Axie Infinity: In demand, yes, but is it delivering well enough

Axie Infinity brought GameFi and NFTs to prominence with its play-to-earn model. Ergo, it is not surprising that to date, it stands to be the most sought-after NFT.

Alas, in a market where NFTs are becoming the next big thing, can Axie continue to keep its crown?

Axie Infinity is still at #1

According to a research report from Design Bundles, Axie Infinity was the most searched NFT on Google over a month.

Bringing in over 3.86 million searches, Axie was way ahead of its closest competitors. The Sandbox had far fewer searches with a figure of 555k while NBA Prime Shot took the third spot with 477k searches.

Even so, many wonder how and why Axie is in more demand than the many other well-known NFTs in the market. CryptoPunks, known to be some of the most expensive NFTs, Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) selling for almost $40 million, exist. And yet, these were ranked ninth and tenth, respectively, in the research report.

The reason behind this is the GameFi model of Axie Infinity, one that has made its NFTs a very important resource.

At one point during the pandemic, Axie Infinity became a primary source of income in the Philippines and had to be classified as currency by the government there.

Since earnings from the game allure more players, the mandate of owning 3 ‘Axies’ is also contributing to the demand.

In fact, about two weeks ago, Axie Infinity became the first NFT series to cross $4 billion in sales. In comparison, CryptoPunks has only managed to conduct $2 billion in sales to date.

However, the price movement of the Axie Infinity Shards (AXS) is still influenced by the broader market trend. A big reason behind this is the correlation between AXS and Bitcoin.

The same has been above 0.8 since December. So, going forward, the king coin will be calling the shots in AXS’s case as well.

Even after the aforementioned news came out, there wasn’t much bullishness observed. Hence, the evidence is right there.

Axie Infinity correlation to Bitcoin | Source: Intotheblock – AMBCrypto

Additionally, on the DEX front, Axie’s Ronin bridge hasn’t been registering any significant gains either. Three of the major Ronin bridge tokens – Ethereum, AXS, and Smooth Love Potion (SLP) have been mostly charting outflows instead of inflows on a daily basis.

Even if there are no outflows, inflows still haven’t appeared in more than a month.

Axie Infinity Ronin Bridge netflows | Source: Dune – AMBCrypto

Thus, all the leverage Axie Infinity has is its play-to-earn model. This will keep driving more players and higher NFT sales.