AXIE INFINITY GAME
EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT IT
Today we will analyze the Axie Infinity
crypto game
You will find out what kind of platform it is, how its mechanics and economy are arranged in it, how people who play it earn $ 500-1000 per month and also tell you about the native tokens of this game and how they work.
Axie Infinity
So, in order to observe the project carefully and thoroughly, we should start from a detailed look at its mechanics, because you and I need to figure out exactly how everything is arranged in it, how the project’s tokenomics work, and where does the demand for their token come from, so… let’s start in order.
Axie Infinity Team
These guys have made this game. When it comes to DeFi games sector, Vietnam appears to be the local Silicon Valley
Axie Infinity was created by
“Sky Mavis” from Vietnam
They founded the company and created the game in 2018. It was then that they raised somewhere around 650 thousand dollars at the very start of the project, in order to launch the project and start working on this playground.
Today, the same company continues to develop the game, but now they have already grown and during these three years they have already collected tens of millions of dollars for the project’s development.
Axie Infinity Team
This is how battles look like in the game
Their general partners include, for example, companies such as Binance, Maker, Samsung, HTC, and many others.
Initially, the game was launched on the Ethereum blockchain where, as we know, the transactions are quite expensive and take some time to proceed.
However, in April 2021, the game was transferred to the Ronin Ethereum-compatible network, where transactions are much faster and many times cheaper, which makes the game much more comfortable for the end-user.
Although, there’s a particular problem regarding the Ronin-Ethereum Bridge we’d like to address at the end of this article.
The Ronin Wallet is a must if you wanna start playing
However, it should be noted that in Axie Infinity, both networks coexist at the same time, that is, you can play both on the Ethereum network and the Ronin network.
The difference is that the Ronin Sidechain is a closed blockchain, that is, in order to become a validator of this network, you need to be included in its whitelist (by the way, the main validator nodes belong to Binance and Ubisoft).
The game itself is cross-platform, which means that it is available on a computer, on a phone, on Windows, Mac OS, IOS, Android, and so on.
Since Axie Infinity is a cross-platform kinda game, you can play it on pretty much anything: starting from your desktop version, ending with playing it on your mobile screen
We decided not to give you a detailed guide on installing, registering, and connecting your wallet to Axie Infinity (for this case, there are a huge number of videos on Youtube), instead, we decided to focus on the essence of the game and how to make money in it.
So what is the Axie Infinity all about?
The essence of the game itself lies in the fact that we have various creatures that can be crossed and reproduced to breed better offspring.
All this eugenics is needed in order to breed the best fighting species so that in the future your newly-minted monsters will fight PvP with other players’ creatures (these creatures are called “Axie”).
Axie classes introduction
Each Axie belongs to one of the nine different classes presented in the game, and accordingly, each class or category has some particular set of characteristics that can work to your advantage over some other classes.
Imagine a blockchain-crypto-upgraded version of a rock-paper-scissors (or Pokemon) game, where paper hits the rock, rock hits scissors, and scissors hit the paper. So, here everything is almost the same and works according to the general “rock-paper-scissors” principle, just on a more global (and funnier) scale.
In addition to the main class of the creature, they each have six of more than 500 body parts that give certain additional characteristics (or attributes).
In the process of crossing and breeding your monsters, these additional body parts or characteristics and attributes tend to pass to other creatures (that is, your offspring), thereby the offspring will be stronger and will have more improved characteristics.
Axie Infinity
Smash ‘em all! These creatures are so expensive, if they’re not meant for me - they’re not meant for anyone!
In order to start fighting, you first need to assemble a team of three Axies, after which you will be able to engage in battles both with computer bots and against real players (PvP), or rather, their teams.
In case of your victory (in any of the modes – against bots or real players), you will receive SLP tokens (Smooth Love Portion), which are necessary in order to reproduce your creatures in the future and breed new, genetically improved offspring.
The game has a limitation on how many times each creature can breed (at the moment this figure is 7), that is, you can increase Axie seven times by “multiplying” it by crossing and thereby increasing its characteristics.
Axie Infinity
This is how local eugenics works
Each time your creature will become more and more powerful, however, the cost of such an “improvement” in SLP tokens will also increase progressively.
