The year 2021 was marked by the emergence of blockchain gaming. Axie Infinity led the effort, demonstrating that the integration of blockchain technology into games has enormous potential and product-market fit. The combination of blockchain and games has spawned a new gaming paradigm: play-and-earn.
Play-and-earn is a concept that allows players to make money while playing games. Gaming has always had economic value, but axie infinity creators are the only ones who profit from it. Only the intangible advantages of playing games — pleasure, a feeling of camaraderie, a sense of accomplishment, and so on – are available to players. Players may have control and ownership over their assets by using NFTs and/or cryptocurrencies as in-game objects. They may easily trade or cash out of the game if they want to, in contrast to existing games where real-world commerce is usually prohibited by the terms of service.
What is the meaning of Axie Infinity?
Axie Infinity is a turn-based card game in which non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and cryptocurrencies are used. It’s best characterized as a Pokemon-style game in which you interact with digital creatures known as Axies instead of Pokemon. NFTs are axes and in-game objects, whereas cryptocurrency tokens (SLP, AXS) are in-game money. Users may trade their Axies and sell the cryptocurrency tokens they’ve earned in exchange for their own local money. This enables gamers to cash in on the money they’ve earned while playing the game.
In conventional games, creators usually make money by selling in-game objects or perks to users. The makers of axie infinity make money by charging a charge for in-game activities like selling on the marketplace and breeding Axies. This generates increased incentives for players and developers to work together to produce the greatest game possible in order to lure more players into the ecosystem. The game has made over $1.3 billion in revenue in the last year, and the marketplace has handled over $4 billion in transactions.
Dashboards for the Axie Infinity Marketplace
The game presently has over 2.8 million unique addresses with over 11.1 million Axies, with 97 percent of those addresses having at least three Axies, the minimum amount necessary to participate in in-game activities. From a low of 8.18 percent of addresses on August 20, 2021, to 16 percent now, the number of addresses with four or more axes has steadily increased. This is most likely due to people being able to purchase additional Axies to form various teams since the price of Axies has decreased over time.
Dashboards for Axie holders
The game is developed on top of Sky mavis’s Ronin network, which is an Ethereum sidechain. Smooth Love Potion (SLP), axie infinity Shard (AXS), and in-game assets such as Axies and virtual land, which are NFTs, are all held on the chain.
In World of Warcraft, SLP is equivalent to gold. It’s the game’s in-game cash, which players may acquire through playing. AXS, on the other hand, works more like a stock in a corporation. Holders of AXS are granted governance rights and have the ability to vote on proposals. Players may also win AXS in-game if they place in the top 300,000 of all players in the arena mode (PVP).
The Ronin network is one of the most active chains today, and it presently exclusively supports axie infinity, demonstrating the game’s immense popularity.
Who is the game’s creative team?
Sky Mavis has created and evolved the game into the success that it is today, led by Trung Nguyen. Sky Mavis is located in Vietnam and was created in 2018 by Trung Nguyen (CEO), Aleksander Leonard Larsen (COO), Jeffrey Zirlin (Growth Lead), Tu Doan (Art Director & Game Designer), and Viet Anh Ho (CTO). The founders have a long history of gaming (both competitively and recreationally) and were among the first to play Cryptokitties, one of the first blockchain games ever developed.
What’s the best way to get started with Axie Infinity?
To get started with axie infinity, you’ll need to create a wallet, purchase your first set of Axies, create an in-game account, and download the game. Sky Mavis has a fantastic onboarding page that walks you through the process step by step, and new users should visit it after reading the summary below.
How to create a wallet/account
Setting up a crypto wallet is the first step in connecting with any crypto program, and axie infinity is no different. To engage with the axie infinity marketplace, players must first create a Ronin wallet. A crypto wallet is a digital wallet that stores your cryptocurrency, similar to the existing digital wallets that store your money, such as Cash App and Venmo.
Purchasing your first Axies
Wrapped Ethereum is used to trade Axies on the market (WETH). Players must use the official bridge to transfer ETH into their Ronin wallets, or buy it straight from the wallet using fiat cash using Ramp (only works in specific countries/states). If you have ETH on an exchange like Coinbase, you can send it to your MetaMask wallet and use their official bridge to connect to the Ronin network.
The official bridge is one of the busiest in the crypto world, with 111K total depositors and $15.3 billion in total volume transacted.
A Binance account is another option to obtain assets on the chain. Users may buy AXS/SLP on Binance, transfer it to their Ronin wallet, then exchange it for WETH on the Katana DEX (Ronin’s official DEX) thanks to Binance’s Ronin network integration.
Creating an account in the game
After checking in with their Ronin wallet, players may establish an official in-game account under their user profile on the marketplace. Players may visit the marketplace without creating an account, but they will need one in order to play the game.
Final thoughts
If you’re looking to understand axie infinity the layman’s way, this article will set you on the right path to understand the intricacies of axie infinity. NFT games are gunning to become the next big thing. And with the pace at which axie infinity is going, it may be the next big thing.