If you’re missing the fun of playing Pokémon back when you were young, Axie Infinity can give you the same gaming experience. Axie Infinity is a blockchain-based, play-to-earn game that is compatible with iOS, Android, Mac, and PC. This promising cryptocurrency game was developed by indie studio Sky Mavis.
Non-fungible tokens (NFT) crypto-collectibles like videos and artwork boomed in fame in early 2021, but even before NFTs attract the mainstream, many blockchain-based video games had already been living in the crypto space, including Axie Infinity. After the cooldown of the sudden market hype, Axie Infinity just got even bigger.
The core gameplay of this Pokémon-like game is for players to have three cute monster creatures (called “Axies”) with various skills, which they fight in a turn-in battle against either computer-controlled opponents or live real-life Axie team.
Getting to Know Axie Infinity
The stellar team behind Axie recognized the shortcoming of CryptoKitties—another blockchain-based NFT game where players can breed kittens— when it comes to long-term principles of finance. They come to realize that there’s nothing more to CryptoKitties but breeding and collecting kittens.
After an in-depth analysis of the game, developers thought of making another game like it, but in a way that is more interactive, addictive, and has playing incentives, which will entice players to play the game for long hours. The early players of Axie Infinity are actually shifters from CryptoKitties.
Axie Infinity runs on the Ethereum blockchain with the help of a sidechain called Ronin, which assists in minimizing transaction delays and high fees.
In-game items are expressed by a non-fungible token or NFTs. These NFTs are basically cryptographically unique tokens that are linked like digital content. In the case of Axie Infinity, these are the land plots and Axies that inhabit the game. Compared to conventional in-game items, NFT confer ownership on the buyer. Every Axies on the game’s marketplace is tradable for real money.
Axies are designed with special characteristics and are born into a certain category. Overall, there are a total of eight Axie categories. Every category has its fair share of advantages and drawbacks. For instance, Axies that are under the Fire category have an advantage over Axies that falls into the category of Grass but has a weakness to Axies that belongs to the Water category.
If you have played Pokémon, you must be very familiar with how this game works. However, unlike a Pokémon, each and every Axie have 6 body parts, and these body parts are modified randomly from 500 choices. Each body part possesses a recessive, dominant, and a minor recessive ability, or a stat. Hence, there are massive possibilities for Axies.
Players can also breed Axies, enabling them to establish a more powerful team and yield more NFTs and tokens to sell at a good price on the marketplace. Axie’s breeding mechanism slightly randomizes the abilities of the Axies, their abilities, and stats. This mechanism works similarly to how genetics work. There are Axie NFT breeds that were sold for a high as 300 ETH apiece, or even more expensive than $600,000.
At its core, Axie NFTs are used to battle, trade, and breed. Currently, there’s no other way to play Axie Infinity without having three Axie NFTs to create a team.
Axie Trading, Breeding, and Battle
Axie trading is quite simple— Axie holders just need to trade an Axie with another Axie. The rationale behind this is not much of a thought, it was to allow players to breed owned Axies with new a one. This permits the creation of an offspring that possesses a semi-random collection of the traits of its parents. Through this, the Axie gets enhanced and obtains the ability to win more matches.
To rank up, players can play in Adventure Mode to rank up, or battle against real-time players and earn a small love potion (SLP). Playing in adventure mode is a lot easier and there’s a lesser amount of damage to take compared to battling against live players. There is a capitalization in the amount of SLP a player can earn in the adventure mode but playing in the PvP Arena is without limits— you can play as much as you want.
Regardless of which you choose, it all boils down to one point: The more you play Axie Infinity, the more you earn.
Smooth Love Potion (SLP)
As mentioned earlier, Axie Infinity is a play-to-earn game, and the Axies that belong to players yield rewards like a small love potion (SLP). SLP is a cryptocurrency that players earn for taking on the victory in their battles. These tokens can be exchanged for real-world money.
In the game, the small love potion also gets utilized for breeding. An Axie can be bred about 7 times, and it takes SLP to do that. After every breeding, the amount of SLP required to breed prices a lot more.
SLP is also used in the game to purchase in-game items. whenever a player purchases a new item from a marketplace or breeds a new Axie, the SLP that was used gets burned. This means that the SLP is gone forever. Nevertheless, since SLP gets constantly produced as players win games, it’s essentially inflationary.
Axie Shards (AXS)
In addition to SLP, breeding also stands in need of Axie Infinity Shards (AXS), an ERC20 governance token in the Axie universe that players must buy in order to breed. However, if the player plays really well in the PvP and is placed in the top rank of the leaderboard at the end of a season, AXS could be acquired for free.
AXS is obtainable from trusted crypto exchanges like FTX, Huobi Global, and Binance. Decentralized exchanges like SushiSwap and UniSwap also have it in their market. However, to trade in UniSwap, a person specifically needs to have a cryptocurrency wallet with an Ethereum-based token or ETH.
Both SLP and AXS are the two primary tokens that are used in the game, powering the entire Axie Infinity game. Originally, AXS and SLP sprang up from the Ethereum network as ERC20 tokens, but since the hype in April 2021, they are mostly on Ronin (an Ethereum sidechain). The reason behind this transfer may be to lower the required fees to play the game.
The Future of Axie Infinity
In the near future, holders of AXS will be responsible for the decision-making concerning the game and its prospective development. Axie Infinity intends to slowly shift into a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) to promote community governance.
The entire “play-to-earn” idea might just seem to be a gimmick or a marketing phrase to hook people into the game, but players around the globe have already proven the decent incentive of this player-owned economy.
Although the game’s upfront cost serves as a major roadblock to many players, it’s a game that could bring back the player’s initial investment by spending more time and allotting more effort into the playing. In fact, in the Philippines, which has the largest Axie Infinity player base (40%), players were able to buy expensive cars and houses.
On the other hand, because this Pokémon-inspired game is a new model for cryptocurrency-based gaming, the good price of SLP and AXS might be just due to its rising popularity. Hence, prices might eventually drop significantly once players fall out of interest in the game or if players mitigate to a competition.