In addition to the fact that these SLP tokens can be used in the game itself for your game progress and to improve your creatures, these tokens can also be simply withdrawn from your wallet for the purpose of further sale on various exchanges.
This is one of the main ways to make money at Axie Infinity
Axie Infinity
Thousands of them, literally thousands!
Players, in fact, “farm” SLP tokens through battles and victories over bots and other players, and then simply withdraw SLP coins from the game to various crypto exchanges and sell at a good price.
Sounds like a heck of a business plan, ain’t it?
Axie Infinity
SLP (Smooth Love Portion)
In addition to making money on SLP tokens, Axie Infinity players can also sell their Axie offspring (or, in general, any Axie that is in their wallet on their account) on the platform’s NFT marketplace, these items are what’s called “non-fungible tokens” (NFT), which can also be a potentially very good source of income, because there is always a demand for powerful Axies.
What is NFT? Well, where have you been, my friend? We’ve already written a lot of articles on the subject of NFTs, so you may wanna check them out, in case your curiosity kicks in. But in a nutshell – NFT stands for “non-fungible-token”, meaning it’s… well, non-fungible, so it can’t be replaced or multiplied, it can’t be copied, there’s always only a certain amounts of those items in circulation (the amount that was initially “minted”, i.e. stored on a particular blockchain). When it first was presented in the art world, the initial idea was to use the blockchain technology as means for distinguishing an original artwork from its copy. That is, to introduce the concepts of “unique signature” and “ownership” in the art media.
We personally believe that NFTs will definitely be a thing in the long run, even despite the hype and sales going down, because the concept itself is what actually makes it worthwhile, not the hype. With the rise of such technology, artists (whether 3d, 2d or even traditional) have finally gotten a particular solution to sell their artworks and earn a decent amount of money, providing themselves only with their craft.
And now this concept is being introduced within other forms of media, such as DeFi crypto games. Hence…
Axie Infinity as a pioneer in this “new-born” genre. Man…I love crypto. You never know what’s waiting on the next corner.
Despite the fact that after each battle the number of SLP tokens in the system and in the game on the blockchain increases, which, in theory, should negatively affect the price (because tokens are simply printed out of thin air), the Axie Infinity tokenomics are still very stable and well thought out.
That is, if you get tokens, you have to spend them on something and a very high demand gives rise to the fact that with each improvement of your Axie, more and more SLP tokens are required for their subsequent upgrade, so instead of spending a lot of time on token farming, many players simply buy tokens on the market, and accordingly, this shows a positive trend for the price of the SLP token.
Axie Infinity
Axies Marketplace. Some of ‘em were sold for millions
As for the sale of Axie (NFT) themselves, they are sold on a specialized marketplace of the Axie Infinity project.
There, you can either buy your Axies as much as your budget allows, or you can just play the game, upgrade your monsters and list them on marketplaces for sale.
Of course, Axies are sold for Ethereum (because it was originally the Ethereum blockchain) and, accordingly, these ETH that you earned from selling your Axies, (that is, NFTs), you can withdraw them and perform any manipulations you want with them – exchange for stablecoins, withdrawal to fiat and so on.
These are the types of earnings that are available to absolutely all players with practically no investment.
Why do I say practically? Well…in the course of the game itself (that is when you are already playing the game and you already have creatures), you will not need to invest a dime if you don’t want that, you just play and earn resources there.
However, if you want to start playing Axie, you will need to buy 3 creatures first
If you register in the game, you are not given free creatures, that is, each player must first buy at least three creatures in order to create a team, which will give him the opportunity to upgrade and breed them.
Axie Infinity
As you can see, the prices are biting as hell
At the time of this writing, the minimum price tag for one creature is about 150-160 USD, that is, the minimum threshold for entering the game is about 450-500 USD, which, of course, scares off a huge number of those who want to start playing Axie Infinity, because you will have to pay about 500 dollars just to get started (and the creatures that you get for the lowest price tag are likely to be of very low stats).
Of course, in the future, you will be able to resell your own purchased monsters, but since the buying rate is constantly fluctuating, there is a risk of losses on the difference in rates. In our opinion, Axie is now almost at its peak, so it’s not recommended to join the game at this very moment.
It is also important to note that $ 500 is the minimum entry threshold where you will get at least something for this amount of money.
