What's on Deck for on Deck?

The Axie protocol generates revenue by taking a 4.25% fee when players buy and sell Axie NFTs in its marketplace, and by charging fees for breeding Axies to create new ones in the form of its tokens, Axie Infinity Shards (AXS) and Smooth Love Potion (SLP).

Crypto’s network effects can create unbelievably fast-growing businesses with moats.

Delphi projects that Axie will end the year having generated $1.1 billion in revenue, mostly from fees generated through its NFT marketplace and from breeding Axies to meet the demand from hundreds of thousands of new players each month. There are more than 600k players currently, around the world, as many as 60% of whom are in the Philippines.

Scores of people in the Philippines and Vietnam have quit their jobs and make a better living playing Axie for hours every day. They earn Smooth Love Potion (SLP), a token earned through Axie gameplay that can be exchanged for fiat, which in turn can be used to pay for food, shelter, medical bills, and all of the other things needed to survive.

Axie co-founder and growth lead, Jeff “Jiho” Zirlin, told me: The idea is to introduce something that’s new and a little scary [crypto] through something fun, familiar, and nostalgic. Then, adding property rights and economic freedom make it really special.

Crypto can create new economic opportunities for all types of people globally, not just whales, DeFi degens, and bitcoin maxis, delivering on the promise of a more level playing field while also capturing economic value.

In May, it did $3.0 million.

A typical game would spend millions of dollars on marketing and keep the majority of profits to itself; Axie spends nothing on marketing, but lets players keep most of the value created. That should lead to a stickier game and more opportunities for expansion.

Roblox, and games/worlds like Minecraft are a huge step forward. Instead of just paying money to game developers, users can actually make money by developing for the ecosystem. It does, however, fall just short of the Bill Gates Line for a platform -- something is a platform if everything built on top of the platform makes more than the platform it... See more