Axie Infinity: June Development Update
Victories, Milestones, and Future Plans
Key Points
On May 17th, we made Axie Infinity: Origins available on iOS in select countries across LATAM and Asia. We launched Ronin’s first generalized NFT marketplace – the Mavis Market – a few hours later.
We introduced a flurry of new features to the Axie universe including the Axie Avatar Forge, Atia’s Blessing, Blitz Mode, and more.
Read this update until the end to learn about what we’re working on next! Hint: there are Homeland and Axie Core leeks below!
Welcome to the June Axie Infinity Development Update! Since our last update, we’ve had major wins including the groundbreaking introduction of Origins on iOS and the successful launch of the Mavis Market on Ronin. In between those milestones, we also shipped a flurry of new features to the Axie universe including the first-ever Axie Avatar Forge. In this update, we’ll walk through the most significant moments of the past few months together and tease a few of our exciting plans at the end! Let’s dive in:
Bringing Axie to Apple
On May 17th, we made Axie Infinity: Origins available on iOS in select countries across LATAM and Asia. In this early iOS version, players can use their own NFT axies to play Origins or battle with upgradeable starter axies in both Adventure and Arena modes. We believe this was the first time Apple agreed to make externally-purchased NFTs usable on the App Store, which marked an important step towards a world where anyone, anywhere can experience the magic of Axie on their preferred device. If you live in Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Venezuela, Indonesia, Malaysia, or Vietnam, download Origins for iOS from the App Store through the button below:
Introducing: Mavis Market
On the same day we went live on iOS, we also launched Ronin’s first generalized NFT marketplace: the Mavis Market. This is powerful infrastructure game developers can use to distribute their NFT collections on Ronin. On the Mavis Market, RON is money: listings appear in RON while the Katana DEX will perform any necessary swaps to enable purchases with AXS, WETH, USDC, and RON. We’re excited about the Mavis Market because it represents more than a marketplace: it’s the key to enabling infinite gaming experiences on Ronin.
The inaugural listings available on Ronin’s Mavis Market were Axie DoLL Sidekicks and AxieChat Premium 2023 NFTs. These collections were created by our very own Axie community members and have already traded over 30,000 RON in volume! Follow the link below to start trading these new collections.
Axie Universe
The past few months have seen a flurry of new features shipped to Lunacia. Where to begin? Let’s start with a community favorite: the Axie Avatar Forge.
In May, the Axie Avatar Forge went live and unlocked a long-awaited experience for our community: the ability to forge unique and customizable avatars using their axies on App.axie. Avatars are key to our digital identities, and we haven’t had a unified way to distribute Axie PFPs to the community – until now. Every army, every nation needs a standardized and scalable way of issuing identification to its citizens. The Avatar Forge made it possible to do exactly that, and you can see it for yourself here:
Axie Infinity: Origins
A few weeks later, we merged Axie lore with Origins gameplay to introduce Atia’s Blessing on App.axie. This is a new feature that boosts the Moonshard percentage players receive from Ranked Battles in Origins. The catch? Players must make a prayer offering at Atia’s Shrine everyday to increase their rewards. The longer the continuous daily streak, the larger the boost!
Fast is a Blast
Our Origins team continues to build, build, build. After the success of Blitz Mode – earlier in the year, we increased Arena Mode animations to 1.35x speed during Origins Season 4. Faster games turned out to be even more fun! Thank you to everyone in our community who told us how much they loved Blitz Mode: your feedback made this possible.
Fortune Chest Fiesta
On another note, we revealed the first-ever Fortune Chests to kick-off our Filipino Fiesta contest on June 8th. These coveted artifacts contained rewards ranging from Moonshards to crafting materials to up to 100,000 SLP! Every player with a Chick rank or above has at least a 50% chance of earning a Fortune Chest when they win a Ranked Stamina Battle. We were honored to celebrate the Philippines – the beating heart of the Axie movement – with the release of this special feature during the Filipino Fiesta. Fortune Chests introduce a novel game mechanic that will get even the most disciplined of Lunacians playing “just one more game.”
Axie Infinity: Homeland
In Axie Infinity: Homeland Alpha Season 2, Lunacians also saw upgrades grounded in community feedback. Homeland is a land-based strategy game, and many players asked for a streamlined way to manage their axies’ activities, building progress, and gathering statuses among other things. The latest Task Management board put everything in one place and has made it easier than ever to keep track of what’s happening on your plot at any given moment! Plus, we created a separate Smart Equip system to organize Adventurers’ stats, prices, and more in a single, convenient place. Together, these features have made Homeland gameplay more competitive and laid a foundation for even more updates in Alpha Season 3.
Spy in Disguise
With the next season of Homeland, we are excited to introduce an element of PvP where players will be able to send an NPC to another landowner's plot to spy. To spy, players will use their items to disguise a creature called a “Ragoon” into an adventurer and then send it to a target plot. Stay tuned for more!
Finally, we want to offer a sneak peek at some impending art upgrades. Check out below for a glimpse of what's to come:
Leek: Axie Experience Points
Axie Core is about achieving connection between axies and their owners. Enabling this requires systems where your time, effort, energy, and skill each have an impact on your axie. Deeper vs. wider.
We estimate (with 75% confidence) that this process will start within the next few months through the release of axie experience points (AXP) and on-chain leveling. Axie OGs from 2018/2019 will be happy to learn that we’ll account for legacy experience points from the Auto-battle era within this system. AXP will be accumulated by playing with our axies, and it will be specific to the axies earning it (nontransferable). We envision players participating in a wide variety of different Axie experiences in pursuit of AXP. Initially, we’ll experiment with AXP being made available through Origins. Then we’ll make it obtainable through other experiences.
Final Thoughts
Axie is more than a game: we’re a worldwide movement. In 2018, we took our first steps in the middle of a bear market. A few years later, we were in the Guiness Book of World Records with the highest transaction volume of all-time – $4.2 billion – for an NFT collectible game. While our powerful digital nation is still young, we know that 2023 has brought significant challenges to our industry and community. That’s why our work together is now more important than ever. Let’s keep building together.