“It’s a guaranteed means of creating inflation.” Players (especially scholars) would use axies to produce SLP, the SLP would produce more axies, and the axies would bring even more SLP-producing players into the game.
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“From a macro perspective, you’ve created a positive feedback loop,” explains Mihai Gheza, the cofounder and CEO of Machinations, a consultancy that tests game economies with large-scale software simulations. Immortal axolotls present a gameplay problem Either way, they were creating more resources and watering down the value of everything acquired in the game. By contrast, Axie Infinity players had two main options: they could sell their SLP - which pumped it back into the ecosystem - or use it to breed axies whose main function is producing even more SLP. Games often include economic “sinks” (like cosmetic items or in-game equipment maintenance costs) that burn resources without producing more. Axies can be bred several times to produce new creatures and are largely immortal, so the breeding mechanic increases the pool of NFTs. SLP is earned through player-versus-player battles, and, until recently it was also available by completing daily quests and grinding in single-player mode, the equivalent of printing money and handing it to players in large quantities. The game produces two of those resources in constantly increasing quantities. Even if the game can overcome the recent challenge of the hack, Sky Mavis hasn’t proven it can transition out of that phase.Īxie Infinity’s economy is built around three major resources: the in-game cryptocurrency SLP the axies that live as in-game items as well as NFTs on Sky Mavis’ blockchain and the “governance token” AXS. As Andreessen Horowitz partner Arianna Simpson told my colleague Casey Newton last October, “If I can play a game, and have an equivalent amount of fun, and also make money - well obviously I’d rather do that, right?” (We’ll leave aside the philosophical questions this raises about the nature of fun.)īut there is a fundamental problem: Axie Infinity’s in-game economy has so far relied on constant growth to keep it running, with inflation built into the mechanics.
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The dream of Axie Infinity, like a lot of blockchain applications, is to get paid for something you currently do for free online. The dream of crypto gaming is getting paid for something you currently do for free The result is a kind of tremendously popular in-game capital market, where axie-holders can earn currency through investment without necessarily playing the game. Axies and SLP can be sold for cryptocurrency, and people can earn SLP by either playing the game directly or participating in the “scholarship” system, where they lend their axies to other players and receive a share of those players’ earnings. Winning battles grants players a token called a “smooth love potion” or SLP, and axies can be “bred” with SLP and a third token called AXS to produce new NFTs.Īxie’s biggest selling point is the chance to turn these tokens into real money. Players buy or rent three non-fungible tokens (or NFTs) linked to cartoon axolotls called “axies,” each of which has a set of associated stats and battle cards. And, as it attempts to reinvent itself with a new free-to-play game, the situation offers a glimpse at what can happen when the hype hits its limits.Īxie Infinity - whose creators refer to it as both a “nation” and “a bleeding-edge game that’s incorporating unfinished, risky, and highly experimental technology” - is sort of like hyper-financialized Pokémon.
Combining the freewheeling hype market of crypto with the complicated economic workings of a massively multiplayer game, Axie Infinity’s in-game world has spent months trying to avert a financial crisis.
But even before that, Sky Mavis was facing bigger questions about its long-term sustainability.
Sky Mavis’ Ronin blockchain suffered a catastrophic hack last week, losing over $600 million to unidentified hackers and putting players’ funds in limbo as Sky Mavis froze Ronin transactions. Even more impressively, Axie Infinity was supposed to herald a new era of “play-to-earn” gaming built around crypto tech.Ī year later, Axie’s future looks rockier. It offered full-time job prospects to some players and commanded an entry price of over $1,000 at its peak, while Sky Mavis itself was valued at $3 billion after a $152 million funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz. The game, launched in 2018 by Vietnamese developer Sky Mavis, was a massive hit in the cryptocurrency world. Last year, Axie Infinity was touted as one of the best candidates for a mainstream blockchain app.
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