Axie Infinity is a blockchain-based game, pretty similar to Pokemon or Tamagochi. The player has a team of three creatures called Axies to breed them and fight other players’ groups, or AI monsters. The game is available on Android, iOS, and PC, so it’s a new-wave mobile game with crossplay on mobile and desktop platforms, like Genshin Impact and others.
Axie Infinity, as of now, is the most popular game built on blockchain technology. However, it’s not the most significant issue here. In addition to its nature, Axie Infinity is also an NFT-related game. All creatures in the game are unique and minted as non-fungible tokens (NFT), so players could breed new unique beasts and trade them for an in-game token called Smooth Love Potion (SLP). In contrast to other MMO games, in Axie Infinity, real-world money in the game process is not prohibited, yet it’s what for this game exists.
The other side of this feature is that the entry barrier is relatively high – to start playing, one should have an initial team of three in-game characters, which could only be bought for SLP. As soon as the average price of one Axie on the market is around $200, the newbie players will have to spend approximately $600 just to start. It’s almost 10x times higher than an average price for a “traditional” AAA game.
AXS is a governance token of the Axie Infinity project. It means that everyone holding a sufficient amount of AXS can vote for changes in the game and the entire project. AXS is an ERC-20 built upon the Ethereum blockchain. However, in May 2021, the project moved to a Ronin – custom Ethereum’s sidechain initially developed for the Axie Infinity, which caused an 80% rally for AXS price. Recent news about AXS includes a message about $152M investments attracted by Sky Mavis – the company behind the Axie Infinity development. One more point is Axie’s announcement of launching a decentralized exchange (DEX) in the future.