Blockchain-powered Game Axie Infinity’s governance token AXS rose to an all-time high in the market again today after the team behind the game announced the development of a new decentralized exchange (DEX) last Friday. The latest news also came after the protocol last week made an airdrop to early users and introduced staking rewards for AXS holders.
At 12:38 UTC, AXS, ranked 21st by market capitalization, traded at USD, a whopping 38% in a day and 137% in a week.
The latest news on the upcoming Axie Infinity DEX was shared by Jeff Zirlin, co-founder and head of growth at Sky Mavis, the company that developed Axie Infinity, on Friday’s podcast The Scoop.
In the interview, Zirlin explained that the purpose of the DEX is to facilitate the trading of tokens used in the game economy, including the governance token AXS and the Smooth Love Potion (SLP) token earned by playing the game. The development thus represents a first step towards bridging the worlds of play-to-earn blockchain games and decentralized finance (DeFi).
According to Zirlin, the DEX will build on Ronin, an Ethereum (ETH) side chain designed specifically for Axie Infinity, making it easier for users to trade and issue tokens without using a bridge.
Aside from DEX development, excitement about the price of the AXS token increased this weekend after the team announced late last week that they had distributed AXS 800,000 as an airdrop to early adopters.
The airdrop, worth $60 million at the time and nearly $120 million today, was sent to all users who played Axie Infinity before October 26, 2020, the announcement says, while further explaining that the number of tokens received from each player depended on the user’s activity level.
In addition, the rise in the token price today and over the weekend also follows the launch of staking rewards for the protocol last week.
At the time of writing, Axie Infinity’s staking dashboard showed that a total of 
The Axie Infinity team previously said that the initial staking rewards would come from a pool of AXS tOkens set aside specifically for this purpose, and that AXS rewards would be distributed in the first month.
The monthly payout is equivalent to AXS 64,516 per day, which is worth just over USD 9.67M at current prices.
The massive growth for both the protocol itself and the price of the AXS token has recently been highlighted by several high-profile figures in the crypto space. Among them was Su Zhu of Three Arrows Capital, who called it “the best seed investment ever” on Twitter this weekend for DeFiance Capital, a DeFi-focused fund.
Similarly, Messari researcher Ryan Watkins pointed to the protocol’s strong growth on Sunday when he said that the game’s revenue grew 48-fold quarter-on-quarter:
But although revenue growth was definitely strong throughout the quarter, there are signs that revenue is slowing for the protocol.
Based on data from Token Terminal, the game’s daily revenue peaked at USD
However, the AXS token has continued its meteoric rise despite the weaker revenue streams for the game.