You might have heard of “play to earn” gaming. But what if you could play to earn a living?
For an increasing number of people, blockchain gaming is making this a reality.
View the video below to see how a small community of people in the rural Philippines have turned to the game Axie Infinity to earn a livelihood during the challenging lockdown conditions brought on by the COVID pandemic.
It’s a real world example of how blockchain technologies are enabling not just a raft of new games for players around the world, but actually providing paths out of poverty.
Axie Infinity is a decentralised application (dapp) that runs on the Ethereum blockchain and allows players to raise, trade, and battle digital creatures called Axies. Think Pokemon but with the ability to breed new Axies — more akin to CryptoKitties, the digital creatures that proved so popular in 2017 they started jamming up the entire Ethereum network.
Like CryptoKitties, Axies are non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which means each Axie is completely unique, can’t be copied, and is provably scarce.
There’s a few ways that players can make money with Axies. The most common method is to earn in-game tokens called Smooth Love Potion (SLP), which they receive for winning battles against other player’s Axies. These SLP tokens can then be sold on centralised exchanges as well as decentralised exchanges such as Uniswap. The SLP token is in demand from other players as it’s needed to help breed new Axies. Players can also chase higher returns by breeding and selling Axies. For rare Axies, this can be incredibly lucrative, with the highest price ever paid being over 100 ETH.
The game’s popularity is skyrocketing and it now has more than 300K daily active users. It was created by the Vietnamese startup, Sky Mavis, which closed a funding round led by Animoca Brands of $1.5 million in 2019. Monthly revenues from the game now exceed the revenues of MetaMask, PancakeSwap, Synthetix, MakerDAO and Curve combined.
But these revenues aren’t just a windfall for the game developer, they’re actually helping players in emerging economies supplement their income by playing it. In many countries where government support during lockdowns was limited or entirely missing, COVID had a devastating effect on communities as unemployment skyrocketed. Now playing games like Axie can even surpass a full time wage in parts of the Philippines or many other developing countries around the world.
It’s not just young people in the Philippines playing the game. Lolo Silvero is 75 years of age. He and his partner, Lola Vergie, found things extremely challenging during the pandemic as the revenue from the small shop they run was severely impacted. Lolo and Lola now play Axie Infinity to supplement their income.
“Even if it’s just a little, we are still earning from playing. That can be used to buy our medicines as old people like us always need medicine. We have a lot of maintenance medicines… We hope that Axie won’t go away.” — Lola Vergie
Unlike many games that require a PC or console to play, Axie can be played on a smartphone, which not only makes it mobile and easier to play from any location, but also lowers the barrier to entry given basic smartphones can be bought for less than $30.
Another factor driving adoption is that game developers are now turning to Layer 2 solutions to lower transaction fees and avoid congestion of the Ethereum network. Axie Infinity has now moved to a side chain called Ronin. This means the only fees players face is an initial transfer fee from their Metamask account to bridge across to Ronin. The entire Axie ecosystem runs on Ronin and provides players with 100 free transactions a day.
This cute little game has now captured the interest of entire communities in the Philippines and is growing strongly just via word of mouth. It’s a great example of a real use case for dapps that combine the unique features of NFTs, gaming, and the ability to earn real money.
It also demonstrates that people who might traditionally be out of the spotlight for game developers due to having a low disposable income are now at the forefront of innovation in blockchain and gaming thanks to the play to earn model.
It is these types of use cases that Amasa is so excited about as they help people anywhere in the world gain access to opportunities that simply have never existed until now.
For more information on how you’ll soon be able to maximise the value of tokens earned from games such as Axie Infinity or other micro income stream platforms to boost your income, check out the Amasa links below.
About Amasa
Amasa’s mission is to connect millions of users to Web 3.0 and DeFi to improve their financial situations. We’re driving adoption of platforms that reward participants with micro income streams for their gaming, time, energy, attention, content, data and interactions.
We’re doing that by building the world’s first micro income stream investment app. The Amasa app will make micro income streams easy to capture, combine and access as a stabilised income, then amplify through user-selected DeFi investment options.
Combine. Stabilise. Amplify. All in the background of everyday life.
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