For almost a yr now, a mysterious Axie Infinity pockets has been quietly amassing billions of Easy Love Potion (SLP), the in-game cryptocurrency powering one of many business’s hottest play-to-earn (P2E) crypto video games.
Right now, the nameless whale pockets now holds somewhat over 22 billion SLP — greater than 50% the overall circulating provide of the token.
The issue? Nobody is aware of who it belongs to and what their intentions are.
The pockets in query was dropped at Cointelegraph’s consideration by Axie Infinity participant and tech co-founder Michael Benko, who first caught wind of this mysterious pockets on Aug. 25.
Ought to we be nervous?
Benko instructed Cointelegraph he grew to become involved concerning the pockets given the quantity of SLP it had gathered in a comparatively quick period of time, which may doubtlessly wreak havoc on the sport’s ecosystem.
“The importance of a pockets holding a lot SLP, if it is a person individual, provides that individual an enormous quantity of management over an economic system, particularly in an economic system the place it’s so arduous to mint a token.”
Launched in 2021, Axie Infinity is a blockchain-based recreation during which gamers buy NFTs of cartoon creatures which they breed and combat in opposition to different gamers in turn-based gameplay.
SLP is earned by gamers for finishing every day quests, battling different gamers within the “Enviornment” mode or enjoying in opposition to AI within the “Journey” mode. The SLP can be utilized for breeding Axies, crafting in-game runes and charms (power-ups), and will be offered on exchanges.
Benko famous that as per the newest season replace, a mean Axie Infinity participant can generate between 10 to 70 SLP per day, relying on how good they’re on the recreation.
“So it’s a concern, if somebody’s sitting there with 22 billion SLP […] they may actually hold the worth flat or hold the worth down when it really ought to, by pure market situations, be going up.”
The cryptocurrency is at present priced at $0.004, down 99% from an all time excessive of $0.40 on Jul. 13, 2021, in response to Coingecko.
Who owns it?
Theories explaining the existence of the pockets have solely led to dead-ends up to now.
Benko initially theorized that the pockets was “some system Axie Infinity needed to robotically distribute SLP to gamers who earned it.”
Nevertheless, Sky Mavis co-founder and COO Aleksander Larson instructed Cointelegraph that neither Sky Mavis nor Axie Infinity maintain any of the sport’s cryptocurrency, stating:
“All tokens in existence have been created by gamers.”
Yield Guild Video games co-founder Gabby Dizon — one of many main DAOs for gamers of Axie — mentioned YGG didn’t personal the pockets and urged it might be a pockets utilized by an change to carry liquidity.
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“Do not assume that is ours as we usually use all of our minted SLP for breeding,” mentioned Dizon, including that “the almost certainly clarification is that an change is holding it for his or her liquidity.”
Benko nevertheless famous that whereas many SLP transactions noticed Binance as a sender or recipient for a lot of transactions, upon wanting on the transactions, he doesn’t consider that it’s a pockets owned by the crypto change.
“Binance appears to have an official pockets [already] and this does not appear to be that pockets.”
Cointelegraph reached out to Binance for remark however has not acquired a response on the time of writing.
In case you have any theories on who’s behind the pockets contact felixng at cointelegraph.com
