Shoutout to one of our favorite Blockchain Games!
Axie Infinity is currently recognized as the leading play-to-earn blockchain game. There are over 350,000 daily active users, the marketplace handled over $170 million in trading volume in the past month and is ranked 119th on Twitch. It is a game that helps people earn additional income with some even making playing the game a full time job. What is Axie Infinity and how are they doing this?
In this article, we will discuss:
What is Axie Infinity
How to Play and Earn Money in Axie Infinity
Play-to-Earn Capabilities
Scholarship Programs
Axie Infinity Changing Lives in the Philippines
What is Axie Infinity
Axie Infinity is a blockchain-based game founded by Sky Mavis in early 2018. It is a game inspired by Pokemon and Tamagochi games where players are able to buy, sell, breed and battle digital pets called Axies. Players need to own at least three Axies in order to play the game, which can be purchased from the marketplace.
Each Axie is an NFT. Their bodies are made up of various parts, shapes and contain individual metadata such as genes and ID number. There are currently six classes of Axies, with three additional secret classes, and each Axie’s body part is classified into one of the six classes (Aqua, Beast, Bird, Bug, Plant and Reptile) where each part are different moves that the Axies have. As the classes and body part affects the stats of each Axie, this makes each Axie individually unique and valued differently within the game. Currently, the floor price of each Axie is around $250 USD.
How to Play and Earn Money in Axie Infinity
The idea of being able to play games to earn money resonates with the current generation who are finding ways to make money online. As a blockchain game, Axie Infinity gives users the opportunity to do so in various ways.
Earning Smooth Love Potions and Axie Infinity Tokens
Smooth Love Potions (SLP) and Axie Infinity Tokens (AXS) are two of the cryptocurrencies in the Axie Infinity ecosystem. Users can earn between 1 to 20 SLP by playing adventure mode as they progress further in the game. Players can also earn SLP by battling their Axies in online matches against other players, ranging from 0 to 12 SLP per win depending on their rank. Top ranked players are also awarded with AXS as leaderboard prizes each season. Additional SLP is rewarded to users for completing daily quests.
The average player could earn at least 150 SLP a day from completing their tasks. As of this writing, one SLP is $0.20 USD, amounting to $30 USD a day. Users can trade these tokens into other cryptocurrencies and real money if they decide to.
Breeding and Selling Axies
Another way that users can earn from playing the game is to breed and sell Axies. As the developers are no longer releasing Axies for sale, the only place players can buy them is from the marketplace. Axies sold on the marketplace are bred by earlier players who list them for players who either need to buy Axies to start playing the game or others who want to collect them. Users can purchase and breed their own Axies to sell and try to profit. On the marketplace, the cheapest Axie is currently listed for around $250 USD and could be priced higher if they have desirable parts or qualities.
Trading Assets — Axies
Another way users can earn is by trading Axies on the marketplace. Users can spend their time finding good deals on Axies with desirable qualities and resell them for a higher price as the game becomes more popular.
Users can also purchase rare Axies on the marketplace. These are Axies with mystic parts, which have unique and aesthetically different parts compared to normal Axies, as well as one of 4,088 Origin Axies that were sold during the pre-sale. With reports that Mystic Axie parts will be upgradable and have additional perks in the future as the game grows, this makes Mystic Axies a valuable asset to own, possibly raising the demand, prices and the opportunity to resell at a profit.
Trading Assets — Land and Land Items
Land will play a role in the future of Axie Infinity gameplay. Plots of land are NFTs with differing rarities which can be purchased and upgraded by players. Land acts as a hub where players collect resources or participate in battles to earn additional resources to upgrade their land and individual Axies to enhance gameplay. Users are currently able to purchase land and items in the marketplace and use it when land gameplay launches or resell for a potential return. The highest plot of land recently sold for 300 ETH (~$652K USD).
Play-To-Earn Capabilities
The new business model of play-to-earn has attracted many players, especially from developing countries during the Covid-19 pandemic which has impacted many families’ income, and Axie Infinity has been at the forefront of this revolution. With just a digital device and internet connection, anybody can play the game.
The current cost of three Axies to be able to start playing the game is approximately $800 USD. Users can earn at least 150 SLP a day, accounting to around 4,500 SLP a month. At the current price of $0.20 per SLP, that is $900 USD a month from playing a game. You would profit $100 USD within the first month and earn $900 USD every subsequent month. That is more than the minimum wage in less developed countries such as the Philippines (more on this later). And this doesn’t take into account potential earnings from breeding and trading Axies!
However, it is a very high starting cost for many, turning away potential players who cannot afford to spend that kind of money, especially for those in less developed countries. Enter: Axie Scholarship programs.
Scholarship Programs
The Axie Scholarship program was an idea introduced by the Axie Infinity community. It is a program where existing players (“managers”) loan out spare Axies to new players (“scholars”). With the increasing popularity of Axie Infinity, the prices to purchase three Axies to start playing has been increasing along with transaction fees, constantly raising the barrier to entry for players, making it difficult for users who are unwilling or unable to spend that amount of money to purchase their own Axies or are new to blockchain gaming.
The scholarship program onboards new users to the Axie Infinity world of play-to-earn in blockchain games. Scholars do not need to pay any fees to participate in the programs, and the only requirement is their time and commitment to play the game to earn SLP. In return, there is a profit sharing element where SLP earned by the scholar is split between them and their managers (approximately 60%-40% split to the scholars, varying on the terms of each program). This is a win-win situation for both the scholar and the manager. Scholars are able to earn additional income at no cost and managers are able to create a stream of passive income from their spare Axies which might have just been sitting in their wallet.
Axie Infinity Changing Lives in the Philippines
As mentioned earlier, playing and earning SLP from Axie Infinity makes more than the minimum wage in the Philippines. During the pandemic, many people lost their jobs and needed to find ways to feed their family. In the Philippines, citizens discovered Axie Infinity and started playing the game after realising the opportunity of making money, more than their minimum wage! Players ranged from kids and teenagers who are familiar with technology to the elderly who have never even heard of blockchain or cryptocurrency before! There are testimonials of a Filipino earning two week’s worth of income in two days and even a 22-year old buying two homes in the Philippines just from playing Axie Infinity.
Axie scholarship programs have become especially popular in the Philippines and other low wage countries because of the opportunity for players who are unable to afford their own Axies to be able to earn additional income for virtually no cost or risk. A profit split of 60–40 of $900 USD to the scholars means that they can earn about $500 USD a month. While this may not amount to much for a typical crypto user, for Filippino players, this allows them to put food on the table for their family.
Axie Infinity, while started as a blockchain game, has grown into more than that. It introduces non-crypto users to blockchain and cryptocurrency, it is a means for some to earn a living, it’s a community network of the Axie Infinity player base and maybe the most important of all, it is life changing for it’s players.
