For pretty much annually now, a mysterious Axie Infinity wallet continues to be silently gathering vast amounts of Smooth Love Concoction (SLP), the in-game cryptocurrency powering among the industry’s most widely used play-to-earn (P2E) crypto games.
Today, the anonymous whale wallet now holds just a little over 22 billion SLP — greater than 50% the entire circulating way to obtain the token.
The issue? Nobody knows who it is associated with and just what their intentions are.
The wallet under consideration was introduced to Cointelegraph’s attention by Axie Infinity player and tech co-founder Michael Benko, who first caught wind of the mysterious wallet on August. 25.
Don’t let worry?
Benko told Cointelegraph he grew to become worried about the wallet given the quantity of SLP it’d collected inside a relatively almost no time, that could potentially ruin the game’s ecosystem.
“The value of a wallet holding a lot SLP, whether it’s a person, gives that individual a lot of control of an economy, particularly in an economy where it’s so difficult to mint an expression.Inches
Launched in 2021, Axie Infinity is really a blockchain-based game by which players purchase NFTs of cartoon creatures that they breed and combat other players consequently-based game play.
SLP is earned by players for finishing daily quests, battling other players within the “Arena” mode or playing against AI within the “Adventure” mode. The SLP can be used as breeding Axies, crafting in-game runes and charms (power-ups), and could be offered on exchanges.
Benko noted that as per the most recent season update, a typical Axie Infinity player can generate between 10 to 70 SLP each day, for the way good they’re in the game.
“So it’s a concern, if someone’s a slave to with 22 billion SLP […] they might really keep your cost flat or keep your cost lower if this really should, by natural market conditions, go up.”
The cryptocurrency is presently priced at $.004, lower 99% from a record a lot of $.40 on Jul. 13, 2021, based on Coingecko.
The master of it?
Theories explaining the presence of the wallet only have brought to dead-ends to date.
Benko initially theorized the wallet was “some system Axie Infinity needed to instantly distribute SLP to players who earned it.”
However, Sky Mavis co-founder and COO Aleksander Larson told Cointelegraph that neither Sky Mavis nor Axie Infinity hold the game’s cryptocurrency, stating:
“All tokens around happen to be produced by players.”
Yield Guild Games co-founder Gabby Dizon — one of the leading DAOs for players of Axie — stated YGG didn’t own the wallet and recommended maybe it’s a wallet utilized by an exchange to carry liquidity.
Related: Axie Infinity searching to ‘double-down’ on Korean market: KBW
“Don’t think this really is ours once we typically use our minted SLP for breeding,” stated Dizon, adding that “the probably explanation is the fact that an exchange is holding it for his or her liquidity.”
Benko however noted that although many SLP transactions saw Binance like a sender or recipient for a lot of transactions, upon searching in the transactions, he doesn’t still find it a wallet of the crypto exchange.
“Binance appears with an official wallet [already] which does not appear to become that wallet.”
Cointelegraph arrived at to Binance for comment but hasn’t received an answer during the time of writing.
For those who have any theories on who’s behind the wallet contact felixng at cointelegraph.com