Blockchain games have endless expansion possibilities
One of the perks of working in the blockchain industry is that I have the chance to see innovation almost on a daily basis. Recently I had the opportunity to see two different verticals converge, and that’s the reason I would like to share more about Axie Infinity and Uniswap: a decentralized game meets a decentralized finance protocol.
What is Axie Infinity?
Axie Infinity is a game (dapp) that runs on the Ethereum blockchain, where users can collect, raise, breed and battle virtual creatures called axies. Axies are really similar to real-life pets and each one has it’s own unique traits and appearance.
Before going into battles, you need a team of 3 axies, and there are a few ways to acquire the cute little beasts. You can buy axies from the Axie Infinity Marketplace that was recently launched, from 3rd party marketplaces like OpenSea, or by participating in the giveaways, there are often people in the community offering free axies (yes, their community is amazing).
In the December update, along with other great features like real-time card battles or PvE mode, they have also introduced a new token: Small Love Potion.
The Small Love Potion (SLP) can be earned by battling in the PvP Arena or by playing the PvE Adventure mode.
Breeding axies will result in an egg that will go through different transformations before it becomes an adult axie.
⚠ Breeding Axies now requires love potions.
Introducing the love potions into the breeding mechanism makes total sense for the Axie Infinity ecosystem because it encourages the users to actually play the game before they can breed their axies.
You might wonder why breeding axies is important? Breeding two axies with good traits can result in a unique axie that can improve your team and help you win more battles, or it can be sold at any time for ETH.
Here’s the interesting part. Small Love Potion (SLP) is an ERC-20 token that can be used on the Ethereum blockchain. At the time of launch, the token had no predefined value (in ETH) as it was earned by playing the game. But because playing Axie Infinity is actually valuable, the community immediately identified the value and created a liquidity pool on Uniswap, and SLP actually started to have a trading value.
🤯 What is a liquidity pool? What is Uniswap?
What is Uniswap?
Uniswap is a protocol for automated token exchange that is using a series of Ethereum smart contracts. It facilitates the exchange between ETH and ERC-20 tokens, but also between ERC-20 and ERC-20 tokens. Uniswap runs completely on-chain.
Another great thing about Uniswap is that anyone can create a new exchange pair for any ERC-20 token, also no listing fees are required. Each exchange created holds reserves of both ETH and its ERC-20 token pair. Anyone can become a liquidity provider on an exchange and contribute to its reserves, basically participating in the liquidity pool.
➡ You can read more about Uniswap and liquidity pools here.
Earn ETH by playing Axie Infinity
At the moment, anyone can sell or buy SLP tokens on Uniswap, but can also be a liquidity provider. This opens more possibilities for the players to earn ETH and this serves as a great experiment for further development of the dapps ecosystem.
- Play Axie Infinity (PvP or PvE) to earn Small Love Potions (SLP) and then sell them on decentralized exchanges.
- Buy SLP tokens from Uniswap and breed the axies you already own. Nice and unique axies can be sold for ETH.
- Become a liquidity provider and enjoy the earnings from the pool fees.
- Axie Infinity has more items, land and more, so the possibilities are more than just the ones listed above. Explore on your own.
ETH ⇆ SLP Uniswap pool statistics
At the time of writing, the pool reserves are 52,861 SLP tokens and 8,809 ETH with a total liquidy of 2,518 USD. There are 33 liquidity providers and the price of 1 SLP is 0.00017 ETH (0.024 USD).
➡ More details about the ETH ⇆ SLP exchange pool can be found on Pools.fyi
TL;DR
Axie Infinity introduced a new token (SLP) for breeding axies, the community felt excited about this and started a liquidity pool on Uniswap. Now anyone can trade SPL tokens or be a liquidity provider on Uniswap.
