With NFTs and their multi-million auctions on the rise, countless opportunities open up for digital entrepreneurs. In addition to being used for art trade, Non-Fungible Tokens also find an important refuge in games. Today, the main exponent of this revolution is a nice game called Axie Infinity.
Yield Guild Games (YGG), a group that brings together gamers of “play-to-earn” games that use blockchain and NFTs – like Axie Infinity, whose native cryptocurrency has risen about 7,800% in the year -, has launched its own cryptocurrency and raised 12.5 million dollars from the sale of the tokens, which sold out in exactly 31 seconds.
The group has become famous for helping players in the community earn money from online games. The economic difficulties as a result of the pandemic have increased the search for alternative sources of income, especially in developing countries, and YGG, in addition to teaching group members to monetize games, even lends resources to those just starting out – through a revenue share, of course.
We are proud to announce that @YieldGuild now has over 4,000 @AxieInfinity scholars! That’s 4000 lived being changed for the better, right now.
Check our recent article explaining how the Axie Scholarship program works: https://t.co/Xh8CCUrnyw
— Yield Guild Games (@YieldGuild) July 29, 2021
“We want to send a huge thanks to everyone who has supported our journey so far as well as everyone who participated in the YGG token sale,” said YGG co-founder Gabby Dizon. “Now, we are looking forward to kicking off our community airdrop where YGG tokens will be given to the most active and engaged members of our guild, especially those who have been with us from the beginning.”
In all, YGG sold 25 million tokens, which represents a small part of the 1 billion tokens that will be issued. Of the remaining 975 million tokens, 45% will be distributed to group members as a way to reward them for their participation in the community. The other 55% will go to the group’s founders, developers and advisors.
The idea is that, with the launch of the tokens, YGG will create an autonomous decentralized organization (DAO), which will allow the owners of YGG cryptocurrencies the right to make decisions about the management of the group. In addition, the cryptocurrency intends to generate value for the group’s participants and enable new investments in the community itself.
Axie Infinity Concept
Following the pioneering concept of CryptoKitties, Axie Infinity is a collectible game based on Ethereum that has been growing since 2018. The game is the brainchild of startup Sky Mavis, based in Vietnam. Initially it was just a project for the theme lovers, but later it became a very popular Ethereum game.
Axie Infinity Shard (AXS) is the token of the Axie Infinity ecosystem. AXS is an ERC-20 governance token, released in November 2020. AXS tokens can be purchased, traded or purchased through the game.
Other tokens associated with Axie Infinity include game assets (such as Axie characters) in the form of ERC-721 tokens and Small Love Potion (SLP), an ERC-20 token.
How Axie Infinity Works
Axie Infinity has no plot or character background construction: it all comes down to putting little animals, which resemble flying puffer fish, to battle monsters in Adventure mode or against other players in Arena mode. What could be a defect is actually one of the trump cards, because that way the focus is on the action.
It all starts with assembling the team. It is necessary to know the nine available types and their powers: plant, reptile, water, beast, bird, mechanic, insect, twilight and dawn. Just like in Pokémon, they have strengths and weaknesses that determine the amount of damage taken.
Also, there are specific body parts and they need to match Axie’s type and your team’s characteristics. For example, the starfish horn is good for aquatic animals, but bad for a plant type, while the feather tail is better used on birds than on beasts.
These parts confer abilities of their own and transform into cards, used to attack the opponent. Simultaneously, there are other characteristics, such as eyes, mouth and ears, that will impact status (health, speed, skill and morale). In addition to all this, there is an energy bar that needs to be managed very wisely.
Start the journey at Axie Infinity
It takes at least three pets to venture into the game. That’s where things seem to get complicated, because the cheapest little monsters are starting at $200.00 at the current price. If you need three of them, you can be prepared to spend around $600.00 — that’s to build a very “HALF-BAKED” team.
This value works like a traditional investment in cryptocurrency: you buy the Axie for a price, it values and you can sell it at any time — but this is not the only, nor the most interesting, way to make money in the game.
The game has a “farm” system, in which the player completes challenges to collect tokens called Smooth Love Potions (SLPs). These items currently only have two functions: to create more fighters by crossing between them or to be sold for cash.
Alpha version
Since last week, the game server suffers from a lot of instability, the result of an initial DDoS attack added to the absurd growth of players. To give you an idea: at the beginning of June, the peak had been 60 thousand simultaneous players; in mid-July, that number jumped to 800,000 people connected.
Of course, this made the system unstable for days — and it still is. The game uses a decentralized system and linked to servers with blockchain, something still unusual, so solving these issues is much more complicated than just installing more dozens of other dedicated machines.
According to Trung Nguyen, co-founder of Axie Infinity, only in the week of July 15th, the Axie protocol generated more fees than Ethereum and Bitcoin in the market. In a single month, the game earned more than $85 million.
All this is considered a resounding success, mainly because it is a game that is still in alpha version. Many new features are in development to create a richer ecosystem within the game, such as land to buy, items and other things. Changes to the battle system, new parts of Axies and visual redesigns are also planned.
