Trung Nguyen is a Vietnamese programmer who founded Sky Mavis, the team behind the massively successful Axie Infinity play-to-earn game. Axie Infinity is an Ethereum-powered DApp with its own sidechain, Ronin.
Nguyen is a lifelong strategy gamer that, after experiencing CryptoKitties, went to build a blockchain-based title inspired by his childhood favorites.
The first half of 2021 was a successful year for Axie Infinity, with the project gaining a significant following in the Philippines due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic. June saw a record-breaking day in which the project made $9.72 million in 24 hours, beating out even the massive Chinese conglomerate, Tencent. In August, the country’s Department of Finance pushed to tax income from Axie Infinity. In September, the majority of Axie Infinity’s player base was located in the Philippines.
Axie Infinity announced it would give out more than $60 million worth of tokens to early adopters in September, alongside the launch of staking capabilities. Shortly afterward, Sky Mavis revealed its intent to build a decentralized exchange on its Ronin sidechain.
In October, the game had a reported 1.8 million daily players with $33 million in daily trading volume. Yet by December, the daily player count had fallen to around 300,000.
Investors have hope in the project’s future, however, as Nguyen and company closed a successful $152 million Series B funding round in October. He aims to build a platform for developers to work on their own blockchain-based titles.
In November, a land plot in Axie Infinity sold for $2.3 million or 550 ETH, allegedly the highest amount ever paid for a virtual real estate plot. That same month, Andrew Wilson, CEO of Electronic Arts, claimed that NFTs and play-to-earn games are the future of the gaming industry.
November also saw the launch of Thetan Arena, a play-to-earn competitor to Axie Infinity that many claimed will steal Nguyen’s thunder.
In December, the Game Management Committee, a division of the South Korean government, pushed to ban all play-to-earn games from the country’s Google Play and App Store platforms. While the effects of this are yet to be seen regarding Axie Infinity, it doesn’t bode well for the play-to-earn industry from 2022 onward.
Conversely, the term “NFT” surpassed the term “crypto” in Google Search activity for the first time ever that same month. The industry can certainly attribute much of that activity to Axie Infinity’s popularity.
Finally, at the end of December, Axie Infinity tweeted that United States citizens could purchase WETH and SLP — the two essential assets for using the platform — with fiat via Ramp Network.
Nguyen’s Sky Mavis has been an inspiration for many Vietnamese developers, with competitors like Thetan Arena emerging from the same region. Even so, Axie Infinity has no intention of slowing down.
2022 will likely see Nguyen expanding the Axie Infinity brand, ensuring users from all over the world can invest in its various tokens with their local fiat. It is assumed Nguyen will dedicate more support toward Ronin-based development platforms, uplifting developers with his successful technology.
2021 saw a significant increase in interest toward play-to-earn and metaverse projects as well. Axie’s popularity is a key benefactor in that interest, and more people are sure to get involved as developers build out their visions of digital living and alternate forms of income. Axie already has a basic version of the Metaverse with land to invest within, and users can expect more of that in 2022.
Metaverse
