![]() ![]() But as the pandemic shut borders across the globe and slashed jobs, many of these workers were sent home. Roughly a quarter of the Southeast Asian nation of 110 million people lives below the poverty line, and its economy is heavily dependent on some 2.2 million migrant workers who send money back home. At one point, players there made up 40% of the game’s user base. The game initially made a huge impact in the Philippines. ![]() By last October, the company had raised more than $150 million from investors including the venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Sky Mavis takes a cut of in-game transactions and sits on a large stash of tokens. ![]() “We believe in a world future where work and play become one,” the game’s website stated last year. With Axie Infinity, the earning potential is baked right into the game play itself. For other popular games like League of Legends and Fortnite, it’s common for elite players to make a living through sponsorships and revenue from streaming their games to online viewers. as part of the rising play-to-earn gamer movement. This technology has been touted by many as a potential backbone of metaverse development.Īxie Infinity was created by a Vietnam-based startup called Sky Mavis Inc. Each Axie monster is an NFT: a unique non-fungible token whose ownership is recorded on the blockchain, a secure ledger of transactions. You can also sell your Axie or breed new, more valuable monsters. Along the way, players earn in-game currency called Smooth Love Potion (SLP), which can be exchanged for other cryptocurrencies. ![]() They then battle other Axies, which makes them more powerful. To enter the game, players buy three cutesy cartoon monsters called Axies, each of which has its strengths and weaknesses. The Play-to-Earn DreamĪt first blush, Axie Infinity looks a lot like Pokémon. Innovative metaverse ideas like Axie Infinity offer immense promise-but also tangible peril for those who feel they have no other option but to take the plunge into the digital unknown. But Orias and others say that Axie Infinity reinforced predatory systems and gave them false hope. Many crypto thought leaders, when rebutting criticism about the unsavory aspects of the space, point to its impact in developing countries. The story of Orias and Axie Infinity serves as a cautionary tale for crypto and its bombastic rhetoric about changing the world. For a brief moment at the peak of crypto’s astonishing 2021 boom, these young Filipino players were fulfilling a longtime dream of crypto’s most ardent evangelists: that “play-to-earn” blockchain games like Axie could lead the way to a more equitable, opportunity-rich global economy. At the same time, thousands of young people in the Philippines were jumping headlong into the game. He soon began earning cryptocurrency, which he converted into pesos, allowing him to take better care of his mother and his home. So he plunged into Axie, doing battle with cartoon monsters for hours deep into the night. Orias, now 26, desperately needed an escape hatch from his financial woes: his mother had had a stroke and required medication, and electricity and grocery bills were stacking up. His friend told him he and others were pocketing up to $600 a month playing Axie Infinity, a game fueled by cryptocurrency and NFTs. Orias was earning about 4,000 pesos a month (about $80, a little less than half the national minimum wage) making takoyaki-Japanese octopus balls. Samerson Orias was working as a line cook last year in the rural Philippines when his friend told him he could make way more money playing a new video game. ![]()
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