Axie Infinity: you’ve probably heard of it. It is the largest blockchain game of the moment and is played by no less than 1.85 million users every day. The game runs on the Ethereum blockchain and it’s a way to generate a monthly income by doing something you might love to do anyway: gaming.
You can earn this income in Axie Infinity in different ways, for example by fighting other monsters in Adventure mode or by competing against other players in Arena Mode, you can also breed, or breed, Axies and sell them. But more about these different ways later!
2021 was the year of DeFi and has also been very popular in recent months. Are you convinced and do you want to know what Axie Infinity is exactly? Then read on quickly! Today you will learn what DeFi gaming is, exactly how Axie Infinity works, how the team works, and how you can start playing!
What is DeFi gaming?
Before you can know what DeFi gaming is, you must of course know what DeFi is. DeFi stands for decentralized finance. Games such as Axie Infinity are actually products within the decentralized environment, in other words, an environment in which no one is in charge and there is never an intermediary.
The applications on DeFi are therefore not offered by banks, governments or other parties, but by the participants of the ecosystem themselves. Examples of DeFi applications are staking and lending. Staking means holding tokens on which you receive fees and lending means lending your tokens on which you receive interest.
You can probably already guess what DeFi gaming is exactly: a game within a decentralized environment. A DeFi game, often also called a crypto game or blockchain game is a game that is built on the decentralized ecosystem and makes use of the various applications of decentralized finance.
For example, within games, you often see different liquidity pools in which tokens can be swapped, from which the liquidity providers can earn money, but NFTs are also often an extremely important part of the games, because, for example, the characters within the games are often NFTs.
How does Axie Infinity work?
Before we can go into depth about how Axie Infinity works, it’s nice to know the idea behind the game. What are you actually doing when you start playing Axie Infinity?
In Axie Infinity, it’s really all about the Axies, which are the characters/characters in the game. The Axies are the little round monsters that come in all kinds of colors, shapes, and sizes, perhaps inspired by the Pokemon we all know.
In Axie Infinity you are, as it were, part of another universe, namely the Axie Universe. The Axies live in this universe. You, as a player, can use the Axies to battle, but also to breed Axies and then sell or reuse them, for example. So very interesting! But now let’s take a closer look at how exactly this works.
AXS & SLP
Within Axie Infinity there is two tokens: Axie Infinity Shards (AXS) and Smooth Love Potion (SLP). Let’s take a look at what exactly these two tokens are.
First up is Axie Infinity Shards. Axie Infinity Shards is an ERC20token. Axie Infinity has a total supply of 270,000,000 tokens, but just over 61,000,000 of these are currently (October 29, 2021) in circulation.
At the moment, the AXS token does not yet have a lot of added value, in fact, no added value yet. However, it is already known that these tokens can be staked in the future and that they will also serve as a governance tokens. Striking course nice, because that way you can earn extra passive income on your tokens, but the fact that it will become a governance token is also promising. This means that the owners of this token will have control over the platform by then. For example, owners of governance tokens can often vote on new features.
In addition, you have the Smooth Love Potion token. The Smooth Love Potion is actually the token that the game runs on. For example, you receive Smooth Love Potion when you win a battle. However, you also need this Smooth Love Potion again, for example to feed your Axies, but also to breed new Axies. The total supply of SLP is therefore infinite. An infinite number of new Smooth Love Potions can be created as they are created every time a duel is fought. There is of course a kind of burning mechanism with the tokens that actually have to be used. At present, SLP has a circulating supply of 2,145,135,756.
The marketplace
Now that we know how the tokens of Axie Infinity work, we naturally want to know how the marketplace works because this is a crucial part of a blockchain game.
Axie Infinity has its own marketplace, which you can find at marketplace.axieinfinity.com. In this marketplace, you can buy Axies, Lands, Items, and Bundles. Below is a brief explanation of what each of these is:
- Axies – the characters within the game.
- Lands – pieces of land within the game. You can use these as a home base for your Axies and you can also grow items on it that you are going to sell.
- Items – all kinds of different items that you can place on your land, for example.
- Bundles – various bundles that you can buy, often consisting of 2, 3, or 4 different items.
Buying something through the Axie Infinity marketplace is actually very easy. You link your wallet to the marketplace, for example, MetaMask or Ronin Wallet, or you log in with your email and password. Then you are in your account and you can start buying things. This is actually completely self-explanatory.
The marketplace is very simple and this naturally lowers the threshold to get started with Axie Infinity. It is really understandable for everyone.
How do you make money in Axie Infinity?
Earlier we hinted a bit about the ways in which you can earn money with Axie Infinity, namely by naming the different ways and by naming the token in which you are paid. Now let’s take a closer look at the different ways.
