AXS Could Regain Its Former Glory on Upcoming Roadmap Targets

One of the breakout sectors of the cryptocurrency market in 2021 was play-to-earn gaming, with Axie Infinity (AXS), a mobile game where users collect, breed, raise and battle NFTs called Axies for monetary rewards, leading the way.

As the market topped and then entered a deep bear market, AXS price retraced from an all-time high near $170 to its current price at $15.20 following several setbacks, including a $600 million hack of the Ronin sidechain that hosts the game.

At the moment, it is unclear what will happen to P2E gaming and its supporters are closely monitoring the situation to see if Axie Infinity can turn things around. Let's take a look at some of the developments in Axie Infinity and determine whether any of them are positive for the short and long term.

The launch of land staking

The most recent development in the Axie Infinity ecosystem is land stake parcels, a way of earning AXS tokens.

According to the Ronin Chain explorer, staking of land has been popular among holders and at least 87% of each of the different levels of plots have already been staked.

Several land plots sold for over 130 ETH each, which indicates that the game is still popular.

As the coin's supply increases, some members of the community are concerned about the possible effects on its value.

The platform also allows AXS staking, with a current yield of 72%, but only 38.47% of the circulating supply is being staked, which means that most of the supply is available in the open market and could potentially be sold off.

The Ronin bridge was reopened

The reopening of the Ronin bridge could be an encouraging sign for Axie, especially because it was disabled after a $600 million hack in March.

Axie Infinity claims that the bridge assets are "fully backed 1:1," and that 11 new validators, circuit breakers, and external audits were added. All user funds lost have been reimbursed, making members of the community whole.

According to data from DappRadar, the volume transacted has increased since the Ronin bridge was reopened and land staking began.

The recent changes have caused a slight increase in the number of daily users and transactions on the network, but these figures are still far below the 2021 high of 744,000 users and 6.7 million transactions.

The community's response to the current changes has been positive

Many people have responded positively to the recent developments, with many wanting to get back into the game after it has finally overcome a few major hurdles.

Cointelegraph contributor Alyssa Exposito, who is an early Axie Infinity investor, noted that the land staking process has already brought about the boost in enthusiasm that the community needed after a large amount of funds was lost in the treasury.

Exposito also pointed out the Axie creator program, which enables community members to build games on the SDK as something that is exciting users of the platform, "especially with the integration of RON as a way to engage and transact on the network."

Exposito described how the ecosystem's efforts to get community members more involved in governance and building on the protocol were what excited the community most.

Exposito said that,

“I think once people begin to see and take notice of how the project enables and helps fund other creators to build on top of it, it’ll gain more traction on the possibilities of blockchain gaming.”

Axie community members have expressed their worries about the circulating supply of AXS, how staking rewards affect this amount and the price, and large sales and price dumps that could result from various lockups and vesting schedules.

The project has taken the necessary steps to recover from the Ronin hack, and it seems to be keeping up with its roadmap milestones. The P2E sector's fate is largely tied to that of the project, so whatever happens in this space will affect it.