How to make money with Axie Infinity
Dear Bankless Nation,
Axie Infinity has been on fire lately. 🔥
The NFT-based game generated more than $39m in revenue over the last seven days. That’s almost more than Bitcoin and Ethereum combined. Absolutely insane. 🤯
The reason? Well…first of all, it’s a fun game to play.
Second: there’s a ton of opportunity for gamers. Axie Infinity, and crypto games at large, are pioneering the Play to Earn sector in gaming.
You play the game, you earn digital assets. Those digital assets have real value (which have also been skyrocketing), meaning you can sell them for cold hard digital cash as you work.
So how exactly are people earning?
Here are 5 opportunities ranging from play to earn, to active LP’ing for Uniswap V3, to passive staking of the AXS token (coming soon).
There’s going to be billions of dollars worth of opportunity in crypto gaming over the decade to come. You should get started now.
Do the Bankless thing…front-run the opportunity!
Let’s learn how to make money with Axie Infinity.
- RSA
P.S. Sign up for the Smart Contract Summit! It’s a FREE virtual summit featuring top speakers from the industry. David and I will be hosting a panel on EIP 1559. Register here.
How to make money with Axie Infinity: Play and Earn Money
The leading NFT game, Axie Infinity, is booming with economic opportunities right now.
However, let’s be clear: There are right ways and wrong ways to go about approaching these opportunities. As such, this Bankless tactic will show you how to capitalize on Axie Infinity’s play-to-earn possibilities in savvy fashion.
- Goal: Learn different ways to earn money around the Axie Infinity ecosystem
- Skill: Intermediate to advanced
- Effort: Varies
- ROI: Potentially considerable if you play your cards—or should I say Axies—right!
Axie Infinity: A New Kind of Economy
Axie Infinity has generated over $39 million worth of total revenue between July 10th and July 17th, 2021, according to Token Terminal! 🤯
To put into perspective just how astonishing that figure is, in the same span Ethereum and Bitcoin generated $37.9 million and $4.7 million in total revenues respectively.
Not only did Axie Infinity bring in more fees this week than the cryptoeconomy’s two most popular blockchains — it’s within striking distance of acutely bringing in more fees than both of these blockchains combined!
So while some of us in crypto joke that BTC’s ossified into little more than a pet rock, it is true — at least for now — that the top crypto is currently being blown out of the water revenues-wise by a single digital pets battle adventure game on Ethereum.
But it’s not just any ol’ game. It’s Axie Infinity, a project that’s become a shining example of how heads-down work in the previous crypto bear market is paying huge dividends today. It’s also pioneering a new game design: play to earn.
That work allowed the Axie team to build a diehard community of players spread out across the world. This community has now become the lifeblood of Axie Infinity’s rising economy, which is giving users of all stripes opportunities to make money around a game that’s fun and enjoyable.
Sound like an economy you want to be a part of? Well then, you’ve come to the right place!
Don’t be a tourist!
Axie Infinity is far from a “get rich quick” scheme. Indeed, the folks who are doing the best with Axie now are the ones who’ve been dedicated players and community members for some time now, just as you’d expect.
That said, if you come to Axie Infinity with a tourist mentality — i.e. you’re just stopping by to make some easy money — you’re likely going to be disappointed.
Why? Because Axie has its share of unique nuances and complexities. Don’t be fooled by the game’s adorable aesthetics, its battles are chess-like and require considerable strategy to win. Moreover, the Axie economy is a breathing organism. The prices of Axies and the game’s $AXS and $SLP tokens fluctuate constantly.
In other words, success and profits aren’t guaranteed. If you dive in without paying attention to the game’s subtleties, you may even end up losing money.
For the best results, play Axie Infinity because it’s fun, stick around the community because it’s teeming and helpful and you can help steer it, work at the game’s mechanics because it’ll make you one of the first people in the world to gain expertise in play-to-earn gaming.
This is how to grind the real returns, both in money and beyond.
How to make money around Axie Infinity
So you’re really interested in Axie Infinity and want to learn more about the game’s various economic opportunities. Below I’ve compiled a selection of five strategies you can consider. The first four are available to you today, and the final one — $AXS staking — is coming soon.
Opportunity #1: Play & Earn
A natural starting point for wetting your beak with Axie Infinity is playing it!
The cool part is after winning battles and completing quests you earn the game’s Smooth Love Potions ($SLP), which currently trade at ~$0.26 each and are required to breed Axies.
Sell ‘em, use ‘em, whatever — it’s your $SLP after you earn the tokens! As for the actual play-to-earn process, you’ve got three main avenues to earn $SLP in Axie Infinity: Quests, Adventure mode (player vs. environment, or PvE), and Arena mode (player vs. player, or PvP).
