Axie Infinity's In-Game Token Hits Another All-Time High Amid Staking

Currently, there doesn't seem to be any opposition to the top p2e (play-to-earn) blockchain game, Axie Infinity. Over the last week, the in-game token Axie Infinity Shards (AXS) jumped 135 percent as developers released the AXS staking dashboard. AXS staking is a newly added feature to the mobile game to reward community members who hold a "long-term" mindset on Axie Infinity. With its continuous upwards trend, many people wonder what AXS staking is all about.

Staying true to its ethos, Axie Infinity wants to be the "first game truly owned and operated by the community that plays it."

Designed in collaboration with Delphi Digital, Axie Infinity Shards (AXS) are ERC-20 governance tokens for the "Axie Universe." The primary goal and function of AXS is to "align the incentives between the players of the game and the developers" and it will operate in two ways. AXS operates to reward players who interact with the game while simultaneously incentivizing them to hold their tokens to redeem additional rewards. AXS also enables the decentralization of ownership and governance in Axie Infinity.

More than that, players will be able to earn AXS when playing and participating in different games and events in the Axie Universe and community. Currently, the token has jumped approximately 40 percent overnight. At the time of writing, the token is trading at $143.95 from a modest $48.12 just a month ago.

Staking is often a mechanism used to reward holders who stake the token as the tokens are locked and will accumulate yield. In this way, users and players are incentivized to hold and accumulate as much AXS as possible to receive a higher return of AXS.

To sum up the staking mechanism, the amount of AXS awarded to players is proportional to the total amount of tokens staked in the pool and the total amount one has locked. In the first month alone, Axie Infinity will give out 2 million AXS worth of staking rewards.

According to the Axie Infinity staking dashboard, there are currently 12,449,919 AXS valued at $1.83 billion at current prices. There's a rather large APY of 189 percent with a total of 64,516 AXS given as daily rewards. It's important to note that the APY is variable and will decrease the amount of AXS considerably that will continue to be staked since users are allowed to re-stake their rewards every 24 hours.

As developers have expressed, the AXS token "represents a little slice (shard) of the Axie universe"—a notion that has never been seen before in any other game. As the first of its kind, Axie Infinity staking allows players with a long-term vision to continue to take ownership of this belief while profiting from it.

Since AXS tokens are locked when staked, this inevitably creates upward pressure on the price since the amount of AXS tokens circulating in supply is diminished. The result benefits holders more than new investors as the price has surged to "buy-in." However, its new all-time high has garnered more attention from new investors.

Axie Infinity players have been anxiously anticipating the staking dashboard and many early adopters anticipated a potential AXS drop to reward their early investing. Axie Infinity delivered and shocked its community rewarding a total of $60 million worth of AXS at the time with many "pinching" themselves at the amount received.