Battles
The first way to earn money with Axie Infinity is of course what the game is all about: the battles. The battles can be divided into 2 categories: fighting monsters in Adventure Mode (PvE) and fighting other players in Arena Mode (PvP).
The rewards differ per mode, in principle the rewards in the arena mode are slightly higher. In the tables below you can see the differences in rewards between the different modes.
This table shows the rewards for Adventure Mode (PvE).
| Level | SLP |
| Lvl. 1-4 | 1 SLP per win |
| Lvl. 5-9 | 2 SLP per win |
| Lvl. 10-14 | 4 SLP per win |
| Lvl. 15-16 | 6 SLP per win |
| Lvl. 17-20 | 5-10 SLP per win |
| Lvl. 21-36 | 10-20 SLP per win |
This table shows the rewards for Arena Mode (PvP).
| Matchmaking Ranking | SLP |
| 0-800 | 0 SLP per win |
| 800-999 | 1 SLP per win |
| 1000-1099 | 3 SLP per win |
| 1100-1299 | 6 SLP per win |
| 1300-1499 | 9 SLP per win |
| 1500-1799 | 12 SLP per win |
| 1800-1999 | 15 SLP per win |
| 2000-2199 | 18 SLP per win |
| 2200-2299 | 21 SLP per win |
| 2300+ MMR | 24 SLP per wi |
Completing tasks
Not only can you earn money by fighting in battles. No, you can also earn money by completing tasks. Everyday users get new tasks and this encourages them to log in to the game daily.
The 3 daily tasks are the same every day, namely:
- Daily check-in – the first task of the day is simply logging in.
- Complete 10 Adventure Mode levels – the second task of the day is to complete 10 levels in Adventure Mode, for which you will receive SLP anyway.
- Win 5 Arena Matches – the third task of the day is to win 5 Arena Matches, but for this, you will also receive SLP anyway.
When a user completes the 3 daily tasks, he or she will receive 25 SLP, in addition to the SLP he or she has already received by winning the battles in Adventure Mode and Arena Mode.
Soon not only the daily tasks will be available, but also the weekly quests and special events. We don’t know exactly what this will look like yet, but we will find out.
Axies
In addition, on Axie Infinity you can also use your Axies for breeding. Basically, this literally means making Axie babies. You can then sell these baby Axies again, or use them to breed or battle Axies again.
Each Axie can breed a total of 7 Axies. The cost increases with each subsequent Axie (from 1 to 7). You can see exactly how this works in the table below.
| Breed Count | Breed Number | Total SLP cost |
| 0/7 | 1 | 600 |
| 1/7 | 2 | 900 |
| 2/7 | 3 | 1500 |
| 3/7 | 4 | 2400 |
| 4/7 | 5 | 3900 |
| 5/7 | 6 | 6300 |
| 6/7 | 7 | 10200 |
So the costs are increasing, and so chances are the first few breeds are more profitable than the last few breeds. However, the price of both Axies and SLP can of course change.
Team & Founding
Axie Infinity is being developed by the company Sky Mavis which, like Axie Infinity itself, was founded in March of the year 2018. 40 people work full-time on the game from its headquarters in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam. We now tell you a little more about the most important of these 40 employees.
CEO – Trung Thanh Nguyen
The CEO (Chief Executive Officer) of Axie Infinity is Trung Thanh Nguyen. He makes all the important decisions about Axie Infinity and runs the company on a daily basis from the headquarters in Vietnam. He is also co-founder and former CTO of Lozi.vn, a Vietnamese e-commerce startup that raised a total of $10 million in investment.
COO – Aleksander Leonard Larsen
The COO (Chief Operating Officer) of Axie Infinity is Aleksander Leonard Larsen. Before joining Axie Infinity, he was a professional e-athlete himself. He was even in the top 200 gamers in Europe when it comes to the game DotA 2 and in addition, he represented the Norwegian e-sports team in the games Warcraft 3 and DotA 2.
CTO – Andy Ho
Finally, we look at the CTO (Chief Technology Officer) Andy Ho. Andy is responsible for technical strategy and game development at Axie Infinity. For example, he has previous experience as an intern at Google and PayPal.
Conclusion
So, Axie Infinity is the biggest blockchain game of the moment. The entry-level is not that high and you can earn money on your first day and then build this into a monthly income. You may still find it hard to believe, but earning a monthly income with a game is possible these days.
The game is basically very simple. You have Axies that you can use to fight, complete tasks, and breed new Axies. You can make money with each of these things and the opportunities to make money or just have fun will only expand in the future.
However, it is important that you do not play Axie purely for the money, because of course there is no guarantee of winning and you can also lose your money. So always pay attention to this!
