The play to earn utility token SLP of the year 2021 Axie Infinity follows the fall of Bitcoin. So making money playing video games may not be such a small matter in the world of blockchain NFT games after all. Aware of this loss of momentum, the Axie Infinity team unveils a teaser suggesting a tantalizing year 2022. Will the recipe be the right one? Let’s find out.
Axie Infinity: Is Play To Earn 2021 out of fashion?
Axie Infinity is an NFT game on the ethereum blockchain. It uses the Ronin sidechain. In this play to earn game you have to have a team of three Axies (NFTs) in order to make them fight in an arcade mode or in a player against player mode. Each victory brings SLP (Small Love Potion, one of the tokens of the game).
Unfortunately, these SLP are no longer up to date. Indeed, their low price leaves bitter Axie holders and scholarships. A scholarship is a player who plays with Axies that are lent to him in exchange for a return.
Often from the South, scholarships exchange their SLP earnings for FIAT currency. The function of the token, initially utilitarian, is thus diverted, which contributes to this downfall. It’s love potion indigestion for play to earn players.
Added to this is the announcement in early December of a delay in the release of the Kingdom project, the lands game project. These NFT plots all assembled represent the lands of Lunacia, the home of Axie Infinity. The development of the lands (already available for purchase on Axie Infinity’s marketplace) seemed to be necessary in front of the competition of play to earn at the end of this year. We will notice that a Land has just been sold 22,45 ETH on January 02, 2022.
The ingredients of success: a teaser, a community…. a restaurant?
In early October 2021 Axie Infinity led a $152 million fundraising round that brought together such major investors as stock market giant FTX and venture capital firms Andreesen Horrowitz. This round of funding strengthens Sky Mavis’ development and allows the company to expand its team. The team is now complete to develop the “K project”.
The year 2022 begins, with the promise of a sweet and sour 3D universe. The beginnings of gameplay development are also visible in these announcements, which quickly made the Axian community’s mouth water (for example: resource collection, Axie burn, combat with Axie armies, etc.).
Axie Infinity: a greedy Play To Earn
“Our vision for Project K is to introduce an aesthetically pleasing fantasy world for Axie, composed of a number of interrelated game experiences built by Sky Mavis and, over time, by the community at large. The aesthetic experience will be strong (…).”
The Lunacian (Axie Infinity’s official journal).
Despite these turbulences, Axie Infinity remains a successful model of play to earn. There are many surprising and amusing examples of local success stories, as this tweet from the influential Axies Sisters shows. It shows a restaurant named after the successful crypto game, never before seen on social networks. For some, this is a new symbol of Axian success.
The carrots may not be cooked yet for the Axie Infinity game. Indeed, it seems that 2022 is full of promises for the game play to earn. However, it is worth noting that despite the enthusiasm of the community, the AXS and SLP tokens curves have not really reacted to these announcements for the moment. Perhaps this is the proof that despite many good intentions, it is time for Axie Infinity to come to the table and treat its players in February 2022 with the release of its new token, the RON.