Have you ever thought of having a video game you love playing being on a blockchain? That is what Axie Infinity is, a video game, but slightly different from what you remember about video games. This is because it is a Non-Fungible Token (NFT) video game.
We will explore the meaning of that shortly in this article. We will also discuss in detail what this game is, how it works and how it has evolved since its explosive growth in 2021. So let’s get started.
What is Axie?
As earlier stated it is an NFT video game. That is the shortest description of it, but there is more to it. You don’t just play it for fun, you can actually play it to earn rewards in cryptocurrency. This placed it in the category of Play-to-earn NFT video games that reward players with cryptocurrencies for playing the game.
Axie Infinity was developed by Sky Mavis, a Vietnam-based technology company that creates decentralized applications and services. The game was inspired by CryptoKitties, a dApp that first appeared on the Ethereum blockchain. Sky Mavis turned CryptoKitties from being like collectibles to making it actually look like a video game. Axie Infinity went on to become one of the highest-grossing NFT projects in history, generating over $4.3 billion in lifetime NFT sales as of 2026.
AXS is available on:
How Axie Infinity works
One thing that actually sets Axie Infinity apart from other ordinary video games is the economic incentive attached. While playing the game and having fun, players can also earn rewards in crypto as a result. This makes players want to play longer, which has driven the growth of the project. The characters in the game are called axies, which actually were derived from the original Ethereum CryptoKitties.
The axies each belongs to one of several categories. Axies are digitized as NFTs that players can collect, breed, raise, battle, and trade. Each one has its advantages and disadvantages depending on the group they were born into. For instance, an axie that is fire can burn grass, but is disadvantaged when it encounters water. They also have many capabilities based on which players can choose them.
Players can breed axies with certain characteristics in order to raise new ones that have a combination of such characteristics for a particular purpose. With such characteristics of the hybrid axie which is usually for battle, a player can start to win battles and earn more rewards.
The current main game mode is Axie Origins, a free-to-play turn-based card game that replaced the original battle system. Unlike the earlier version, new players no longer need to purchase three Axies to start playing. Axie Origins uses competitive seasonal formats with skill-based gameplay, making it more accessible to newcomers while rewarding experienced players.
Axie Infinity tokens: AXS and SLP
Axie Infinity uses a multi-token economic model:
AXS (Axie Infinity Shards) is the core governance and utility token. It has a maximum supply of 270 million tokens, with approximately 148 million in circulation as of early 2026. AXS holders can stake their tokens to earn rewards, participate in governance votes and use AXS for breeding new Axies. In January 2026, Sky Mavis introduced Bonded AXS (bAXS), a non-transferable token that replaced tradable AXS game rewards. bAXS is bound to player accounts and can only be used for in-game activities, staking or governance. This was designed to stop automated “farm-and-dump” bot farms from crashing the token price.
SLP (Smooth Love Potion) is the in-game reward token. Players earn SLP by winning battles and completing quests. SLP is used for breeding new Axies and buying in-game items. SLP used for breeding is permanently burned, but new SLP is generated through gameplay, so it is ultimately an inflationary token. In January 2026, SLP emissions in the Origins game mode were halted, reducing daily token supply inflation by over 30%.
Both AXS and SLP operate on the Ronin blockchain, an Ethereum sidechain purpose-built by Sky Mavis. This reduces the gas fees incurred on Ethereum when making transactions, which is essential for a gaming token with frequent, small transactions.
The rise and fall of Axie Infinity
Axie Infinity experienced explosive growth in 2021, particularly in Southeast Asia where players in the Philippines and other countries earned meaningful income through gameplay. AXS reached an all-time high above $160 in November 2021 and the game attracted millions of daily active players.
However, the project faced serious setbacks. In March 2022, the Ronin bridge was hacked for approximately $625 million, one of the largest DeFi hacks in history. The hack was later attributed to North Korea’s Lazarus Group. Sky Mavis eventually reimbursed affected users and strengthened the bridge’s security with additional validator nodes.
The broader crypto bear market of 2022-2023, combined with the unsustainable nature of the original play-to-earn model (where new player money was essentially paying existing player earnings), led to a massive decline in users and token prices. AXS dropped over 97% from its all-time high to trade between $4.50 and $7.20 in early 2026. SLP also lost virtually all of its value.
Since then, Sky Mavis has pivoted toward sustainability: making the game free-to-play, introducing skill-based competitive seasons, reforming tokenomics with bAXS, and establishing the Axie Infinity Foundation for community governance. As of 2026, the game maintains over 100,000 daily unique active wallets and processes more than 1 million on-chain transactions per day on Ronin.
Axie Infinity in 2026: what’s next?
Sky Mavis is developing “Atia’s Legacy”, a massively multiplayer online (MMO) game set in the Axie universe. It promises Eve Online-style complex economies and risk-to-earn PvP combat. Over 17 million players signed up for early access.
Meanwhile, Axie Infinity Classic (the original V2 game) will be shut down after June 24, 2026, with all development resources redirected to Axie Origins and Atia’s Legacy. The Axie Infinity Foundation, launched in August 2025, manages the Community Treasury (holding 23 million AXS as of July 2025) and implements governance decisions voted on by AXS holders.
Whether Axie Infinity can recapture even a fraction of its 2021 glory remains to be seen. The play-to-earn model that made it famous has been widely acknowledged as unsustainable. The project’s future depends on whether it can successfully transition into a genuinely fun game that people want to play for the gameplay itself, with token rewards as a bonus rather than the primary motivation.
Please note: investing in gaming tokens like AXS carries significant risk. AXS has declined over 97% from its all-time high. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Never invest more than you can afford to lose.
Table of Contents