Axie Infinity Marketplace

Axie Infinity Marketplace Review

Axie Infinity is a game centered around fantasy creatures called Axie. The birth place of the game is Vietnam. Axie Infinity rewards players with ERC-20 AXS (Axie Infinity Shards) tokens. At the time of first writing the review (30 March 2021), the website claimed to have more than 19,000 monthly active on-chain users.

Axie Infinity Marketplace made the news on 9 February 2021 when CoinDesk reported that one of its NFTs — an in-game virtual land was sold for 888 ETH (roughly $1.5 million at the time). What an incredible amount!

What is an NFT Marketplace

An NFT Marketplace is a marketplace for NFT. So far so good. But what is an NFT?

NFT is an acronym for “Non-Fungible Tokens”. Something which is fungible is replaceable. For instance, one kilo of 24 karat gold is – at least in theory – replaceable with any other kilo of 24 karat gold. When something is non-fungible, it means that it is unique, and not replaceable with any other item out there.

Although NFTs are conceptually similar to cryptocurrencies, these digital assets might represent antiques & artworks, collectables like trading cards, and other items with unique features. These tokens are stored cryptographically in a blockchain network for authentication and validation. Even when transacting, each token is sold coin as a whole, unlike cryptocurrencies which are divisible into smaller units. NFTs lose their value when split into smaller portions, however, they can be duplicated by the artist and each additional copy can be sold separately (but the total number of duplicates will then always be known).

Axie Infinity Marketplace Focus

The Axie Infinity ecosystem is entirely owned by the players. These players can transact their in-game assets and NFTs for digital currencies. Since the game revolves around imaginary creatures, it is a digital pet universe of sorts. To get started, every player needs to have at least 3 Axies.

Unlike many other NFT Marketplaces, the Axie Infinity Marketplace only sells characters and items from the Axie Infinity ecosystem, and nothing else. So if you're looking for a fresh digital art motif to display via iPad on your living room wall, you'll have to look elsewhere.

Axie Infinity Marketplace Fees

When you make a trade at Axie Infinity Marketplace, a 4.25% marketplace fee is taken from the seller (but not the buyer). This means that if you sell an Axie Infinity NFT for 100 USD, you will only receive USD 95.75 for it. The remaining part of the sale price is paid to Sky Mavis, the core developers of Axie Infinity, as a commission. Starting 2021, however, all marketplace fees will go into The Community Treasury which will ultimately reward AXS token holders.

As a buyer, the fees you need to worry about are the gas fees. There are four separate gas fee categories based on speed — Slow, Standard, Fast and Rapid. The gas prices depend upon the category and nature of the transaction. Here is a snapshot.

Layout of Axie Infinity Marketplace

Different NFT Marketplaces present their NFTs, the latest bid and the remaining time of an auction etc. in different ways. What you are most comfortable with viewing and using is up to you and no one else. The following picture is a print screen from Axie Infinity Marketplace:

Players can access the Axie Infinity marketplace to buy NFTs like Axies, Land, in-game items or a bundled package. When buying these NFTs, users can view different details and statistics, depending on the NFT being bought. Here’s an image of an Axie listed on its marketplace.

Axie Infinity Marketplace Payment Methods

A few of the NFT Marketplaces out there accept deposits and payments via credit or debit card, and some even accept PayPal-deposits.

Axie Infinity Marketplace does not support PayPal or Credit Card purchases. Since it uses the Ethereum network, the transactions are carried out through the use of Ethereum (ETH). The platform recommends the Metamask wallet for smaller transactions or exchanges like Coinbase or Binance for larger transactions.