For decades now, video games have been a way we spend money, not make money. That balance is starting to change.

Axie Infinity is a Pokemon-style game with a cryptocurrency twist. Players raise creatures, known as Axies, then lead them into battle and/or trade or sell them for cryptocurrency.

There are two cryptocurrencies within Axie Infinity: Axie Infinity Shards (AXS), and Small Love Potion (SLP). You can buy and sell AXS on Coinbase and other leading exchanges; you can gain SLP within the game and use it to breed new Axies.

Axie Infinity became one of the largest crypto apps on the Ethereum blockchain over the course of 2021 [1] — and the trajectory continues to point up in 2022 and beyond.

The premise of the game focuses on breeding Axies and raising them for battle. That’s a standard video game premise. What makes this Axie different from normal turn-based battle games is each Axie is an NFT, which you can sell in the in-game NFT marketplace for real money.

But that’s not the only way you can make money playing this game.

You can also make money battling Axies, farming SLP, breeding Axies, and even just by playing the game.

So, on the surface, Axie Infinity sounds like a fun and easy way to earn crypto; play your favorite games, earn crypto along the way. But before you call your boss and hand in your notice, it’s important to really understand the time commitment (and financial investment) required to make money through Axie Infinity.

This article will talk you through the many ways you can make money playing Axie — and also cover how much you can truly earn.

How Axie Infinity's Play-to-Earn Model Works

Via: Protocol

The prevailing business model for mobile games in the market today is “pay-to-win” — that is, in order to make real progress in the game or to be competitive in online play, you’ll need to pay money for upgrades, characters, and weapons. This model is profitable for companies but not particularly popular with players. Axie aimed to flip that model around to create a “play-to-earn” video game.

(This is a different approach than, say, making money with Roblox which leans more into the video game creator economy than play-to-earn.) 

And it was possible thanks to the growth of web3 and popularity of NFTs , which with it brought a range of new app opportunities. The result: Axie Infinity is a game, but many people also see it as an investment opportunity.

In order to play Axie Infinity, you must own at least three creatures, and the cheapest creature sits at around $200 (in Ethereum) in the Axie marketplace. You’ll need a digital wallet like Metamask in order to buy creatures, collect SLP, and play the game.

If you don't have a casual $600 of disposable income lying around to invest in a game, you can still get started on the game — you’ll just need to give up a portion of your winnings. Yield Guild Games (YGG) offer players the chance to loan out creatures and take 30% off their earnings in return. There are also scholarship options available (more on that later).

On its face, Axie Infinity gameplay is similar to a traditional turn-based battle game. You gain tokens for playing a battle and extra tokens for winning. You can then use these tokens to breed more creatures. But unlike traditional turn-based battle games, each creature is an NFT, so when you breed new ones, you are creating brand new unique NFTs.

How to Make Money Playing Axie Infinity

Breeding Axies

Perhaps the most common money-making option in Axie is to breed creatures. You can use SLP to breed animals from your starting creatures, each of them becoming a unique NFT. Each NFT creature has a specific value, so the more Axies you breed, the more you can make. 

Breeding Axies can make you money in several ways. 

For starters, by breeding more advanced Axies, you will be able to win more battles. As we have touched on already, winning battles provides you with SLP as a prize. So the more battles you win, the more crypto you can gather.

If you have more Axies than you can need for battle, you can use your additional Axies to set up “scholarships” for other users — so you make crypto from their battles. (We’ll cover this below.)

If you’d rather cash out your Axies fast, you can sell them in the game’s marketplace. This option will provide you with a quick source of one-off income, whereas the other two breeding money-making options will provide a steady stream of income over a longer period.

How to breed Axies

Every time you breed Axies, it costs you SLP, so you will need to gather enough SLP to continue breeding. 

There are seven different forms of breeding, each one based on how much SLP you have available. The more SLP you have, the higher the breed count. You can check out the ratio of breeding to SLP below.

Via: Lynnyl

You can breed different Axies to make more or less valuable Axies offspring, so before you sit your Axies down to have The Talk then send them off to breed like bunnies, do some research and calculate the best options available to you.

There are plenty of breeding simulators online that can help you make this decision. And you thought all that time learning about Punnett squares in high school biology was going to waste.

Farming Smooth Love Potion (SLP)

Axie Infinity uses Smooth Love Potions (SLP) as its digital currency. SLP enables you to breed more Axies — and breeding Axies is necessary for moving up in the game and making money. 

Users must have a certain amount of SLP to breed an Axies. The cost of breeding depends on how high the breed count is of the parent Axies. (Don’t worry. That will make sense once you’ve played the game for a little bit. For now, though, just know you’ll need SLP to breed Axies.)

So, how do you get your hands on it and start selling it for a healthy profit? The most obvious way to gather SLP is when you win a battle in Axie Infinity. 

Via: Market Realist

Seems simple enough, right?

Well, not quite.

This technique is quite time-consuming, as you might need to win as many as 15 competitions to earn enough SLP to execute your first breed. As shown in the graph above, you need at least 600 SLP to breed one creature.

The amount of SLP you earn per battle depends on your match-making ranking (MMR). Your MMR will go up when you win a match, and down when you lose. A word of caution: The higher your MMR, the trickier your opponents will be.

However, if you are willing to put in the time and effort, you can win battles to earn SLP, use that SLP to breed more creatures, then earn real money by either selling those Axies or loaning them out to scholarship players.

That’s not the only way you can use SLP to make money. Instead of using your SLP to breed Axies, you can choose to sell your SLP to other players. 

SLP is a standalone cryptocurrency. You can trade SLP on decentralized exchanges (DEX) or centralized exchanges like Zipmex [3].

