What’s next for Axie Infinity after making $ 2 billion in NFT sales?

Axie Infinity has big plans ahead of it, including upgrades and billions of rewards.

What is currently the largest NFT project? In terms of total trading volume, is it NBA Top Shot or CryptoPunks? No, it’s Axie Infinity – a monster fighting game founded by the Synthetic Teamese team, inspired by Pokémon, based on Ethereum, which exploded this year.

Sky Mavis, the parent company of Axie Infinity, passed the $ 2 billion mark in total trading volume last week, Bitcoinist reported. Players spend tons of Ether on animated monsters, lands, and other items in a game that now has over 1.8 million daily active users. Axie Infinity’s AXS governance token has also exploded in value, with a market cap currently over $ 4 billion.

However, this is not a cheap game. The NFT acts like a title deed to a digital asset – in this case, an interactive creature or a customizable piece of land. You need three Monster NFTs to play Axie Infinity, with prices ranging from $ 150 to $ 200 Ether. That’s a sizeable upfront investment, but it hasn’t stopped the project’s exponential growth since the start of the year.

The Axie Infinity community has been growing slowly since late 2017, but accelerated rapidly this summer with the introduction of Ronin, a purpose-built sidechain for Ethereum. It lowers fees while avoiding congestion on the Ethereum network, resulting in fast transactions when players buy, sell, and breed Axie NFTs.

Axie Infinity is playable on computers and mobile devices

Jeff Zirlin, co-founder and head of development at Sky Mavis, said Ronin was the spark that set the Axie Infinity on fire.

“Ethereum will be the common payment layer, but it’s not a place where you can run high performance applications. This is the first time that a product with a very strong community has moved the whole thing to a sidechain or layer 2 (scaling solution). “

Axie Infinity’s summer rebound also follows a $ 7.5 million Series A investment round announced in May. It’s a relatively small amount in the crypto industry, but it has attracted attendance from celebrities like billionaire investor and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, as well as Seven Seven Six founders VC and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. Alexis Ohanian in particular criticized the game and its crypto-reward-based play-to-earn model.

“Easily said, but the reality is that this play-to-earn model is becoming the new normal. What it does to empower people around the world is really remarkable and quite extraordinary, ”Ohanian said. share with Bloomberg in August when it comes to Axie.

However, the new influx of players has created new challenges. In July, Axie Infinity was exposed to increased demand and could not function properly at times, as Sky Mavis was struggling with a “messy” database for Axie’s combat system.

However, Zirlin says they are ready to tackle the next obstacle, which it certainly will.

“Nothing has ever been killed by excessive demand problems.”

Build on success

Axie Infinity’s play-to-earn model has already started to take hold: some players in developing countries like the Philippines and India make a living selling SLP reward tokens that they have earned in in-game battles. This is what drives Axie’s “Scholarship” rental programs, led by the Yield Guild Games, sponsored by Andreessen Horowitz and supported by FTX. It is an innovative way to break the barrier to entry by having NFT holders loan credits to players and then sharing the profits from the token rewards.

But that’s just the beginning for Sky Mavis. The company has a large pool of AXS tokens geared towards fueling future growth, and AXS ‘recent price hike has brought the total value of the fund to approximately $ 4 billion. Zirlin calls it “a growth catalyst on a different level than Ronin,” and the expanded play-to-earn push will include AXS stakes on rewards and token-based governance.

Although Axie has gained around 1.8 million players a day, the high upfront cost is still a significant barrier to reaching millions of other potential users. Buying three Axie NFTs is very expensive while the Axie Scholarship Agreement is really a job, a serious commitment. So what about casual gamers who just want to try out what Axie Infinity is?

Axie’s updated combat system will offer more strategic gameplay

This is where Free Axies comes in. Sky Mavis plans to launch a trial version of Axies with “zero or near zero” earning potential and it is a way to try the game out before investing any money. Axie’s play-to-earn perks are still reserved for players who buy the NFT, but at least one simple ramp is added – essentially a demo version.

“It’s about a missing bridge between consciousness and serious activation,” says Zirlin.

In addition, the gameplay of Axie Infinity will be improved and expanded. Currently, the game mainly focuses on fights, against fellow players or AI opponents, where players use attack and skill cards to challenge and defeat opponents. However, the parallel turn-based structure is pretty clumsy with a poker-like approach – you decide your moves before you see your opponent’s actions. Zirlin admits it’s “a little unintuitive” right now.

The land system can significantly increase Axie’s know-how

The V2 combat system upgrade will improve combat and allow for more back and forth movements which will increase the level of strategy required for success. In addition, the new system, also known as “Axie Infinity: Origin”, can implement additional deck and team building adjustments, as well as updated single player content and Axie Monster upgrades. All of the above features and upgrades are expected later this year or early 2022.

Finally, the long-awaited land system will hit the market next year. Sky Mavis has been selling land NFT lots for a while – one ticket sold for $ 1.5 million in Ether in February, but the game is still in development. Once deployed, players can customize the terrain they own, use the location to mine valuable resources, and share the space with the world. It could be the bridge to bring the game’s passionate community into a common online metaverse for Axie enthusiasts.

Axie Infinity challenges

Axie Infinity has quickly become the most successful and attractive cryptocurrency game on the market today, but there are many other projects in development that may call its dominance into question.

Animoca Brands’ The Sandbox is a promising open world 3D metaverse game that has grossed millions of dollars from the NFT LAND storyline featuring Snoop Dogg, The Walking Dead, and Atari. Meanwhile, next year comes the Guild of Guardians mobile play-to-earn game and Big Time, the fantasy RPG adventure game from AAA gaming veterans.

All of these games are based on Ethereum, but the Solana-powered science fiction game Star Atlas has also been causing a stir recently with on-demand sales of NFT spaceships. The Solana Aurory Project is also planning to turn its existing profile picture, NFT, into a monster fighting and role-playing adventure, and Animoca, who is also an original investor in Axie Infinity, is endorsing both Aurory and Star.Atlas. Even bitcoin gaming is on the rise, thanks to Moonray’s upcoming fantasy game to earn.

Each of these games has its own unique look and feel, but as the competitors compete for the time, attention, and money of cryptocurrency gamers, Axie Infinity has a bigger goal in mind. Games are an ideal way to determine the value of user-owned assets and crypto rewards, so it’s no surprise to see a multitude of projects pending in the field.

Zirlin shared:

“We always believed that games with a player-centric economy would be one of the greatest apps of all time. I think it’s a really great way to introduce people to blockchain. One of the problems with blockchain is that it fails to attract the attention and imagination of everyday users. ”

“Axie Infinity is basically designed as a user engagement and retention machine. If you wanted something that got people thinking about blockchain, what would you build? Yes, it’s a game with a mass appeal. ”

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