After reviewing various opinions on the game, we came to the conclusion that for a comfortable and successful game you need at least one thousand and five hundred dollars in order to assemble a more or less normal team that will win from time to time, bringing you a full-fledged and more or less stable income.
Axie Infinity
Axie Infinity Marketplace
However, in our opinion, this is a fairly good mechanic that naturally keeps (or even raises) the price of the token (as well as the price of NFT), simply because people cannot start playing for free (that is, the circle of potential “investors” is limited), that is, by purchasing Axie to start the game, new players will in fact naturally bring money into the ecosystem of the project, contributing to its development.
In terms of sales, NFT Axie Infinity has set several records
It should be noted that that kinda news drew the close attention of crypto enthusiasts to the project and attracted a new stream of new players, wishing to join the game.
Currently, on the Axie Infinity project’s marketplace, some Axies are selling for 10,000 ETH (which is more than $ 31 million at the time of this writing).
Most likely they are not bought so often, but some items do sell at such prices because the demand for improved and super-powerful creatures is there and it is constantly growing.
What is the point of buying expensive Axies and “leveling up” in general?
Well, firstly, it will just be more interesting and fun to play, because you will win more, and secondly, by winning, you will receive more SLP tokens, which will lead to faster farming (hence, faster earning).
Axie Infinity
Therefore, a thousand and five hundred dollars will just equal such a relatively “comfortable” entry threshold to start playing for fun and have a good income, so keep this figure in mind.
In developing countries (and around 40 percent of Axie Infinity players are citizens of the Philippines), people literally earn their monthly salary by playing this game, because for many of them it is now their main source of income.
Successful players with a strong team who play day and night can consistently withdraw $ 1,000 from the project by selling accumulated SLP tokens, as well as new, improved offspring of Axie creatures on the local marketplace.
Now, given the average salaries in undeveloped countries, imagine how the potential income and opportunities of Axie Infinity are many times greater than anything that these people can ever hope for.
My Axies
Since so many people from poor countries cannot afford to shell out $ 1,500 or even $ 800-900 to buy themselves their own Axies, a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs came up with the following scheme: they buy creatures themselves and then rent their creatures to other players so that other people can have an easy start in the game.
Axie Infinity
People in the Philippines are digging it!
Accordingly, those SLP tokens that are generated on a particular account are divided in the ratios specified when concluding a lease agreement between the “owner” of a particular Axie and the player who rented the creature.
That is, the owner takes his share, building himself a passive income source, and the player gets the opportunity to save up for his own creatures or just have some kind of stable income as well.
This is how “owners” who originally bought the creatures can also get some certain passive income on the spot.
Axie Infinity
Philippine locals are playing Axie Infinity. For a lot of young people it’s become their main source of income
This may actually work, since Axie Infinity is a very trendy DeFi game project, and is currently at its peak, but… so far there is no super-cool technology to regulate all this, (like a well-written smart contract for renting creatures) that would do it automatically.
Therefore, this is either done through negotiations, where both parties simply agree with each other, or in a more thoughtful way – through the previously mentioned smart contracts.
Imagine, for starters, you can simply purchase creatures, then upgrade them to a certain level, or not upgrade, but immediately rent them out on the basis of a pre-written smart contract that will regulate all the nuances of cooperation between the owner of the creature and the player who took your Axie into a lease for a certain period. There are already several platforms (like Axies Scholarship) that allow you to make such “deals”, but so far all this is at the initial stage and is regulated very conditionally, mainly relying on trust.
Tokenomics behind the Axie Infinity project
This may actually work, since Axie Infinity is a very trendy DeFi game project, and is currently at its peak, but… so far there is no super-cool technology to regulate all this, (like a well-written smart contract for renting creatures) that would do it automatically.
Therefore, this is either done through negotiations, where both parties simply agree with each other, or in a more thoughtful way – through the previously mentioned smart contracts.
Imagine, for starters, you can simply purchase creatures, then upgrade them to a certain level, or not upgrade, but immediately rent them out on the basis of a pre-written smart contract that will regulate all the nuances of cooperation between the owner of the creature and the player who took your Axie into a lease for a certain period. There are already several platforms (like Axies Scholarship) that allow you to make such “deals”, but so far all this is at the initial stage and is regulated very conditionally, mainly relying on trust.
