Original Author: WILLIAM M. PEASTER

Original Translation: Deep Tide TechFlow

Axie Infinity has just launched its on-chain upgrade system AXP. This new mechanism is not only significant for Axie Infinity itself, but also has potential implications for the overall NFT ecosystem.

First, let's review Axie Infinity...

Axie Infinity is a turn-based tactical card battle game where players compete by assembling teams of creatures called Axies. "Axie Classic" is the first official version of the game, with a total of 21 seasons from December 2019 to June 2022.

Axie Infinity: Origins is the next evolution stage of the series, starting in April 2022.

Origins introduces new adventure mode (player versus AI) and arena mode (player versus player) experiences, and serves as the foundation for several new game mechanics, including free starter Axies, equipable accessories, and runes, among others.

The 1st season of Origins began in September 2022 and as of July 2023, the 5th season is about to start.

In December 2022, Axie Infinity announced Axie Core, a vision for the fundamental experience of breeding, raising, equipping, and upgrading Axies, all centered around "Axies having on-chain genetic code that can be permanently altered through on-chain actions."

If the announcement of Axie Core was an outline of the vision, then the recently launched Axie Experience Points (AXP) is the next significant step in achieving this vision, where Axies are transforming from passive assets to digital creatures that can evolve through gameplay activities.

What is AXP

"There are now millions of Axies. We have always regarded Axies as an important part of our identity: digital pets, digital friends. To truly achieve this goal, we need to establish a system that allows you to inject your time, effort, energy, and skills into your Axies. This is a system of vertical progress rather than horizontal progress, depth rather than breadth. AXP lays the foundation for Axie Progression. The core of Axie Progression is the conversion of time, effort, skills, and resources into making our Axies stronger, cooler, rarer, and more personalized." - Lunacian's view on AXP

Axie Experience Points (AXP) is a new on-chain upgrade mechanism used to promote Axie's progress and part upgrades.

By playing Origins, you can earn AXP, with each winning team's Axies earning 150 AXP in each ranked battle. Initially, each Axie can earn a maximum of 4,500 AXP per day. These points are non-transferable and are tied to each Axie.

These points are used for upgrades, which is an evolutionary process that synchronizes Axie's level with the chain, increases its level cap, and allows part upgrades.

When Axies reach levels 9, 19, and 29, upgrades can be activated through transactions on the Ronin sidechain, requiring a total of 13,310, 110,480, and 334,170 AXP respectively.

The introduction of AXP and Axie upgrades makes Axies dynamic NFTs that can be improved and personalized over time, marking a transition from passive characters to evolving and personalized characters through gameplay experiences.

In addition, Sky Mavis, the creator of Axie, can now use AXP as a strategic tool in their ecosystem to incentivize desired in-game behaviors, such as completing more dungeons, and reward third-party game developers who achieve specific milestones.

AXP and Overall Situation

I used to work at JPG, which is an NFT management platform where we developed a dynamic "Canonicon" NFT with an integrated JXPG upgrade system. The more curation you do, the more experience points you earn, and you can customize your Canonicon, etc. However, we embedded this system directly into smart contracts.

So, from my personal perspective, I find AXP in Axie Infinity interesting on multiple levels - first, it is crucial for deepening the gameplay of the Axie ecosystem, which is not to be underestimated. Furthermore, it provides a general blueprint for other NFT games and projects, even if they didn't directly embed such a system at launch, they can adopt their own experience point system.

Assets like Axies are stored on Ronin, while the Origins game logic is off-chain. Therefore, with the launch of AXP and upgrades in sync, Sky Mavis is using transactions to regularly update the progress of the on-chain game (currently at levels 9, 19, and 29).

This system can be promoted and applied in new games or added to existing projects. I believe we will see more similar efforts as Axie Infinity remains the largest Web3 game, and many other game projects will study its approach to AXP.

Over time, this on-chain upgrade approach is likely to become the norm not only in Web3 games but also in other areas of space, from curation to PFPs to Web3 social networks. I think this way of doing things will become obvious, just like Uniswap-style decentralized exchanges are obvious to us now. Similarly, I think the arrival of AXP represents a shift in the trend, and soon we may all be upgrading in various ways on-chain.

Meanwhile, it is worth keeping an eye on whether AXP will be available in other Axie ecosystem games such as Axie DoLL, Homeland, Raylights, etc.