Hello, fellow Lunacian,
Welcome to yet another issue of Axie News! What can we say, this was absolutely crazy week in Lunacia. We finally have RONIN DEX! It’s here it’s live and it’s absolutely crazy what it did for Axie and its economy! So, let’s not waste words on the intro and dive right into the news sections! Woohooo!
🕹 Axie Infinity Updates
All this time we were asking WEN DEX, Sky Mavis? I wonder what will we be asking from now on when season 19? Well, whatever it will be the DEX is here, it’s alive and kicking.
Decentralized Exchanges (DEXs) are applications that allow people to exchange between any two assets without the need of a traditional bank or other trusted third party by using smart contracts.
They picked a great name too, KATANA! It fits so nicely into their naming of the sidechain “RONIN”, kudos for consistency in naming Sky Mavis, I am liking it a lot. Katana will allow anyone to easily swap between different tokens such as SLP, AXS, or WETH within the Axie Infinity ecosystem. Furthermore, it allows you to deposit those assets into the liquidity pools to get passive rewards from the trading fees. You can even farm RON token alongside that. Yes, RON is a new token. What does RON do exactly?
RON is the ecosystem token for the Ronin chain. It will eventually be used to pay gas fees and secure the network for both Axie Infinity and future games/products hosted on the chain. RON’s primary purpose is to ensure that Ronin will always be a blockchain owned by our community.
When you send axies or SLP or AXS from one ronin wallet to another, you see that little RON fee that is currently free for the 100 transactions? In the future, this will not be free and it will be paid with RON tokens.
Ronin DEX is removing a lot of friction within the ecosystem which means easier onboarding of players and more liquidity for your in-game assets. This release is a game-changer for Axie Infinity. - Mr.Kepolas
💰 State of the Economy
Like with every major release from Sky Mavis, this too had an enormous impact on the economy. Of course, DEX is a vital part of the economy so there are no surprises. One of the most notable events is that SLP jumped in price quite a lot. It kind of feels hard to understand the SLP price rise when we saw the biggest mint rate in the history of Axie Infinity. Understanding that the SLP is minted only when is claimed, explains a lot. Many players have been holding SLP in their game client and didn’t claim it. Now with DEX up and running large amount of people claimed their SLP to swap it for WETH to hold or/and buy some axies. On top of that, we saw a lot of people add SLP/WETH pair to the liquidity pool, and that locked quite a large amount of SLP out of circulation. Now when the rush has calmed down, the price of SLP is also calming down.
Marketplace went nuts hitting all-time high traffic and sales. Again, many decided to buy axies with their SLP. Some people report that is hard to fight for good floor deals as those are sold out very fast. The frenzy lasted around two days, but it’s calming down now. We still don’t know when will we see the balance patch so no point in preparing for the new season buying blindly.
AXS is on the rise again. With DEX some people decided to add AXS/WETH pair to the liquidity pool. This removed a nice portion of AXS from staking thus increasing APR from staking back to 126%.
Overall, the release of DEX gave a lot more options to passively earn and an easier way to be involved with Axie Infinity economy and ecosystem in general. We are in for a hell of a ride from here. - Mr.Kepolas
👨🏽🤝👨🏽 Community Spotlight
Instead of highlighting one individual, I decided to mention one guild that stands out the most (in my humble opinion).
There are many Axie Infinity guilds and scholarship programs. Yield Guild is leading the pack. It is certainly the biggest guild of all with over 5000 scholars. But no other guild has a stronger community and synergy than LootSquad. I open Twitter and see ‘LOOT’ usernames everywhere. It seems like LSG scholars are real ambassadors of the brand. And even though, LootSquad might not be the most competitive guild, it is definitely the most impactful and outstanding community in Axie Infinity. Recently they have released LOOT Magazine, the project inspired and led by guild members. There are many upcoming streamers and they all support each other. It’s amazing to have a people cantered gaming guild that is using NFTs to empower the world.
- Se Won
🎨 Lunacian Art Scene
This week’s favorite artwork is done by Rosendo. It’s an absolutely beautiful art of his beast axie. Japanese culture vibes, the setting, and little details are making this artwork so memorable. You can support the artist by following him on Twitter.
- Se Won
⚔ eSports Overview
Axie Infinity eSports continues this weekend with Axie Infinity Fall Showcase presented by @Okcoin You can watch it RIGHT NOW HERE on Twitch. Interestingly we have Zyori, 1437, Jaeger, and Sedano as casters. The pretty neat lineup wouldn’t you say? I am especially happy to hear Zyori is back at casting some games. It’s always nice to hear his observations and expert commentary.
- Mr.Kepolas
❓ Question of the Week
Why cased SLP price increase?
As we know, earlier this week Sky Mavis released Ronin DEX, called ‘Katana’. It was a big step forward that enabled Axie Infinity users to swap tokens with no fees inside the Ronin chain (no need to use Binance unless selling for fiat). During the first 24 hours after the launch of the DEX, we saw a record-breaking amount of Axie sales on the marketplace. Most likely, a lot of users swapped earned SLP for ETH to get new axies.
Besides that, now people can earn $RON rewards by adding their tokens to the liquidity pool. More on that here. A lot of users added the SLP-ETH pair to the liquidity pool. This means a lot of SLP tokens were locked and removed out of circulation.
All of mentioned above caused the SLP price to increase. However, as I said earlier, SLP is a utility token. The value of this token will always be volatile and depend on many factors. Major updates usually affect the price positively, but after a while, the price tends to decrease (what we see right now). So to ensure the stable price of the token new burning in-game mechanics must be introduced. - Se Won