Metaversal is a Bankless newsletter for weekly level-ups on NFTs, virtual worlds, & collectibles
Dear Bankless Nation,
There’s an NFT project that’s dominating the entire dapp space right now when it comes to 30-day protocol revenues. Indeed, not even Ethereum’s biggest DeFi heavyweights can match this game’s numbers at the moment!
The prodigious project in question? Axie Infinity.
The pioneering play-to-earn NFT game is redefining how many people think about and approach the cryptoeconomy, and it’s got the stats to prove it.
Let’s dig into some of these stats today, as something special is happening 💫
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Axie Infinity, a digital pets battle adventure, is Ethereum’s most popular game and among Ethereum’s most lucrative dapps right now.
For those not familiar with the title, Axie Infinity players breed, collect, battle, and trade their pet Axie monsters, and with nearly 300,000 daily active users (DAUs) the game’s breeding and marketplace fees are now seriously starting to stack up.
Indeed, crypto data platform Token Terminal’s 30-day protocol revenue dashboard shows that as of yesterday Axie Infinity facilitated +$11 million in cumulative protocol revenues over the past 30 days. Woah.
Graph via Token Terminal.
To put that into perspective, Axie Infinity is currently generating more 30-day protocol revenues than top DeFi apps like lending protocol Maker ($8.4M) and decentralized exchanges Sushi ($6.3M) and Curve ($3.6M)! As such, Axie Infinity presently accounts for no less than 20% of the total protocol revenues generated by all the dapp’s Token Terminal tracks right now.
These are really impressive numbers, and they remind me of a recent comment from Axie Infinity co-founder and COO Aleksander Larsen: “Fun games will bring blockchain technology to the masses.”
Notably, this Axie Infinity surge has been powered in no small part by the recent arrival of the game’s bespoke Ronin sidechain, which has brought near-free and near-instant transactions to the Axie economy. I’ve personally tried Ronin, and it’s easy to use and comparable to bridging money to Polygon experience-wise.