Metaverse ABCs: What Is Axie Infinity (AXS) And Why It's Taking The GameFi Sector By Storm

2021/09/17 09:23:59

Games have always been fun. They were made as a way to de-stress and detach yourself from one reality and attach yourself to another. Whether it's multiplayer games like Overwatch, Dota, and League of Legends, or campaign games like Red Dead Redemption and God of War. Within these games, you’re stuck in an endless loop of quests, collectables, and matches that boosts your dopamine and keeps you engaged.

Interestingly, there’s a new class of games that focuses on rewarding its players based on their engagement. GameFi, short for Game Finance, is a new class of games based on Gaming and DeFi. It’s the gamification of financial mechanisms where players can finally make money off of their hours and hardwork. Simply put, GameFi is what makes play-to-earn games possible.

Lately, Axie Infinity (AXS), a popular play-to-earn game, has been doing extremely well and introduced a whole new perspective in the gaming industry. One could say, Axie Infinity was the much-needed catalyst for the rise of play-to-earn games.

Axie infinity is at the forefront of the new class of play-to-earn games. Projecting a record high $1.5 billion in trade, around 300,000 monthly users, and a monthly volume of almost $1 billion, Axie Infinity is driving the hype around GameFi with full force.

In this article we’ll be diving into what Axie Infinity is and how it’s going to change our games forever.

To Infinity and Beyond

Axie Infinity is an Ethereum based NFT game inspired by the extremely successful Pokemon game series. The game is based on an open-ended, massively flexible gameplay that enables players to collect various digital pets known as Axies, which can be bred, battled, nurtured, and traded through the endless Axie ecosystem.

The main goal of the game is to acquire Smooth Love Potions, or SLPs, which can be used to breed new Axies that can be deployed within the game. NFT-based games aren’t something new, they have been around since 2017 ever since the launch of a similar Kittens based game called CryptoKitties, where players could raise, level up, breed, befriend, or trade their kittens.

However, none have been as successful as Axie Infinity. WIth a market capitalization of over $4 billion at the time of writing and projected revenues of over $1 billion, Axie Infinity is making a dent in the newly found universe of play-to-earn games.

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As of August 2021, Axie Infinity ranks as the number one Ethereum-based gaming DApp by weekly on-chain volume. Moreover, it’s also one of the top ten most popular gaming DApps by user counts, with over 121,000 new users every week. Thanks to Axie Infinity, Ethereum has been handling millions of transactions every week; over 220,000 transactions per week in particular.

Developed by a Vietnamese developer named Sky Mavis, Axie Infinity was introduced to enable players with a fun, accessible, and educational way to enter the DeFi space and understand blockchain technology. This is because Gaming is a sector that has consistently seen billions of players for a very long time and it’s the perfect medium to invite and educate users with cryptocurrencies, blockchain technology, and DeFi.

Axie Infinity Shards and Smooth Love Potions

Remember when we said Axie Infinity was based on a play-to-earn model? Let us explain how. As we mentioned, Axie Infinity revolves around cute pokemon inspired creatures called Axies, which players can breed, hunt, train, trade, battle, and use to complete challenges within the game. The game’s main goal is to obtain as many Smooth Love Potions or SLPs as they can so they can breed new Axies that can be used within the game.

Since Axie Infinity is a blockchain-based game, SLPs also double as cryptocurrencies that can be readily bought on a crypto exchange or used within the ecosystem. Allegedly, some players around the world have been making as high as 1500 SLPs per day from their respective Axies.

Axie Infinity was designed to employ a decentralized governance system, which would allow its community to make decisions surrounding the development of the game. It’s highly expected that Axie Infinity will be completely governed by a fully decentralized organization by the end of 2023. To make all of this possible, Axie Infinity Shards were introduced.

Axie Infinity Shards are what binds the Axie community together and will serve as the foundation for the game. Axie Infinity Shards are governance tokens for the Axie Universe, through which its holders can enjoy a plethora of perks, stake their tokens, participate in the game, or take part in governance votes.

What makes Axie Infinity shards so unique is that it rewards players for interacting and investing their time on the game as well as incentivizes them to hold on to their tokens and gain additional rewards. Moreover, it also decentralizes the ownership and governance of Axie Infinity; therefore, ensuring the game stays decentralized. Recently, Axie Infinity concluded a massive successful token sale on Binance Launchpad, raising around $3 million.

Axie Infinity’s zealous approach towards a completely decentralized game by shifting its governance to its Axie Infinity shard holders is what’s driving the GameFi sector by storm. While games have tried to sell a “decentralized” game to its users, many have failed to stay true to their promises. Axie Infinity's unique approach to proving their stance and their ever-expanding ecosystem has allowed the game to stand out.

Closing Thoughts

Axie Infinity’s plan to employ a decentralized governance system could mean that we could see competing games take a similar approach. Thanks to Axie Infinity’s efforts towards a more rewarding ecosystem, we could now see gaming titans enter the space and reward users for their participation.

Could we see larger gaming studios shift their governance to its users? What would games look like if they are governed by the users?