Key Points

• Origin and Land development are chugging along and gaining momentum. Community members have been key sources of input for both products.

• Your Axies are becoming tickets to an infinite realm of experiences thanks to the Axie Builder’s program and user-generated content initiatives.

• We are making massive investments towards community partnerships and expanding the Sky Mavis team.

• The Ronin Bridge. Land staking. Origin updates. Community Partnerships. AxieCon. We are putting together a string of victories and building through turmoil.

Axie Infinity hatched in 2018, and over the life of the project, our community has experienced both the euphoria that comes with successful launches, growth, and building together, as well as the learning opportunities and struggles that come in times of constraint, pressure, and yes… failure. Our goal is to build something trailblazing and world changing together with you. This will require our consistent, focused commitment as well as a dash of resilience. One thing is clear: no matter the environment around us, we will continue to build, adapt, and welcome everyone interested in contributing to, and benefitting from our mission.

The growth and progress within our ecosystem as of late is incredibly inspiring. Despite various challenges all around us, so many initiatives have been building in parallel, and the pace of productivity is rapidly accelerating. In honor of all of this amazing work, we wanted to find a way to summarize some of those activities, so let’s get on with it!

Games

We want Lunacia to be a comprehensive, and cohesive gaming world comprised of many different gaming genres, all which interrelate to each other through a rich lore and user-owned assets that are usable across various experiences. Foundational to this is a focus on delighting gamers with deep, immersive gameplay.

Axie Infinity: Origin

All hands are on deck for the upcoming Origin launch! As described in our recent “Phases and Advancement Plans” post, we have recently entered into Phase 2, and are rapidly progressing towards our planned global launch, with no unforeseen blockers to date. We owe a considerable amount of success to date from the regular ongoing community testing and feedback of the game. This rapid iteration approach leveraging our newly formed live operation team is evolving the Origin gameplay in directions everyone seems to enjoy!

Over the course of this next month, our primary focus will be bug-fixing. So expect regular, ongoing patches. We are excited to have incorporated 49,157(!) AXS of prizes into our first Origin alpha season, and look forward to sharing many of the surprises we plan to introduce both in upcoming pre-releases as well as the final release of the game!

Our creators have made some amazing content around Origin recently. Take a look at some of the top Youtube videos!

Land

Our goal remains to ship initial Alpha gameplay for Land by the end of the year. The Land Team has been working hard towards this goal, while ensuring a high standard for everything that’s been developed.

A major focus of some sprints over the recent weeks is the Idle Combat system. Idle combat will provide players with a way to sell crafted items to NPCs (Non-Player Characters). These NPCs, loaded with these items will go out into the world to battle enemies in combat. This system will allow players to compete with each other on a Leaderboard. This PvE battle system will also serve as the basis for more complex battle systems in the future. 

Outside of the Idle Combat system, the team has also been building social functions such as a Friends and Chat infrastructure, so that players will be able to communicate with each other. As you can see, we’ve come up with some fun ways to reward players for engaging socially in the game, these benefits will reveal themselves with more play.

Of course, every environment in Land will have its own distinctive look, based upon both the land type and the efforts of players. We want to make sure it is a beautiful, engaging environment players will enjoy with their friends and regularly hang out in! 

We have felt an amazing amount of support from a number of land owners looking to help ensure that Land is a world-class engaging game experience. They have formed a Land Working Group (LWG) that has met regularly with the Sky Mavis product team. Various discussions have been summarized and shared with the Land owners community in the Discord Land channel!

Builders Program

Earlier this year, we officially launched the Axie Infinity Builder’s Program, designed to empower passionate community members to experiment with building various gaming concepts inside the world of Lunacia. We are thrilled to partner with 12 inaugural project teams and supporting many other gaming initiatives based on Axie Infinity as well. Over the past month, all of these builders have been busy! Here are some assorted updates from a few of the teams, some of which are playable now! 

Across Lunacia has seen great traction on their early access demo, which garnered valuable feedback that they’ve incorporated into the gameplay. They are steadily working on improving their level design and combat gameplay. All Axie owners can play the demo today at:

Across Lunacia Demo!

Axieology has been working on battles with various bosses, check this one out:

Mech Infinity has been working towards a prototype, here is some of their latest concept art:

Axie Infinity War has made great progress towards their first demo release: 

Lunacia Cup has been making improvements to their racing system and started working on the system to have Axies built in-game! Check out the stun effect:

Inter The Dungeon released an Axie mini-game with an SLP reward that connects with your Ronin wallet allowing the game to use your existing Axies to play. To play, register here:

Inter the Dungeon!

…and connect your Ronin Wallet. Then click "Axie Love" to get started.

Defenders of Lunacian Land (DoLL) is working towards releasing its closed alpha in a few weeks. You will need a DoLL Early Access pass to play the game. Make sure to follow them at http://twitter.com/axieDoLL and join their Discord for updates and Early Access giveaways. Check out Turnip attack!