Axie Infinity
Smooth Love Portion
However, in addition to the SLP token, there is also another token on the Axie Infinity platform, called AXS (Axie Infinity), which is also required for the reproduction process of your creatures.
However, the difference from the SLP token is that if the number of SLP tokens required for, say, the “level-up” of your creatures increases progressively, then AXS is always needed in the amount of 4 pieces.
Axie Infinity
AXS token
Also, SLP coins have a deflationary structure, that is, after each use, these coins are burned, while AXS is sent to the wallets of the developers and the project community after each use.
By the way, in July this year alone, the company earned about $ 85 million simply from AXS tokens.
AXS tokens can be obtained either by playing or simply by purchasing them on the exchange
They have a limited offer of two hundred and seventy million tokens (that is, there will be no more of those coins added), 15% of the total number of tokens were bought by early investors on presales, (and for 9-10 cents), now the AXS token costs more than $ 67.
Both of the main Axie Infinity tokens (SLP & AXS) have been successfully listed on Binance exchange. Which means you can easily withdraw them from the game and sell directly on Binance.
High liquidity assets in work
The remaining 50 percent of the tokens are given to players as a reward.
That is, the tokenomics of the project states that over the next few years, players will receive AXS tokens during the game, and the remaining 35% will be distributed between the development team, game advisors, and all team members who took part in the creation of the Axie Infinity project.
A fairly large part of the tokens of early investors who bought coins for the presale is already unlocked, respectively, they can sell their assets at any time, however, the full unlocking of all tokens is planned sequentially until 2025.
Accordingly, not all of the total 270 million tokens are currently in circulation.
What is also worth mentioning – in the case of the Axie Infinity project, early investors were able to purchase only 15% of the total supply of tokens, which makes the price movement in the market more natural, without sharp dips or rises.
This is very different from, for example, the situation with the Solana token, where almost all tokens are in the possession of the very first investors who can manipulate the price of the token as they want.
Here, the price of the coin moves more naturally, because the token can be sold both by the validators of the AXS token, as well as by the community and the project developers themselves.
Moreover, tokens can be sold by the players themselves, who farm these coins.
Accordingly, early investors own only a small fraction of all coins, which excludes the possibility of manipulating the price of the token.
All this speaks of a good, well-thought-out tokenomics of the project, which occurs due to the fact that every day about 300 thousand people come to the game at the moment.
As for LSP tokens, the situation is somewhat different from AXS tokens
The fact is that there were no pre-sales in the SLP token, there was no specific circle of people who would receive a certain amount of tokens in their possession at an early stage and then start selling them to other players.
No, the situation here was somewhat different, namely: the first and each subsequent LSP token was printed to a real player during the game.
In other words, simply by playing on the platform, the player received these tokens and either used them in the game for breeding and “leveling-up” creatures or simply withdrew them from the game and sold them on the exchange.
That is, everyone entered on an equal footing, none of the token holders had the advantages and opportunities to control the price in their own interests, so we can conclude that the real price of the SLP token is really the maximum (at the moment) possible market price.
Axie Infinity
Battles in game
SLP tokens are currently returning to their ATH (All-Time-High) indicators, which once again speaks in favor of the project (or rather, in favor of a well-thought-out tokenomics of the project) because the developers did not try to create any artificial ways to pump a token or come up with some made-up “need” for a damn coin.
In the case of the SLP token, the good old “supply and demand” concept is naturally built into the very mechanics of the game and is determined by the development of your creatures and the natural need of players for this token.
Axie Infinity
A player obtains all types of tokens during battles
Should you buy SLP and AXS tokens now?
Despite the fact that the Axie Infinity platform has a very thoughtful, developed tokenomics, we do not think that this is a very good entry point, because now the project is on a big hype, at least since given the fact that both tokens are now at the peak of their prices.
After all, everybody talks about the Axie Infinity project, and the project is clearly going through the peak of its popularity, which suggests that the information wave has already worked itself out and, most likely, there is every reason to assume that we will not see further growth in the price of the token, and most likely the price will roll back.
Of course, no one can ever say with 100% certainty whether the price of a particular coin will rise or, on the contrary, fall, but in the long term, we believe that even though Axie Infinity is a very promising, well-thought and rapidly developing project with a huge future and a huge following… We still tend to believe that now is not the best time to enter and buy platform tokens.
