Play-to-earn game Axie Infinity's revenue continues to slide

The blockchain-based game Axie Infinity brought in only $988,400 in revenue last week — the first week the play-to-earn (P2E) game has clocked less than $1 million since February of 2021.

 

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Axie, the darling of the P2E world, experienced a meteoric rise in popularity in the summer and early fall of 2021. At its peak, the game accrued over $215 million during the week of August 8, 2021. In October of that year, Axie's creator Sky Mavis had even reached a $3 billion valuation after a $152 million funding round led by a16z. 

But as The Block’s data dashboard shows, Axie Infinity has experienced a steady decline since November of 2021. Sky Mavis couldn’t continue its rapid growth due to an imbalance issuance and burn mechanism for Axie’s in-game tokens, The Block previously reported.

Too much of the Axie’s in-game token, Smooth Love Potion (SLP) was issued without ample ways to destroy, or burn, the token. This lead to inflation that caused the token to lose value, disincentivizing players to continue using the game. Sky Mavis attempted to instill more burn mechanisms into the game, but it does not appear to have had the desired affects. 

About Author

MK Manoylov has been a reporter for The Block since 2020 — joining just before bitcoin surpassed $20,000 for the first time. Since then, MK has written nearly 1,000 articles for the publication, covering any and all crypto news but with a penchant toward NFT, metaverse, web3 gaming, funding, crime, hack and crypto ecosystem stories. MK holds a graduate degree from New York University's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP) and has also covered health topics for WebMD and Insider. You can follow MK on X @MManoylov and on LinkedIn.