Esports

From all vantage points, the Axie Infinity Esports Grant 2 was a big success. The worldwide series enabled important global community events designed from the outset to broaden awareness of Axie, by being more inclusive and open. As we wind down this phase (there are still some tournaments remaining if you want to get involved!), we also have positioned ourselves well for Origin’s launch, using this time to establish robust conventions, rules, and processes. Thanks to everyone’s engagement, we now have a competitive integrity council, a governing ruleset, and a feature backlog we’re excited to incorporate into the Origin product.

We are now deep in preparation for our one million USD tournament series leading up to AxieCon! This includes:

• A 500k USD “Axie Classic” tournament, complete with online open qualifying rounds which culminates in a 16 player epic finale live at AxieCon!

• A 400k USD Dreamhack-style Origin tournament for all in-person attendees of the conference

• A 100k USD Axie Stadium event for all enthusiasts of Origin, especially for those new to esports!

Last, but certainly not least… we are hosting some pilot Origin tournaments, designed once again to prepare us for large scale esports events in Origin. Two events held recently (the Brazil and Philippines Origin Cup) were both successful events that helped us better understand how to structure both the gaming product and upcoming events.

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Lunacia

It would be very easy for a new community member to think about Axie Infinity solely in the context of our legacy v2 battles experience, or as the Origin game, or perhaps even as upcoming games such as Land. However, our vision for Axie Infinity is an entire gaming universe, comprised of infinite gaming and lifestyle experiences, all built on top of a foundation of a deep, elaborate, engaging world. That world will continue to grow infinite, interrelated experiences thanks to the digital nation we are actively building together.

We believe that modern virtual societies such as Axie Infinity will be defined by a return to the basics of social relationships. These communities will be built by people who freely choose to come together and share their perspectives and dreams, pushing one another towards collective good, ensuring a stable prosperity for each other on which we can all develop and innovate.

In order for this world to truly feel cohesive and expansive, it needs a comprehensive lore, similar to well known creative universes such as Star Wars, Final Fantasy, or the Lord of the Rings. We’re excited to share that we have spent considerable time researching our community and the “market”, and have begun to develop the Axie Universe lore system in partnership with the collection of seasoned gaming experts at Strider. The Strider team has played a direct role in contributing to universes such as The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, Star Wars, Game of Thrones, and the Marvel Universe. It’s with this scale in mind that we envision everyone building on top of a world where all user experiences will be connected to each other in diverse, yet logical ways.

In the future, you can look forward to:

• In-game experiences that are deeply interrelated and enhance a player’s understanding of the lore of Lunacia

• Universal base lore, which includes details around the geographical setup of Lunacia, forms of life, and major characters that have historical impact upon the universe

• Integration of massive community-based content in world building. Our goal is to allow all community members to create rich storylines and experiences inside Lunacia.

• A lore “central hub” to enable 3rd party multimedia and content experiences. We are planning for comics, animated series and many other types of 3rd party products to collectively add value for all owners of the ecosystem.

We believe that this creative foundation also provides us with an opportunity to reinforce positive ethical foundations into our digital nation. Cornerstones of the Axie Infinity world lore include harmonization, love, care for one another, and opportunity that comes from selflessness. While much of the contributions you’ve seen from the Sky Mavis team are technical and strategic, the creative team believes that embedding these concepts will prove to be one of the most important contributions we’ll make.

Community

Growth

Our growth team remains focused, locked in, and with our eyes on the prize: the Origin Global Launch, and recently, we’ve truly been building with the community towards achieving this goal. The Axie community is a portal into Web3. Many of you have put extraordinary efforts into onboarding your friends, connections, and family members into this community. To reflect our commitment to appreciating your tireless efforts, we launched three initiatives with a focus of reinvesting in, and growing with you all: Lunacian Codes, the Creator Program, and a fellowship collaboration with Nas Academy. 

Lunacian Codes is a first-of-its-kind web3 referral program that allows community members to participate in the value they help create when onboarding new players and showing helpfulness to existing players. Every Lunacian is eligible, and when your code is used, 1% from the 4.25% marketplace fee will be sent to your wallet! Check out our Lunacian Codes Guide for more info! 

In tandem with QU3ST, we’ve begun testing a framework for the Axie Creator Program, designed to identify and support impactful Axie contributors! Creators from all verticals are eligible for the program and the accompanying rewards. To get more involved

1. Join the Axie Infinity Discord

2. Introduce yourself in the Creators Program chat (#creator-central)

3. Engage with Axie Creator Program staff! 

To continue to invest in our community, we’re funding 200 fellowships for creators to participate in Nas Academy’s new Creator Academy. Through this program, participants will have access to key educational resources allowing themselves to take their content to the next level! Registration is open now and will end on July 20th! Join us today! 

Origin is steadily improving; issues and bugs are fixed almost daily, balancing changes are thoughtfully considered, and the technology behind the new in-game mechanics are being methodically built out. The new Alpha Season’s ushered in a period of growth among the playerbase, with 4,600 downloads yesterday.

Axie Infinity metrics continues to dominate among other NFT games, and we look forward to sustaining this trend as Origin is refined. According to DappRadar, when looking at the top web3 apps (measured by Daily-On-Chain users and sorted by at least 1 M USD in 24 volume to control for low-value apps using bots to boost their volume), we see that Axie ranks second with 574,960 on-chain users over the last month.

