Axie Infinity: Can you actually earn money?

Axie Infinity sounds great, but is it realistic?

Axie Infinity is the most famous NFT video game. It’s so famous that in some countries, Axie gamers have literally quit their jobs to become full-time Axie Infinity players and replaced their fiat currency income with crypto.

It boils down to a game that admittedly took inspiration from Pokémon and the cool FaceBook games that saw players collect dragons to fight against each other. They call them Axies and there are nine different types of Axies, each costing an amount of ETH (Ethereum). Ethereum is a cryptocurrency that also has value in fiat currency. This means each Axie you buy or sell is worth real money. To start playing Axie Infinity, you need to obtain three Axies.

And, with some Axies reaching several hundred or even thousand dollars in pricing, it used to be a high entry bar. That was until Sky Mavis developed a scholarship program for those who didn’t have the crypto required to start playing. But, once you’re set up on Axie Infinity, can you actually make a substantial amount of money?

Recently, on Reddit’s AxieInfinity subreddit, a poll was held for people to comment if they had made any substantial income playing Axie Infinity. Out of the 1300 respondents, 586 said yes, and 727 said no. One of the most notable answers was a player who mentioned investing 1.2 ETH to obtain over 70 Axies and 15 Scholars. Another user mentions how it’s possible to earn roughly $10 a day by winning most of your arena matches and finishing your daily quests. This could take four to eight hours, depending on the player’s skill.

So, considering how Axie Infinity is a game and not a job, the money you could earn playing Axie as a side hustle could be some good extra income. But, it’s not necessarily a livable income in many developed countries. Having said that, it’s still better than nothing for just playing two to three hours a day you’d otherwise be using for other games.

Axie Infinity © Sky Mavis

Unfortunately, several players don’t describe Axie Infinity as a fun game if you don’t have many Axies. Players seem to be more motivated to play for the income and not the experience, seeing the experience as a shock absorber for the monotony usually present in office jobs.

For comparison, freelance bidding sites sell freelance gigs for two-digit prices that’d otherwise be in the mid-hundreds of dollars in more developed countries. Usually, workers from third-world countries with lower wages populate these platforms as these lower prices could easily add up to a month’s rent where they live.

The best way to earn money on Axie Infinity is by earning Ethereum tokens known as Small Love Potions (SLP). You obtain these by completing your daily quests or winning battles in the Arena Mode, which is also considered the most challenging method for obtaining SLP as you have to fight other players. When you earn them, you can trade them for ETH. As ETH is a cryptocurrency, SLP could translate into fiat currency. If you have higher-level Axies, you can earn more SLP.

Axie Infinity is the poster-child game for play-to-earn decentralized models. Should other games innovate on the concept, it might herald a new age of creator economy in Web3, where people work by playing instead of working at the office 9-to-5s.