July started with some good news for Axie Infinity players. A short-lived bug was causing any Axie with an ID number above 1,000,000 to be unplayable. The Axies would cause an error message when they were synced and their avatars would appear as slimes or another similarly incorrect image. The most recent update from 1.0.0y to 1.0.0ab solved that issue.
Clarifications Regarding Automation
The bug followed the news that Axie Infinity reached a major milestone. According to The Lunacian, Axie 1,000,000 was born at the end of June, heralding both good news for Axie Infinity and trouble in paradise. Axie 1,000,000 quickly became the subject of controversy because it was discovered that "the breeder used an advanced methods to interact directly with the Ronin chain and submit many breeding transactions at once using a breeding script" according to Axie Infinity. In the spirit of fairness the decision was made to send this young Axie into the wilderness and subsequently banned it for 365 days. While the fate of Axie 1,000,000 was the juicy news its legacy will be the terms of service (TOS) clarification that it forced to the forefront. Due to the unfair practice surrounding it's breeding, the TOS regarding automation were clarified. These were done in a manner which is expected make breeding events more fun and also balance the needs for new Axies. As many new players have seen, the cost to start playing is high, breeding automation helps address this by theoretically creating downward pressure on market prices by feeding demand. However, this also takes the fun out of events. Other automations were also highlighted. The entire article can be viewed here.
A Short Lived Opportunity
The silver lining to the Million Plus Bug was that there appeared to be a small but notable dip in prices on the marketplace for Axies that were numbered above a million. For a period of a couple of days prices appeared to be down by roughly 0.01- 0.02 ETH per adult Axie with an ID number over one million and a breed count of two or more. Unfortunately, as of this writing no reliable data can be found to confirm this observation however within 24 hours of the fix prices have increased to a floor of approximately 0.08 ETH from lows of 0.06 ETH. Although it was a frustrating and anxious time for many players, as can be observed in the "Bugs" category on Axie's official Discord Channel, it also provided a rare discount for new players to enter the game. Taking the analysis a step further, if data ultimately confirms the price drop observation, it shows that utility does play an active role in prices which bodes well for the future development of Axie Infinity.
The future is bright for the game that recently took the top spot for NFT sales. With regular updates, successful fundraising and continued support from the developers Axie Infinity is showing itself to have staying power.
