What is Axie Infinity?
…and how do you make money on it?
What is Axie Infinity?
Step into the world of Axie Infinity, where cute and lovable creatures known as Axies roam free in a timeless digital universe. This PlayToEarn game has taken the world by storm, offering players the chance to collect, breed, and battle their Axies in a dynamic ecosystem that rewards participants.
Axie Infinity took the world by storm in 2021 when the game had a peak of 2.7 million players. The reason behind Axie’s success was the fact that playing the game paid off more than going to an actual job in some cases. Everyone and their mother were breeding their Axies and competing to earn Smooth Love Potions (SLP), Axie Infinity’s in-game rewards token.
The game managed to achieve a true PlayToEarn experience, albeit for a short time. What’s more impressive is that Axie grew into the largest Web3 gaming community thanks to the clever breeding system. Axie collectors were incentivized to collect Axies, breed them, and then sell the NFTs on the open market. Because Axies were expensive (more than $200 per Axie), community members offered to rent them to new players.
By the end of 2021, the Axie Infinity NFT marketplace saw 2 million Axies bought and sold, amounting to 140,956 ETH, or $600+ million. Among other achievements, one Axie was sold for 300 ETH, making it the most expensive NFT ever sold.
Like all good things, Axie Infinity was about to face its first serious challenge.
In late March 2022, Axie Infinity suffered a hack on its Ronin sidechain, which is a scaling solution used to reduce transaction costs and improve user experience.
The hack resulted in the theft of approximately $622M worth of crypto, which was stored in the Axie Infinity ecosystem. The attacker was able to sign transactions from five of the nine current validator nodes on the Ronin network, which is the threshold needed to approve signatures. Ultimately, the attacker gained access to Sky Mavis’ own four validators, along with one operated by Axie DAO.
As a result of the security breach, Sky Mavis has halted the bridge that connects Ronin to the Ethereum mainnet. Ronin was restarted in 2023, but the team is taking a slow and safe path.
To add insult to injury, the Axie core team later decided to reduce the SLP rewards, which made it no longer viable to play Axie as a full-time job.
Despite the hack, Axie Infinity has continued to grow in popularity and user adoption, and the team has worked hard to restore trust and confidence in the platform. The incident serves as a reminder of the importance of robust security measures and ongoing auditing and monitoring in the DeFi and blockchain spaces.
As of today, Axie Infinity still has a strong community that holds partial control over the game. According to Sky Mavis, they plan on gradually decentralizing governance as the game matures.
How does Axie Infinity work?
Axie Infinity is a play-to-earn game that combines battle mechanics with an in-game economy. As a Web3 game, players own their Axies in the form of NFTs. These NFTs can be traded, or bred with other Axies in order to create unique Axies. The random nature of Axie breeding coupled with the alert gameplay has turned Axie Infinity into the most well-known blockchain game. Let’s see how each component of Axie Infinity works!
Axie Infinity Gameplay
Axie Infinity is a tactical RPG game with earning mechanics. Players own little creatures called Axies that roam in the land of Lunacia. But the land of Lunacia is under attack! It is up to the player to defeat creatures called Chimeras and save the kingdom.
In order to play, users have to own at least three Axies which can be bought from the Axie Infinity Marketplace. Axies have numerous archetypes such as Beast, Aquatic, Plant, and so on. Each archetype has its own strengths and weaknesses. It is up to the player to decide the best-fitting lineup. Generally, a trio of Axies aims to have attackers, defenders, and support Axies.
During the game, each Axie has its own set of cards that represent its abilities. It is a turn-based game, so players have to calculate the energy points required to cast an attack. The first player to defeat its enemies is the winner.
Players have two gameplay options: Solo Adventure and PvP Arena. Over the course of the journey, players get to advance in level and fight increasingly stronger opponents. At the end of every battle, players gain more Exp points. Currently, Solo Adventure mode doesn’t incorporate any earning mechanics. Following Season 20, all rewards have been moved to the PvP Arena.
Participants in the PvP arena get rewarded with Small Love Potions (SLP). These tokens can be used to breed Axies which basically means minting NFTs.
Axie Infinity Breeding
Breeding is the feature that makes Axie Infinity stand out from the rest of Web3 games. Players require 2 Axies to hatch an egg, and it takes five days for a new Axie baby to be born.
To avoid hyperinflation of Axies there is a maximum amount of times an Axie can be bred before it becomes sterile. Axies can be bred a maximum of 7 times.
Breeding has certain source requirements: 1 AXS and some SLP tokens. While the number of AXS required for breeding is fixed, the amount of SLP varies. The higher the breed count of the Axies that are used to breed, the more SLP is required.
Here comes the interesting part. Axie developers have come up with a way to add randomness to the breeding process so the number of combinations is unlimited.
Each Axie has 6 body parts as well as a body shape. For each part, an Axie possesses 3 genes. A dominant (D), recessive (R1), and minor recessive gene (R2).
Through breeding, genes can be passed down with certain probabilities, depending on their dominance. Aside from the chances of genes being passed down to the offspring, there is also a chance for each gene to mutate, resulting in a different Axie than his parents.
Players aim to breed their Axies in order to create a stronger one. For example, if you are looking to breed a strong defender, then one Axie should have high HP, or self-healing to absorb more damage. The second Axie should have similar stats, but you get the idea.
Breeding adds to the excitement around the game, as players can create entirely new Axies that can be used in battles or get sold on the Axie Infinity Marketplace.
Axie Infinity Marketplace
Axie Infinity has a marketplace for every single NFT in its ecosystem. Here, players can exchange axes and plots of land from the world of Lunacia.
This is where Axie players are down to do business. Buying an Axie is more affordable than ever, so if you’re looking to build a strong lineup, take your time to look through each Axie.
Axie Infinity LAND
In 2021, Axie Infinity opened up the sale for its metaverse land plots. Lunacia, the Axie homeland, is divided into tokenized plots of land which act as homes and bases of operation for their Axies. Plots can be upgraded over time using a variety of resources and crafting ingredients that can be found when playing the game.
In addition, land-owners might find AXS tokens on their land plots, or use the Axies that occupy the land plot to explore resource nodes on the map. When interacting with resources nodes Axies can find AXS and potentially other resources.
Lunacia consists of 90,601 plots of Land. These Land plots are represented as NFTs and can be freely traded by players.
Land gameplay is still being actively developed and will be released in phases. As of 2023, the experience will focus more on simulation and land management i.e. production, resource gathering, building, and trading. In the next phases, the experience will focus more on the strategic gameplay.
Ronin Sidechain
Due to the Ethereum fees, Sky Mavis has decided to build its own sidechain on Ethereum. The Ronin sidechain was developed specifically to facilitate transactions on Axie Infinity.
After the Ronin hack, development has taken a pause. According to the team, Ronin has been restarted, but the development is going at a slower pace.
How to make money on Axie Infinity?
The main way to make money on Axie Infinity is by playing PvP and getting involved in the Axie Infinity ecosystem.
Check out the full article: https://l3mbda.com/post/what-is-axie-infinity-all-methods-to-make-money-on-it
