players for the time and effort they spend both playing the game and growing the ecosystem.

Axie Infinity has revolutionized gaming by creating economic freedom for gamers, making a future where work and play can be united and become one. At this point, I know you will be very curious as to how it works.

How does it work/ Gameplay?

Creatures called Axies serve as the focus of the game, which players can breed, acquire, train for challenges, and fight against online. During gameplay, the player must collect small love potions (SLPs). These SLPs can be used to breed new axies, which can then be deployed within the game.

You can now earn through accumulation and trading of SLPs or trading your built Axies.

So as a Player, you earn SLP tokens during gameplay and trade those for money at a crypto exchange. Top players are reportedly making 1,500 SLP tokens, that's around $375 per day from their Axies. Axies themselves can be traded in real life in Marketplace as NFTs. Other in-game items that can be traded as NFTs are real estate, flowers, barrels, and lamps.

Growth, Milestones & Price talk - Hype

The Axie Infinity launched its governance token, Axie Infinity Shard AXS, in November 2020. The holders govern the Axie Infinity universe, and it gives them the benefit of collecting weekly rewards if they stake their tokens, participate in governance vote, and play the game.

Axie Infinity has experienced a rapid rise in recent weeks, with the game’s native token AXS surging 469% this month. The public sale price for AXS was 10 cents ($0.1), and since then, it has scaled heights; it reached an ATH of $52 on July 27th, and it’s currently trading at around $43.

During the first week of July, Axie Infinity achieved a revenue stream that was higher than the game's entire June revenue. In the last 30 days, based on statistics from Token Terminal, the game earned $102 million in revenue, which is more than all DeFi protocols combined.

To put those numbers in perspective, the leading crypto game has raked in more funds into its treasury over the past month than the Binance Smart Chain DEX PancakeSwap at $11.9 million and crypto wallet MetaMask, which boasts more than 5 million users, at $7.4 million.

In fact, no matter the timeframe you look at, either the last 7 days, 30, 180, and even going back 1 year, Axie Infinity has led in revenue. Axie infinity daily active players has also increased as it boasts over 300,000 Daily active users, increasing more than 30x since the beginning of the year. All these are pretty remarkable stats and go to show why the hype has been so loud.

AXS has truly transformed gaming from a time-consuming and money-consuming pastime into an income-generating endeavor, which has made the game so popular in developing countries. Some players earn quite a bit of money through playing the game, with many in the Philippines being able to support themselves through playing effectively.

Collaboration and partnership

As expected, Axie infinity has collaborated with the big names in the business. They have partnered with Ubisoft, the publisher of major traditional game franchises such as Assassin’s Creed. They have also partnered with Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange.

Of course, popularity and fame also come with challenges.

Challenges

There are some limitations on the expensive Ethereum network, and a solid technological foundation is required to support growth. A DDOS attack and hosting issues were also aggravated by the sudden surge in interest and server problems. The real challenge that AXS will face would be in supporting users as they begin to scale. Right now, 40% of daily active users are from the Philippines. With more users joining daily across the globe, it will need more stability to support them.

Future outlook

Nevertheless, the future is bright; Axis Infinity has a whitepaper with a clearly defined roadmap and goals. It will soon introduce staking. This allows token owners to tie up their coins for a set amount of time and earn interest.

Experts believe crypto-related games will be another big trend in the near future, where gamers will exchange inter-game NFTs and sell them to cult followers. Gaming as a career is gaining traction in the western world, and the expenses of the youngsters on gaming have increased.

Now you are probably asking how do I play, how do I get in?

How to start playing, battling, and earning?

The first thing you should know is that it’s not free-to-play, and the only way to get started is to buy a team of Axies from the player-to-player marketplace. Every user needs to buy Axie in order to start the game.

To play Axie Infinity, you need to buy or borrow three Axies. Currently, the cheapest Axies on the market cost around $225-$250 each. A starter team could cost as much as $700, which is more than the price of a PlayStation 5. It's important to remember that your Axies are investments that can be resold, as well as generate you rewards through gameplay. The Axies can be purchased from the official Axie marketplace via your Ronin wallet, which you’ll connect to the game. You will need to create a Ronin wallet and have an Ethereum wallet like MetaMask or Trust Wallet as well. Once you have a Ronin wallet set up, you can use the Ronin bridge to transfer ETH over to Ronin, where it becomes WETH (Wrapped ETH). You can then use this to purchase Axies.

If you can’t afford to purchase, you can enroll in available scholarship programs where a manager or guild lends out three Axies that you will use to play the game and earn SLP. The amount of SLP earned by you is then split with the manager or guild at a predetermined ratio. Yield Guide Games is an example of such an organization offering these services.

The choice is yours to make whether you prefer spending your time and energy on traditional games, yes you still get to enjoy the fun, but it ends there. Or join the play-to-earn trend by building an Axie team that is certain to generate you monetary rewards - enjoying both aspects of fun and earning. Tell me what you think by commenting below.

This is where I will be ending this video; remember to do your research and trade at your own risk. If you like this video, please like, subscribe to my channel, and share it with others.

Thanks and see you later!