Axie Infinity’s SLP token has fallen since July 2021 as in-game rewards have dropped
Contents
- What is Smooth Love Potion (SLP)?
- SLP’s Price history
- 2021: A mixed bag for SLP
- SLP price prediction
- FAQs
Axie Infinity has fuelled the play-to-earn industry after demonstrating huge success with its platform. Its Smooth Love Potion (SLP) token is key to that success. The token is given as rewards to users for playing the game and can be spent to breed new creatures.
People in developing countries have turned to Axie Infinity has a new source of income. But the game has started to fail these users as the number of rewards has been falling since July. Now players earn less than the Philippines’ average wage.
The SLP token has subsequently been on a massively bearish trend losing 97% of its value since its peak in July. Is there any hope for an SLP breakout?
What is Smooth Love Potion (SLP)?
Axie Infinity took inspiration from successful games such as Pokémon, but included a key difference. The game allowed players to own their items and earn currency with real worth. Players collect creatures called Axies that exist as NFTs, which they can breed, battle, and trade.
This is where Smooth Love Potion comes into play. The ERC-20 token can be earned by completing daily quests and battling with the Axies. The Axie Infinity team compares it to the coins from Super Mario, but with monetary value.
These tokens can then be used to breed new Axies. The cost of these starts from 100SLP and increases gradually depending on how many you have bred. Axies can only be bred up to seven times, to stop hyperinflation.
Axie Infinity proved to be a huge initial success with its SLP token rising rapidly. But is it beginning to lose its charm?
SLP’s Price history
SLP launched at the beginning of January 2020 on UniSwap around the $0.03 mark. The token was one of the first of its kind, spearheading the innovative idea that you could earn from playing games. Despite the excitement from the co-founder, Jeff Zirlin, on Twitter, the market was not quite ready for SLP and it had dropped below $0.01 on 1 February.
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However, the gaming token did see its first price spike later that month. SLP had climbed back over the $0.01 mark and to $0.016 on 19 February. This came after the launch of the first season of the player vs player (PVP) arena. Throughout the season, players battle each other up the rankings: the higher the ranking the more rewards the user will earn.
Over the following months, SLP fell below $0.01 and continued to drop gradually. By 20 June, the token stooped to $0.003. But, only a few weeks later SLP would see its first substantial price surge.
SLP raced from $0.003 on 6 July to $0.19 two days later, breaking past the $0.10 barrier for the first time. In a blog post, Axie Infinity argued this breakout was because of the games enticing nature. It said: “The increased SLP price strengthened our narrative of play to earn and brought many new eyes to our ecosystem. We were most excited to see that although many of the new community members came to speculate, they were drawn in by the game and community and have stuck around.”
The price explosion had also come just before the end date of season seven of the PVP arena. By 12 July, the day it finished, SLP had dropped to $0.02.
It rallied again in early August as the team changed some of the dynamics to the battle system. It implemented player-demanded features such as increasing the amount of healing from certain characters. SLP peaked at $0.07 on 12 August, which was still much lower than its July rally.
Despite falling in late August, SLP reached $0.07 again on 1 September as season 10 went live. This time players could earn DGX, a cryptocurrency whose value is tied to the price of gold.
Although SLP did see smaller spikes in its price over the following months, it was now in a long-term bearish trend. The gaming token had plummeted to $0.01 on 1 January 2021. But it would soon break out again.
2021: A mixed bag for SLP
Smooth Love Potion started rallying at the beginning of February. This coincided with the launch of Ronin, a sidenet of Ethereum designed specifically for Axie Infinity. Ronin was created to avoid the pressures and high gas fees of the Ethereum mainnet. Players could now migrate their items to the new sidenet.
SLP reached $0.07 again on 21 February and it broke past $0.10 on 15 March. The same day, Axie Infinity tweeted the exciting projects it was working on. These included a new battle system approved by the Ubisoft game studio and a marketplace upgrade.
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The gaming token fell slightly after peaking mid-March, dropping to $0.03 on 24 April. SLP then set its all-time high a couple of days later, racing to $0.41 on 1 May. The rally started after Ronin was updated to allow users to migrate their Axies to the Ethereum sidenet. Users could now use the network for breeding, token claiming and marketplace transactions.
SLP was unable to maintain the price and it fell back to $0.13 on 31 May. It stayed roughly at that level for the following month, but managed to stay above the $0.10 barrier.
July 2021 was Axie Infinity’s most active month to date. SLP came close to its all time-high on 13 July reaching $0.40. This came as its platform exploded in popularity. Between 1 July and 14 July, Axie Infinity’s daily users and transactions almost tripled, according to DappRadar. Its userbase raced to 24,619 daily players on 14 July and its transactions reached 37,284.
Unfortunately for Axie Infinity, it was unable to maintain this success. Its users, transactions and SLP started falling after the end of July and did not stop. During September it had stooped below the $0.10 mark and it dropped even further to $0.05 in December.
Axie Infinity’s slump has been attributed to loosing its main demographic in developing countries like the Phillipines. As Covid hit, many quit their day jobs and turned to the game as a source of income. But after changes in its reward mechanics, rewards started to fall. The fall in rewards is almost identical to the SLP price drop, according to Naavik.
Even looking at the short term, SLP is still falling. Take 21 January 2022 for example, it was down 13.98% in the last 24 hours and 11% in the past seven days. Is there any hope left for SLP?
SLP price prediction
There is a conflicting view on the future of SLP. While some think it will never escape its bearish trend, others are more hopeful forecasting a steady rise.
The sentiment around Smooth Love Potion is bearish, according to CoinCodex’s technical indicators. Its Smooth Love Potion price prediction for 2022 says the coin is a bad buy. It expects the price to fall by 1% over the next week. However, it forecasts a 78% rally in February.
WalletInvestor agrees with CoinCodex, stating that SLP is a bad buy for a one-year investment. Its SLP coin price prediction expects the token to continue losing its value in 2022, dropping to $0.010 by the end of the year. Its Smooth Love Potion price prediction for 2025 expects it to fall to $0.001.
Meanwhile, PricePrediction forecasts steady growth for the gaming token. It estimates SLP to reach $0.05 in 2024 and $0.11 in 2026. Its Smooth Love Potion price prediction for 2030 is a new all-time high of $0.46.
DigitalCoin forecasts this growth to be slower. Its SLP price prediction expects the coin to stay around $0.02 until it climbs to $0.03 in 2025. The site predicts SLP to eventually reach $0.06 in 2029.
Axie Infinity has popularised the innovative play-to-earn gaming model. The platform enjoyed great success in July 2021. However this has not lasted. Critics argue the drop in rewards has caused players to abandon ship and the future of SLP is now hanging in the balance.
FAQs
There is currently a circulating supply of 3.2bn SLP, with no maximum amount. Players can earn SLP through completing daily quests and battling others in Axie Infinity.
It might be. Since its peak in July 2021, SLP has been plagued with a bearish trend. It fell below the $0.10 mark in September 2021 and below $0.05 three months later. This has given many price predictions a pessimistic outlook on the future of SLP. Remember, you should always do your own research before investing.
It could do. The verdict from price predictions depends on who you ask. WalletInvestor forecasts the token to continue losing its worth, while PricePrediction expects a steady rise. Cryptocurrencies are not always predictable and can be volatile, so you should never invest more than you can afford to lose.
It depends. Axie Infinity has created an innovative game that has fuelled the play to earn industry. However, its SLP token has been on a bearish trend since July 2021. There is a conflicted view on whether Smooth Love Potion can win over investors again. Remember, you should always do your own research before investing.
