Axie Infinity, which blends entertainment with financial speculation, was hit by a $615m heist
Jarindr Thitadilaka, 28, from Thailand, who co-founded the play-to-earn guild"GuildFi", is in Bangkok, Thailand on April 5 2022. Picture: JARINDR THITADILAKA via REUTERS
In Axie Infinity, users buy virtual blob-like creatures with varying attributes as NFTs, or non-fungible tokens — digital assets whose owner is recorded on the blockchain — for anything from tens of dollars to hundreds of thousands. Axie Infinity’s Vietnam-based owner, Sky Mavis, said it would reimburse the lost money through a combination of its own balance sheet funds and $150m raised by investors including cryptocurrency exchange Binance and venture capital firm a16z.
Players spent $4.9bn on NFTs in games last year, according to market tracker DappRadar, representing about 3% of the global gaming industry. Though demand has cooled since a peak last November, gaming NFTs have still racked up $484m in sales so far in 2022. This model is commonplace across play-to-earn games. Thitadilaka said his guild, GuildFi, grew into a network with 3,000 Axie Infinity players who split their earnings with the asset-owners 50:50. Thitadilaka now runs GuildFi as a full-time job and the company has raised $146m from investors.
For Axie Infinity Pia lets her players keep 70%, while she takes a 30% cut. In another play-to-earn game, Pegaxy, where players buy and trade NFTs of virtual horses to compete in races to win crypto tokens, she splits it 60:40.
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