[Axie Infinity] The Lunacian Issue #2
Record Sale, Crypt-Oink Collaboration, Player Growth, Interview with Freak
Welcome to the 2nd issue of The Lunacian— a periodical shining light on recent developments in the Axie Universe.
We’ll be releasing a new gameplay roadmap in the next few days. Make sure to join our Discord community to see it as soon as it’s released!
Player Growth Heats Up
Axie community growth has accelerated recently. 383 wallets acquired Axies for the first time in the last 30 days bringing the total number of wallets holding Axies to 2081, up from 1700.
That gives us a monthly user growth rate of 22%!
Special shoutout to all the community leaders that have been crucial in on-boarding new users recently!
The chart below illustrates the number of all-time users that have interacted with the Axie Infinity smart contracts.
Axie Sushi Launches Golden Races
Congrats to community-built mini-game Axie Sushi on launching “Golden Races”!
3% of all races will be “Golden”.
Golden races distribute prizes to the top 3 racers with prizes in the form of land items and even land plots!
Over 6000 races have taken place since the launch on March 25th!
Cryp-Oink Collaboration
We launched a special collaboration with Japanese blockchain game Crypt-Oink.
Anyone that owned an Axie could claim a special Axton (Axie-themed Cryptons) while all Crypton holders can claim a Ganbaru Crypton Land item.
All 250 limited-editions Axtons( Axie-themed Cryptons") were claimed by Axie holders in a matter of hours!
Crypton holders can still claim a Ganbaru Crypton Land by filling out this form—your item will be delivered to your Loom wallet address Soon™.
Players could use their Axtons to qualify and participate in the Infinity Cup.
Axie at GDC
Jihoz, our Growth Lead, was at GDC(Game-Developers Conference) in San-Francisco last week. The burgeoning interest and momentum behind blockchain gaming was evident, with an increasing number of teams building both content and tools for the space.
Record Axie Sale
Triple Mystic Reptile Axie #1733 sold for a whopping 110 ETH. This is the only triple Mystic reptile ever born.
Want to learn more about Mystics and what makes certain Axies so rare?
Check out our collectors guide.
Podcast with Psycheout, Axie’s COO
Our COO, Aleksander Larsen, AKA Psycheout joined Jon Jordan for a podcast where they discussed the future of Lunacia, creating value for NFTs, and building on top of second layer scaling solutions like Loom Network.
Q&A with Axie Community Legend, Freak
For our first Q&A we decided to chat with one of the Axie community’s most beloved players- Freak! Freak is a prolific developer of Axie tools and has one of the most amazing Axie collections we’ve seen so far.
You can find Freak’s collection of Axie tools here.
How did you get your start in the NFT space?
I first got started in the NFT space by playing CryptoKitties. I'd been in the cryptocurrency scene for a while, but was standoffish on Ethereum. When CK came out, I was intrigued by the concept and was quickly hooked on breeding. I also used CK as a way to learn about Ethereum and smart contracts. I spent some time reading the CK smart contract and learned how to build tools to interact with the Ethereum blockchain. I used the education as a justification for spending crazy amounts of money on digital cats.
What attracted you to Axie?
There are a few things that initially attracted me to Axie. First, the breeding mechanics were similiar to CK, so some of the knowledge learned from CK transferred well to Axie. Second, the goofy artwork really caught my attention. The balloon on the back of an Axie had an absurd kind of appeal to me. Finally, the Axie community and developer responsiveness was what really cemented my interest in the project. Jihoz, Psycheout and Trung were always on discord and always encouraged players when they contributed to the ecosystem.
You’ve been amazing at building different tools for the community. What drove you to start building them?
When I first heard about Axies, I started out pretty slow. As with any new crypto project, you need to do some due diligence to make sure the project is legit. I started out by buying a single Axie, but didn't quite understand if it was good or not. I threw together a couple of tools that made is easier to see rarity and trait attributes and released them to the public. The community seemed to embrace the (minimal) efforts I put in to the tools which encouraged me to build even more. I think, as with any project, if you make people feel their contributions are impactful it motivates them to do more. I initially built tools for my own benefit to help me better play CK and Axie, but I realized that the crypto-gaming ecosystem was too small to keep the tools to myself. I have an incentive to publicly release my tools to make it easier for others to participate in the games. If I can help increase user adoption and retention it also adds value to the assets I own.
What has your experience as a 3rd party dev been like?
Building tools for Axie has been great! I love when new developers join the community and build new content -- it really shows their passion for the game. I also like the plans for having 3rd parties build content for Lunacia. I think providing art assets with the SDK lowers the bar for potential developers to enter the ecosystem. My philosophy is that if you want people to build stuff for you, make it easy for them to do so -- and providing standard art assets is a step in the right direction.
What is your outlook for blockchain gaming over the next year?
This is an interesting question. Most of the really cool things in blockchain gaming will take years to develop, so I'm most excited about what will happen a few years down the road. In the coming year, I think some of the earlier blockchain gaming projects will start to release good, playable content and one or two projects will see tremendous user growth. Conversely, you'll also see some projects fail because they've run out of funds.
What’s your favorite Axie?
Of course it has to be #2595. My fluffy tailed unicorn Axie.
This concludes the second edition of The Lunacian! Please make sure to subscribe and share this with your friends!
The Axie Infinity Team
Axie Infinity Discord — the best place to meet our community and talk to the Axie team directly!
Axie Infinity Twitter— Our DM’s are always open :)
Axieworld.com— A community-run site that aggregates the top Axie tools, guides, and mini-games.