Governance

During our last update to you on this topic, we shared a “framework” that details steps toward progressive decentralization of the Axie Infinity ecosystem. The Axie Infinity universe has incredible long term value. Harnessing this value effectively will only occur if we can all find the healthy balance between establishing robust, proven infrastructure for decision making and giving more and more immediate agency to the thousands of community contributors who are already creating value all around us. Over the past 2-3 months, we have made concrete progress in this direction:

• We have established the Axie Infinity “Town Builders”, which is a starting collection of senior community members who were selected based upon an initial set of criteria which include a history of contributions to Axie governance, longevity within the community, and embodiment of the Axie Code of Conduct. These initial community members (Artic, Baronar, freak, Sensei Odin, and Zee) will work alongside additional invited advisors (ie, Coco__Bear, Owl, Syntax) and Sky Mavis to design and implement various stages of progressive decentralization and also maintain healthy participation of town builders by involving additional community members into this role over time.

• We are in the process of building a comprehensive and sustainable approach to formally recognizing and credentialing Axie Infinity community contributors. We anticipate that those who actively work to add value to the ecosystem ultimately will have the strongest insights into future direction for the project. Therefore, over the next couple of months, we will embark on a pilot project to identify at least 1,000 of these “contributors” through a completely community-governed process.

• We are proud to have established a formal partnership with Metaportal DAO, an organization comprised of individuals with considerable track records in decentralized governance, gaming, and strategic planning. They have agreed to help provide process support for the various volunteer community groups described above. Throughout their engagement with us thus far, they have already provided important advice and elbow grease to this rapidly emerging activity.

Our hope is to have some exciting things to announce and share with the community by AxieCon. Stay tuned!

Regional Updates

Our digital nation is global, and we welcome everyone from all cultures and languages. To help facilitate this, we continue to establish regional representatives who are working to build more local communities all around the world. They wanted to share some updates with the community!

Philippines: We hosted the first official #AxiePH meetup recently! The event was attended by over 220+ community members, and tickets sold out in 8 minutes! Over 20 Lunacians flew in from the United States, the United Kingdom, and other parts of Southeast Asia to join in on the fun. We heard countless stories from community members on how the event allowed the Filipino community to form great bonds with one another, connect personally with Axie team members, and meet some of the biggest names in the Axie creator and competitive scene. We have big plans for future events and other activities in the region in the future!

Latin America: We kicked off a weekly Axie Community Talk Discord spaces for the LatAm community, where everyone gets to ask important questions about anything and everything within the Axie ecosystem using their native language at times convenient for the region. We just celebrated our 10th episode last week!

Japan: We are brewing some collaborations with Japanese guilds and content creators. More about this will be shared soon! For now—we are gearing up for a couple of official meetups in Japan to fully connect with the Japanese community!

Infrastructure

Ronin

There has been an incredible amount of progress in refining and aligning the typical Ronin user experience. Some of that work consists of improving the asset on/off ramp interface, by simplifying in some cases, and making it more user-friendly in others:

As we work rapidly to decentralize the Ronin network, there are a number of additional backend functions we need to build for validators, including voting processes, and various summary dashboards:

Finally, we recently released the Land Staking user experience, and it seems from your feedback that the community is quite enthusiastic about our general direction! ~90% of all land plots are currently staked— a major accomplishment!

Marketplace

The Marketplace team is currently preparing for the introduction of NFT Runes and Charms; this marks the first time in years that a new asset class has been introduced into the Axie ecosystem!

• We are developing a new streamlined way to move assets (runes, charms, tokens) between the Origin and your Ronin wallet

• With runes and charms, we have formally introduced ERC-1155 tokens, and with that, a new page type for ERC-1155 tokens. While this page will support runes and charms for now, we anticipate many other types (both in-development and on our roadmap) in the future

In the meantime, we are continuing the implementation of our new marketplace design system building blocks. Thanks in advance for your patience with some volatility in the current design as we continue our transition process.

Sky Mavis

Over the past year, Sky Mavis has undergone a massive organizational transformation. In the face of the COVID pandemic, we have become a global, 150+ strong person team:

We anticipate continuing to grow the organization, with a target of approximately 250 individuals over the next 12-18 months. One of our primary goals in 2022 is to either hire or partner with truly world-class talent. We intend to actively recruit many of these roles, but are also interested in hearing from you! If you’re interested being a part of Sky Mavis, take a look at our job postings below:

Join us at Sky Mavis!

Growing rapidly within a global pandemic has forced us to get to know each other mostly online. Fortunately, as things have stabilized, we were able to host our first “all-hands” in Vietnam since 2019! It was an amazing opportunity to team build, make strategic plans, and finally get to know each other over meals and laughs.

Additionally, in preparation for our team growth, we had to also find convening space, so we also recently opened a new office in Ho Chi Minh! All of these steps are being considered in light of our long term plans for Axie Infinity and the Ronin ecosystem. Now, let’s all get back to building!

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