The first pitfall: Axie Infinity, join in the fun and buy Axie’s NFT at a high point

The first blockchain game Cathy played was Axie Infinity.

On September 6, 2021, I saw an analysis article about Axie Infinity on Gamelook’s WeChat official account. The number of players, revenue, asset prices, and play-to-earn data were all very astonishing.

Figure 1: Gamelook "Monthly revenue of $200 million, what kind of revolution does this phenomenal NFT game bring?"

I immediately searched online for tips and downloaded the Sky Marvis client after much effort. To buy an axie, I first opened a metamask wallet and used Moonpay to connect my credit card from Singapore's OCBC Bank (Moonpay later withdrew from the Singapore market due to payment license issues). I spent more than 100 Singapore dollars in fiat currency deposit fees to buy 2000u of eth, then exchanged it for ron coins across chains, opened a Ronin wallet, and then transferred ron coins from the Metamask wallet to the Ronin wallet. Three days later, on September 9 and 10, I spent nearly 2000u of ron to buy 7 axies. At that time, the floor price of an axie was 172u, and the most expensive axie I bought cost 532u.

Figure 2: My transaction record of buying 7 Axies on September 9 and 10, 2021 vs. the Axie floor price on September 8, 2024

---I admire myself a little. On September 6, 2021, from a novice, I relied on the guides I found on the Internet to patiently open a wallet step by step->buy ETH with a credit card->exchange RON across chains->transfer RON from metamask to ronin wallet->use RON to buy Axie NFT, and I completely ran through the process by my own research.

Over the next month, I played the game every day. The first week was quite exciting, and the price of my Axie increased slightly. I thought that if I could save 600 Smooth Love Potions, I could use two Axies to breed a small Axie and sell it (the breeding policy at the time was that two Axies needed to pay 300 Smooth Love Potions each to breed a next generation Axie).

After I had played for 2 weeks and saved about 300 smooth love potions, I received an email from the Axie project on September 23rd saying that the breeding policy had changed and two Axies would need to pay 600 smooth love potions each to breed the next generation of Axie. Then I kept receiving new emails, and the cost of smooth love potions required to breed the next generation of Axie increased from 1200 to 1800 and then to 3600.

I played Axie Infinity and stopped when I saved up 400 Smooth Love Potions. I just couldn't catch up. I had a splitting headache from playing games every day, and I even asked my two kids to help play for me (later they refused to play even after I paid them, saying it was not fun). But I was still getting further and further away from the target of 3,600 Small Love Potions.

Figure 3: Axie’s first breeding cost increase notification

I was confused at that time, watching the breeding cost of axie double again and again, and at the same time the floor price of axie plummeted, first half off, then 1/4, then 1/8, the price of smooth love potion also dropped from 9 cents to 5 cents, 3 cents, and then 1 cent. I thought it would rise again, so I kept the 7 axies I bought and the smooth love potion I made, and didn't sell them. Later there was nothing left, so there was no need to sell them. I just checked, today the floor price of axie has become 2u, 7 can be sold for 20u, my 2000u finally became 20u, a loss of 99%.

Summary: The first blockchain game pit I fell into was Axie Infinity, which cost me 2000U in tuition.

Looking back, although I lost 99% of the 2000u, it was not in vain. I started to study the introductory knowledge of blockchain from Axie Infinity, and was enlightened by blockchain games. I also saw other players taking screenshots to show how much they earned, especially Gabby Dizon, a BD manager of a game developer I met at an event of the Singapore Game Industry Association. He started a business in YGG and made a lot of money. This actually deepened my interest in studying blockchain games.

Figure 4: Major events in the third quarter of 2021

1. In July, two Roblox games developed by my 15-year-old brother won big prizes. This marked the beginning of his heyday of receiving 5,000 or 10,000 RMB bonuses every month. He received the bonuses for more than a year and earned nearly 30,000 SGD.
2. In August, AviaGame received $40 million in investment. Among the investors, Galaxy Interactive invested in many Web3 games.
3. On August 20, Black Myth released a 12-minute real-machine test video
4. On August 23, in order to start a game jewelry peripheral company, I got the Gem-A Gemologist Diploma from the Royal Gemological Society of the United Kingdom.
5. Oculus Quest 2 was released in September and I bought one for S$770
6. In October, VectorGems, the game jewelry peripheral company I founded at that time, won the platinum award of the American Muse Design Award for the official authorized "Genshin Impact God's Eye Jewelry"

To be continued. Next week I will write about the pitfalls I encountered while playing Legend M.