Axie Infinity Roadmap: Designed for revival or a game of uncertainties?

One of the most popular play-to-earn blockchain-based games, Axie Infinity’s roadmap has proven to be vital in sustaining the project’s relevance to the crypto-economy. However, this is not to say that the journey so far has been without burns and bruises. 

On one hand, the roadmap, developed in 2017, showcased ambitious plans for the game’s development and expansion across the blockchain landscape.

Needless to say, a ton of the Axie Infinity [AXS] roadmap has been achieved. However, before jumping into what’s currently happening with the project, let’s take it down the memory lane a bit.

The Axie Infinity roadmap: From ideation to buzz

When the Sky Mavis team conceptualized the Axie Infinity model, only a few play-to-earn games like The Sandbox [SAND] existed. But the firm, led by Trung Nguyen, did not plan to imitate The Sandbox’s idea.

Instead, it created its in-game economy around a mix of Pokemon-like games and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) on the Ethereum [ETH] blockchain. This exciting idea was one of the reasons the project raised 900 ETH in presale for the Origin Axie. This happened as far back as February 2018. 

Although Axie Infinity started on Ethereum, it has been able to create its own sidechain called Ronin. Sidechains are created by projects to remove the burden of delayed transactions and exorbitant transaction fees from mainstream blockchains.

The Ronin network is an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)- compatible blockchain built to encourage developers to build games connected to Axie. Hence, the development of the Ronin sidechain laid the grounds for increased adoption of Axie Infinity products and activity on its network. Before that, the Axie Infinity roadmap fixed the development of its own NFT marketplace in March 2018.

Via the NFT marketplace, users could play games and trade assets including lands and accessories. The addition of the marketplace led to the launch of several games and the impressive launch of its first land which led to a 3200 ETH raise. Between 2018 and 2019, Axie Infinity released more than five games including,

• Breeding game
• Idle battle game
• Community battle card battle game.

AXS staking and the introduction of the Hub

As an addition to its thriving NFT marketplace, at that time, Axie Infinity launched Mavis Hub in 2022. The idea behind the hub was to create a platform where promising blockchain games can be launched. And in the same month, it sold out all of the launched lands at approximately 4200 ETH.

Meanwhile, Axis did not immediately move to the Ronin network when its launched Mainnet launched in February 2021. Instead, it took an extra two months for the team to agree on full migration.

Interestingly, this occurred at a time when the 2021 bull market was beginning to pick pace. Consequently, the Axie Infinity Shards token gained the attention the community gave the project and led to an incredible rally. 

This was also around the period when the Axie Infinity roadmap felt it was time to introduce AXS staking. However, the project seems to have lost its midas touch, no thanks to the rise of its competitors and a tough market condition.

According to DappRadar, transactions were down by 31.56% in the last 30 days. Also, Unique Active Wallets (UAW) had severely fallen. This metric shows the number of distinct wallets interacting with a decentralized Application (dApp).

Therefore, the hike, as displayed above ,means that interaction with the smart contract was nowhere close to the highs recorded at the height of market interaction.

Challengers in the race but there’s no plan to halt

However, the project has been pegged back by its competitors including The Sandbox, and Decentraland [MANA], which only launched in 2020. For example, according to Santiment, MANA’s market cap has grown to 894.76 million.

On the other hand, AXS was lower at 813.03 million while SAND was ranked higher at 939.9 million. The condition of this metric across all networks means that Axie Infinity is the least dominant. Thus, it lacked liquidity when compared to the rest.

Despite these drawbacks, the Axie Infinity roadmap has been diligently followed to a fault. In April 2022, the Axie Infinity Origins Alpha was launched. This introduction of a creator program and the Origins approval on Google Play in December 2022 also followed.

As it stands, Axie Infinity has not reneged on its plans. An evaluation of its website showed that bugs are being fixed too. In addition, the NFT Charms and Runes are 60% close to launching and several applications are in the process of deployment.