Axie Infinity developers recently announced a reduction in SLP emissions, to safeguard the game’s future, causing a noteworthy surge in the price of the in-game ERC-20 token.
The developers of the well-known Play-to-Earn (P2E) metaverse game Axie Infinity (AXS) recently announced via detailed post on the project’s substack that the game will undergo some important changes in its rewards mechanism, in order to rebalance its ecosystem.
The post that delved into Axie Infinity’s upcoming season 20 and the economic balancing adjustments, highlighted that the game will witness a notable reduction in the supply of Smooth Love Potion (SLP) tokens, by as much as 56%, thus increasing the token’s scarcity.
The devs stressed that without these changes, the game risks a permanent and total economic collapse. “We know that this is painful medicine. The Axie economy requires drastic and decisive action now or we risk total and permanent economic collapse. That would be far more painful,” they stated in the post.
What is SLP?
The Play-to-Earn (P2E) model that entertains as well as helps players make money, has been a big hit in recent times. Inspired from popular titles like Tamagotchi and Pokémon, Axie Infinity is counted amongst the biggest titles in this arena.
The players collect, breed, battle and trade cartoon creators called Axies (NFT-based in-game assets), and are rewarded with something referred to as Smooth Love Potion (SLP) tokens (ERC-20). These tokens can be later used for breeding new Axies, which can then be traded freely in the NFT marketplace.
Why the step?
The lucrative earnings from these SLP tokens have helped a large number of gamer communities, particularly from the Philippines, to create a stable source of income for themselves. However, unlike the AXS, the game’s main governance token, SLP didn’t have any capping on its supply. As a result, non-stop emissions caused a drastic plunge in SLP’s value. In fact, its price crashed 94% to $ 0.01 earlier this month, significantly lower than its highs of $ 0.39 witnessed in July last year.
The developer team informed, “The daily quest, in principle, was great to encourage people to play every day, but it’s now become a mass emission mechanism for SLP. By removing the daily quest, we are able to reduce issuance by around 45 million SLP per day.”
As can be seen in the SLP/USD daily price chart below, this recent step has helped SLP gain significantly in value, appreciating almost 370% in the past one week alone.
SLP/USD Daily Price Chart. Source: TradingView