Quests
Axie Infinity offers a Daily quest players can complete to earn 50 $SLP currently. A Weekly quest and other limited-time special bounties are coming down the line.
Adventure mode
For more casual gameplay, you can try out Axie Infinity’s Adventure mode and earn tokens for beating down computer-controller monsters. If you can, that is: the fights get harder as you proceed from level to level.
Arena mode
You can also test your resolve by battling your Axies against the best that other real players have to offer. It’s play for keeps, too, so trainers earn $SLP for every Arena victory.
At this point, things you’ll want to keep in mind:
- The upcoming Battles V2 system will include free “starter” Axies for you to play with, but until then you must first buy (or borrow) 3 Axies to create a team and start playing.
- The main hub for buying Axies is the official Axie Marketplace, now live on the game’s bespoke Ronin sidechain. For a quick guide on migrating assets to Ronin, check out the great video tutorial below by Axie Infinity co-founder Jeff “Jiho” Zirlin.
- Download the Mavis Hub Launcher, which is used to launch and update Axie Infinity, directly from axieinfinity.com.
Opportunity #2: Breed Axies
Another economic opportunity in the Axie Infinity universe comes via breeding Axies. As you breed more Axies, you can sell, lend, and create Axie Scholarship teams (where you let other players use your Axies in exchange for a non-exploitive cut of the $SLP they earn) from your inventory.
Breeding costs a flat fee of 4 $AXS and a variable fee of $SLP depending on how many times the participating Axies have been bred before. For example, breeding two virgin Axies will always cost 300 $SLP and then scales up from there, as the image below indicates.
Quick Guide: How to breed Axies 👶
Note: this quick primer assumes you already have the requisite assets migrated over to Axie Infinity’s Ronin sidechain!
- Select your desired Axie, and on its profile page click on the “Breed” button. Input which two Axies you want to breed, and it’s time to proceed. Click “Let’s Breed!”
- You’ll get a prompt in your Ronin wallet to approve the breeding fees. Press “Confirm.”
- Once this transaction confirms, you’ll receive a newborn Axie egg in your inventory.
- After you breed your Axies and have eggs, it’ll take 5 days for them to be ready to morph into adult status. Once that period has passed, head to your Inventory in the Axie Marketplace and click on your egg of choice.
- With your newborn Axie’s profile now pulled up, click on the “Morph to Adult” button. Your Ronin browser wallet will prompt you to sign a transaction. Press “Confirm” to complete the signature. The morphing will take a few minutes, and then you’ll have a new adult Axie on your hands!
Opportunity #3: Provide Liquidity for Axie Tokens
We’ve already discussed how $SLP functions like a utility token for Axie Infinity, and then there’s $AXS, the game’s native governance token.
Both assets are instrumental to Axie Infinity, and thus as the game grows more popular demand for these tokens should grow in kind. One way to participate in the Axie Infinity economy is to service this demand by serving as a liquidity provider (LP) on leading decentralized exchanges.
In particular, you might consider providing liquidity to:
🧠 Remember: you take on the risk of impermanent loss (IL) by LPing in these pools, but you also earn trading fees + maintain exposure to the upside of the Axie Infinity economy.
Opportunity #4: Speculate on Rare Axies in the greater Axie Marketplace
Do you think Axie Infinity is going to keep booming? And that its rarest Axies will continue to age like fine wine?
If that’s the case, one potential way to earn is by speculating on fractionalized Axies, (i.e. Axies that have been “sharded” into many fungible ERC20 tokens to make collective ownership easier).
In this arena, there are two avenues to consider: single Axies that have been fractionalized, or collections of Axies that have been fractionalized.
An example of the former is Almace, an ultra-rare Axie that’s been sharded into 10,000 $ALMX tokens via NIFTEX. An example of the latter is Unicly’s uAxie token, which represents a basket of 24 mystic Axies.
Opportunity #5: AXS Staking (Coming Soon)
Remember how we started out this tactic by noting how Axie Infinity was bringing in incredible amounts of revenues lately?
These revenues accrue to the Axie Infinity Community Treasury, governed by the AXS token. With the upcoming rollout of the game’s AXS staking system, these impressive revenues will start being distributed to players who stake their AXS.
How’s that for passive income?
AXS staking will presumably kick off at some point later this year, so be sure to keep it on your radar.
The Big Picture
Axie Infinity is teeming with opportunities right now. To make the most of them, approach this blossoming NFT game with equal parts dedication and curiosity and you’ll be a savvy veteran in no time.
Just remember, the Axie Infinity journey is like the Bankless journey: this is a frontier where there are risks (price swings, IL, etc.) and where you have to put in the work to succeed.
If you’re up for the challenge, then there’s a lot of fun to be had along the way, which is its own reward 😉
Action steps
- Play Axie Infinity and start earning!
- Check out the Axie Infinity Alpha Guide. 👀