However, if you want to get into the project anyway, it might be a good idea to consider a “three-thirty-three” strategy. This is not financial advice, these are just some of our thoughts on the ideal trading strategy, which we share with you, and then you make your own decision whether to enter the platform or not.
The essence of the “three-thirty-three” strategy is that you allocate the amount that you would like to spend on the purchase of Axie Infinity assets, and right now, at the market price, you buy tokens for exactly 33 percent of the amount of your deposit.
So, further, our strategy depends on the behavior of the token price.
If the price of the Axie Infinity token rises, then everything is great, you are in the big plus already, you can take profit or hold in the hope of even greater growth.
If the coin falls, (which is quite likely after such an increase), then you buy another thirty-three percent of the remainder of your deposit, but it is better to wait for the coin to fall in price twice from its current price.
If the coin continues to fall, then you buy another 33 percent for the rest of your funds, when it falls twice more.
Thus, such a strategy will help you average your losses in the event of a fall in the price of a token and will help you earn in the end (albeit not from the full amount).
In other words, you are a winner even psychologically: if the coin grows, you are happy, if it falls, you are also happy and buy more. This will allow you in the worst case to get even at least to zero, and in the long term, when the coin rises in price again, take the profit.
In general, the project seems to us super promising and potentially successful, and we expect very good further growth from this project (both from SLP tokens and AXS tokens) and perhaps SLP tokens will grow in price much more than AXS since they have a much smaller market capitalization, respectively, the price of the token will be much easier to pump.
Another way to make money in Axie Infinity is to buy and sell local “land plots”
The concept is extremely simple: we buy a land plot for a cheap price, and we sell a land plot for a higher price.
Axie Infinity
August 2021, Lunacia has come and it’s flourishing
So let’s figure out exactly how this works.
Axie Infinity has a virtual world called “Lunacia”.
This virtual kingdom consists of about 90 thousand land plots, but only seventeen thousand of them will be available for players to own.
Accordingly, the rest of the plots will be used for other needs.
Axie Infinity
Land Plots
There are several types of land in total. Depending on the location, this can be savanna, desert, forest, arctic tundra, road, river, and so on.
Each site has different features, for example, there may be some rare resources, or there may be bots with which you can fight, and such things like that will help you further develop your creatures.
This, in turn, directly affects how many LSP coins you can possibly earn.
Axie Infinity
Different types of areas. As you can see there’s every kind presented: “mystic”, “arctic”, “forest”, “savannah”, you name it.
Therefore, rare and fertile land plots in themselves are of great value and therefore are highly valued among community members, because they provide additional opportunities for earning and developing your creatures.
Of course, the value of a land plot is directly influenced by the presence of various bonuses located on it. The more “fertile” the land, the more different bonuses to pumping your creatures it gives. One of these rarest and most fertile land plots was sold for one and a half million dollars.
Where did these “land plots” come from in the first place?
Axie Infinity
As soon as land plots were first introduced into the project, they were played out in the form of a presale lottery.
To participate, each participant was required to send a certain amount of ETH to the platform, and in exchange, the participant received a chest, opening which would give you an opportunity to randomly get some area.
Depending on the rarity of the plot, each of these plots fell out with a different degree of probability, that is, it was really a lottery – people could get either an ordinary, unremarkable plot or get a very rare and potentially extremely profitable land plot for resale.
Axie Infinity
Axie Infinity Land Plots
Then you could just keep this lot and use it to develop your own creatures, or you could immediately sell it on the local land real estate marketplace.
Basically, the “land plot” item is exactly the same form of non-fungible tokens (NFT) as the Axies themselves.
All these lottery sales with land plots have not yet ended (there were only two), many lots have already been bought, but there are still those that have not yet been sold out and will still be available for purchase.
The value of such land plots will only grow, at least due to the deflationary component of these NFTs. Indeed, with the arrival of new players, the influx of new money, and the further development of the project, attention to the plots will only grow, and the plots for purchase will become less and less (we remind you, that these are limited to only 17 thousand, so keep that number in mind).
Alright, in the article we have shared with you a fairly large amount of information, so let’s summarize in order to understand what kind of Axie Infinity project it is, what the mechanics of the game are and how exactly can you make money on it?
