Axie Infinity (AXS) was the game that defined play-to-earn gaming. At its peak, players in the Philippines and Venezuela earned more playing Axie than minimum wage jobs. The token crashed 98 percent but the infrastructure remains.
How Axie Works
Axie Infinity is a Pokemon-style battle game where creatures called Axies are NFTs owned by players. Players earn Smooth Love Potion (SLP) by winning battles and completing quests. AXS is the governance token used for staking and governance.
Inside the Ronin Hack
In March 2022 the Ronin bridge was drained of about 173,600 ETH and 25.5 million USDC - roughly 600 million dollars at the time. The attackers compromised five of nine validator keys, enough to approve forged withdrawals.
The US Treasury later attributed the theft to the Lazarus Group, a North Korean state unit. Sky Mavis reimbursed affected users and rebuilt the validator set to more than 20 participants. The scar remains: bridge security is now the first question for any gaming chain custody model.
The Rise and Fall
AXS peaked at 165 dollars in November 2021. The game had 2.7 million daily active users. Then three things happened: the Ronin bridge hack (600 million stolen), SLP inflation collapsed the economy, and bear market drained speculative inflows. AXS fell below 5 dollars.
Current State
Sky Mavis rebuilt Ronin with additional validators. Daily active users dropped to around 500,000. The studio pivoted toward a more sustainable game economy with Axie Origins and Homeland. Origins added a free-to-play onramp, removing the upfront cost of buying a team, which had been the original growth bottleneck.
Ronin as a Gaming Chain
The quiet second act is Ronin repositioning as a general gaming network rather than one game's rail. Pixels, a farming game, migrated in 2023 and at times drove most of the chain's activity. Other studios followed for the cheap transactions and built-in audience.
The shift matters to AXS holders because chain activity, not Axie gameplay alone, now drives fee flow and relevance. Watch the titles launching on Ronin more closely than the Axie roadmap.
Vesting Overhang and Emissions
AXS launched with a majority of supply allocated to team, advisors, ecosystem funds and play-to-earn rewards, vesting across roughly 2021 to 2026. Scheduled releases create recurring sell pressure on known dates, and staking rewards were cut repeatedly to slow emission.
Check the release calendar before holding through a dated event. Free float grows on schedule regardless of demand, and price has to absorb it.
Trading on Kanokwallet
On Kanokwallet, AXS trades against USDT with published fees. The token remains volatile - 10 percent daily moves are standard. Use bracket orders and size small.
Reading the Gaming Sector
AXS rarely moves alone. It trades with SAND, MANA and GALA as a category, and the category rotates with metaverse and Web3 funding news. Funding rounds into gaming studios tend to lead the tokens by two to three quarters, which makes them the early signal worth tracking.
Support at 4.80. Resistance at 6.20 then 7.50. AXS moves with gaming sector sentiment and broader altcoin trends.
Trading the Events
Treat AXS as an event trade on Kanokwallet: known vesting releases, new game launches on Ronin, and marketplace volume spikes are the catalysts that actually move it. Size at 0.5-1 percent of the account, bracket every entry against 4.80 support, and bank partials into 6.20 or 7.50 rather than holding for the old 165 dream. If the gaming category breaks down together, cut first and analyze later - downside correlation is the one property that never left this trade. Play-to-earn gaming was a genuine innovation that created real economic value for participants. Whether it returns depends on whether game economies can be designed sustainably without hyperinflation.