Axie Infinity Surpasses $1 Billion in All-Time Trade Volume

As blockchain gaming continues to get traction, Axie Infinity has now surpassed the $1 billion mark in all-time trading volume, marking an important milestone for the industry.

The game launched back in 2019 has been referred to as an NFT version of the popular game Pokémon but with a twist. This has attracted more than 936.065 owners that have performed over 2.4 million transactions since its launch.

While the game has been popular ever since its launch, a fifth of all Axie Infinity’s sales seem to have taken place during the last week, according to Decrypt. This surge in popularity allowed Axie Infinity to become the first NFT game to ever achieve this milestone.

While NFT collectibles like NBA Top Shot and CryptoPunk have reached about $675 million and $657 million in all-time sales, they don’t offer a gamified experience as Axie Infinity does, which seems to be one of the main reasons beyond the game’s success.

To start playing the game at this time, players are required to acquire at least 3 Axies, the game’s version of a Pokémon, to form a team. At the time of writing, the cheapest Axies in the marketplace are worth over $293 worth of ETH.

The Community Behind The Game is Key

Unlike other blockchain-based projects in which users acquire tokens to keep until the value gets higher, Axie Infinity’s interactive nature means that Axies owners can generate gains by playing the game and actively participating in the ecosystem, a model known as “play-to-earn”

This model has increased the popularity of the game among players that the game has reached another major milestone as a result: having over 1 million daily active players.

However, as a later tweet by the developer would confirm, this number is misleading due to not all of the players actually owning an Axie.

This lack of ownership means that part of the daily userbase has downloaded the game but has actually not engaged with the Axie Infinity universe as owning an Axie is required to play the game.

The high price of the Axies available at the market means that it’s unlikely that many of these potential players will join the game in a permanent manner.

However, both milestones achieved by the game over the past week are a reflection of increasing interest in the game, which makes it likely for it to continue growing in the near future despite the high barrier of entry.

Crypto Exchange FTX Is Helping Players Join the Game

Crypto Exchange FTXhas partnered with Yield Guild Games to allow players in developing countries to join games like Axie Infinity to boost the growth of the NFT gaming industry.

Yield Guild Games offer players “scholarships” in which the beneficiaries can borrow another player’s NFT, allowing them to earn money via in-game rewards while enjoying the game themselves.

The guild describes its vision as:

“We want to own and develop assets in the metaverse as we believe that virtual economies will be more valuable than real-world economies over time. At the same time, we want to create value in the virtual world for our guild members to thrive in a virtual environment – the competitive gamers, the artists, and content creators that populate the metaverse.”

The partnership will see FTX provide funding to provide 137 new “scholars” with the chance to join the game in exchange for the exchange having lifetime naming rights to the accounts of those receiving the scholarship.

The discord channel established by Yield Guild Games for the purpose of applying to the scholarship has seen an increasing number of users joining in as a result of the announcement, with citizens of the Philippines, Indonesia, Brazil, and other developing countries seemingly being the most interested in participating.

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