So, to start the game, we will first need to purchase at least 3 creatures to create a team.
We must develop these monsters (to get into battles with bots and “PvP” against other players) and crossbreed for breeding.
Whenever we engage in the local battles, we earn a reward in the form of an SLP (Smooth Love Portion) token, which we can either use to develop our creatures or sell them on the exchange so that other people buy this token to upgrade their own creatures.
This is how the local “tokenomics”
of the project work.
As a reminder, Axie Infinity’s slogan is “Play to Earn!”
In general, all possible types of earnings
in the game include:
- Selling SLP and AXS tokens.
- Selling creatures (“Axie”).
- Purchasing and selling local land plots.
When it comes to the trading strategy (that is, making money on the purchase/sale of SLP and AXS tokens), we believe that the project is very promising and the game will develop further since a huge number of people will just come to this game in the near future, which naturally will lead to an increase in project assets, that is, an increase in prices for both of the Axie Infinity project tokens.
Axie Infinity
However, now is most likely not the best time to buy tokens, since both coins are on their ATHs and it is better to wait for a little until the price drops slightly, or split your deposit allocated for the purchase of these coins and buy coins according to the “three-thirty -three” strategy we’ve shared with you.
We believe that it is better to miss a little profit than to take unnecessary risks and lose all the money.
In general, everything, as always, boils down to the fact that it is better to develop and adhere to your own risk management strategy (we will not tire of repeating the importance of having your own trading strategy and your own risk management strategy!)
But the Axie Infinity project is, of course, very promising, advanced and the developers now have very large and influential partners (along with the following).
In general, if you are interested in the Axie Infinity project, we recommend that you restrain yourself from buying for a while (a good reason to wait out ATH and devote this time to learning the basics of the project) and watch various reviews and guides on Youtube.
Regarding “which creatures to choose”, “how to assemble a starting team”, “which body parts are more effective for a certain class of creatures”, “what buffs and debuffs there are?”, and so on.
As an epilogue, we wanted to address one very important issue related to the insertion of ETH coins into the Axie Infinity system to the Ronin Wallet through the Ronin Bridge.
Ronin Wallet. You’re gonna have to connect your Ronin Wallet
to the game
Almost none of the reviewers warn about one nuance directly related to high fees in the Ethereum network (ERC-20). The fact is that Axie Infinity is located on the Ethereum blockchain, however, to use ETH tokens, you need to deposit ETH to the Ronin Wallet, which is the sidechain of the Ethereum network.
The infamous Ronin Bridge, used to either deposit or withdraw the ETH from the game. Be careful with that
The thing is, in order to send coins on the platform, it is not enough just to add ETH to the Metamask wallet and connect it to Axie. ETH needs to be sent from Metamask directly to the Ronin Wallet itself through the special Ronin Bridge, and in my case, the gas fee for transferring around $ 600 in ETH was a bit over $ 30.
Please bear this in mind!
I know, it doesn’t sound like a lot, but in case you have a really big deposit to insert… Well, you know what I mean, I’m sure you can pretty much do the necessary math yourself.
But the biggest pitfall lies in the withdrawal of ETH from the platform. This is done through the same Ronin Bridge (just click on the “Withdraw” button instead of “Deposit”).
See those two transactions pending? That’s what I’m talking about
The problem is that as soon as you confirm the withdrawal, you will not be able to cancel this transaction – and if there is not enough ETH on the Metamask wallet (to which you withdraw your ETH coins) to pay the commission (i.e. “gas fee”) … your transaction will simply freeze and get stuck on “pending” mode.
And it is IMPOSSIBLE to cancel it.
The first time it happened I got scared, especially when the gas price was constantly changing, and an hour later (in the evening prices are usually more expensive) it reached $ 118!
In order to solve this problem - simply deposit some additional ETH to your Metamask wallet (to where you’re withdrawing ETH from your Ronin Wallet), then confirm the operation, and the transaction will be completed
Anyway, don’t give out to panic – it turned out that the only way to successfully complete a transaction is to send the required amount of ETH to the recipient’s Metamask wallet and click on “Confirm” again and then finally confirm the transaction, aaaand…You’re done, congrats.
If you are interested in this project, we will continue to monitor it and promptly provide you with updated information regarding anything related to the Axie Infinity project.
Stay tuned, folks!
