Axie Infinity, the play-to-earn gaming platform operating on the Ethereum blockchain, announced that one of its virtual lands was sold for 550 ETH, which at the current price of $4,450 per token, puts the dollar figure at $2,447,500.
The land, called a ‘genesis land’ was sold and according to Axie, is the largest sum ever paid for a digital land.
It reads, “A Genesis Land Plot just sold for 550 ETH! That’s over 2.3 M USD! Our player-owned Digital nation continues to shock the world. We believe this is the largest sum ever paid for a single plot of digital land. Congrats to the buyer and seller!”
What you should know
The Axie Infinity platform has definitely taken the cryptocurrency community by storm as its blend of play-to-earn gaming model, as well as its use-case for NFTs has seen the platform generate over a billion dollars in revenue so far in 2021, according to Axie World data.
The game takes place in the world of ‘Lunacia’, which is inhabited by Axies. It is a 301 x 301 square grid where each section represents a tokenized plot of land called Terra, which players can also buy, sell or rent out to other players at will.
The land that was sold yesterday is classified as ‘Genesis’, which is the rarest form of virtual real estate available in the Axie Infinity ecosystem.
Monsters, known as Chimeras, spawn in the game and terrorize Lunaria. By defeating Chimeras, players earn Smooth Love Potions (SLPs), the second native token of the platform, which can then be sold at cryptocurrency exchanges for cash. Defeated Chimeras also drop other types of resources that can be used to upgrade their Axies and land, thereby increasing the earnings potential for SLPs.
Genesis Land is located strategically at the centre of Lunacia, where rare Chimeras raid bosses spawn and drop special items. In the game, out of the 90,601 land spots, only 220 slots have the Genesis classification.
With people paying over $2 million dollars for virtual land, it goes to show the possibilities and potential of the play-to-earn, metaverse and NFT industry in the cryptocurrency space. According to a Grayscale report, it was explained that the metaverse represents a $1 trillion annual revenue market opportunity, however, the report did not give a timeline to this.
AXS, the native token of the platform is trading $134.66, down 3.02% for the day, as of the time of this writing.