Other players will want to buy your SLP as they attempt to execute larger breeds. As you can imagine, many players won’t grind through enough battles to get the 10,200 SLP needed to execute a top-level breed — so they’ll need to supplement their SLP totals through purchases.

Scholarships

Axie Infinity has a high buy-in fee — one that can prohibit new players from joining in. With starter teams costing at least $600 — more than an entire video game system like a PlayStation 5 — many people can’t afford to play Axie Infinity.

That's where scholarships come in.

Scholarships allow you to play Axie without breaking the bank (well, at least, without breaking your bank).

When an experienced breeder offers other players free Axies, it’s known as a scholarship. The scholar uses those Axies to play the game and gain SLP, and the experienced breeder receives a cut of the winnings.

Now… this is not an official game feature; you’ll make these transactions outside of Axie. So make sure to vet the people you work with on scholarship.

Via: Leveldash

Scholarships rose to prominence as some veteran breeders built a backlog of Axies and wanted to get recurring value out of them — not just sell them outright. [4] Fights are three vs. three, meaning you can only use three Axies at a time. Players tend to store a few backup Axies if they are a high level or they are strong against certain opponents, but after that, all other Axies will sit unused on the bench. And owning multiple accounts is against the terms and conditions of the game, making it a major risk to do.

Experienced breeders will also teach scholars how to play the game well, including how to farm SLP and the best attack combos. In return, any earnings the scholar makes are split based on a predetermined agreement between the breeder and scholar.

Scholarships are a win-win opportunity for the Axie community, as breeders with many Axies can earn passive income, and scholars can play and earn for free.

How to become a scholar

1. Search for guilds or breeders looking for Axies scholars. There are posts on Reddit hourly requesting scholars, so that is a good place to start. You can also check Axie Infinity Facebook groups or the official Discord server.

2. Get in touch with breeders to let them know you’re interested. If you find a potential breeder to work with, reach out to them and give them some information about you. Explain where you live, how much time you are going to put into the game, how much information you already have, and what percentage split you are looking to get. All of this information will help a manager see that you are serious, and move the conversation along quickly so you can get started sooner.

3. Start playing. Once approved, receive your Axies and go to work!

Playing the game

The final money-making option within Axie Infinity is to play the game. (I think it speaks volumes about the focus of this game that this ranks fourth on the list!)

Once you have gathered your first three Axies, either via scholarship or payment, you can form your team. You will gain SLP tokens and AXS crypto as your prizes if your team wins a match in either Adventure or Arena Mode. (More on those modes below.)

Matches are turn-based — however, unlike other turn-based games, you can’t select your target, the game automatically targets the Axie closest to your party.

With each fight, you receive action cards at random. You can play these cards on your turn, depending on how much energy they cost and how much energy you have.

Energy

It costs you one energy to fight. You can still battle without any energy, but you won't receive any rewards. The speed at which your energy replenishes is dependent on how many Axies you possess.

Adventure Mode

Via: Leveldash

I would recommend that, as a new player, you start in Adventure Mode. Here you can gain up to 100 SLP and experience (EXP) for your Axies every day.

In Adventure Mode, the levels begin very easy and progressively get more challenging the more you’re winning (as is the case in, you know, pretty much every video game ever). If you get stuck on a level, you can continue to farm SLP and EXP at your current level.

Arena Mode

Via: Axiewrangler

In Arena mode, you will be able to earn SLP for each win, with the SLP amount based on your matchmaking rating (MMR). The game determines your ranking based on an average compared to the rest of the community. The higher your rank, the more you can make for each win.

It takes a while to get your MMR up, but the rewards are greater than in Adventure Mode once you do.

How Much Crypto Can I Make Playing Axie Infinity?

Players who spend numerous hours playing the game can expect to earn between $8 and $40 per day. [5]

This figure depends entirely on what Axies you possess, the powers those Axies have, and how many wins you collect each day. It also depends on how much time you have to devote to the game.

Based on this data, it’s tough to make a full-time living in the United States or other developed countries simply by playing the game. However, in less economically developed countries, many users played this game to earn a living during the height of the pandemic.

As the hype surrounding this game has died down slightly, so too has the value of the cryptocurrency within Axie Infinity.

However, the amount of cryptocurrency that you earn for each fight you win does not change based on the value of the coin. For example, if you earn 10 coins for a win and those coins have a value of $1 each, a fight win is worth $10. However, if their value is 70 cents, you still win 10 coins, but they are only worth $7. (Bear in mind, these are example values for clarity only.) 

This means that when the game’s crypto coin is performing well on the exchange, battling is more lucrative.

If you opt for the other methods to make money with Axie Infinity, such as breeding and selling your Axies, the potential to earn increases slightly. Fxstreet calculated the average NFT creature sells for $270 in the Axie marketplace.

So as you can see, if you are willing to invest upfront and put the hours into this game, there is plenty of earning potential there. 

However, if you expect to play the game eight hours a day and earn a living, that’s most likely not going to happen. Then again… think about how much time you devote now to video games to earn zero dollars. Axie Infinity probably won’t convert your video game time into extravagant wealth, but if you want to make your video game time at all profitable, this just might be the best way to do so right now.

Make Money With Axie Infinity: Conclusions and Takeaways

There you have it, all of the ways you can make money from the Axie Infinity crypto game.

Two final takeaways to keep in mind:

• While crypto-earning games are a relatively new concept, as the technology develops rapidly, expect to see more blockchain-based apps and games. (There are already lots of options springing up if you want to make money playing video games.) So if you aim to earn money from playing games, research all the options available that best suit your needs.

• If you are willing to put in the necessary time and effort, it is certainly possible to make money playing Axie Infinity. Over time, you’ll learn to breed cleverly and you’ll figure out how to complete challenges and win fights.