Axie Infinity launches DEX, sending native currency soaring
NFT play-to-earn game Axie Infinity rolled out its own decentralized exchange (DEX), Katana, Thursday, leading to the game's native currency nearly doubling in price.
Katana will allow players to easily exchange its in-game tokens, which power Axie Infinity's massive economy. It will also allow players to stake tokens in liquidity pools to earn rewards over time.
"Katana enables exchange by leveraging assets community members like you share within liquidity pools," Axie's announcement stated. "Katana allows for anyone to become a liquidity provider when they deposit both sides of a trading pair’s assets into its liquidity pools."
The launch of Katana briefly caused the price of Smooth Love Potion (SLP), which is used in game to breed the game's titular characters called Axies, to double to nearly $0.14 USD. As of this writing, SLP was priced at $0.104 USD, up about 52 percent since the announcement.
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Axie Infinity exploded in popularity last spring following the launch of its own blockchain, Ronin, which allowed users to trade in game NFTs and other tokens without paying high Ethereum gas fees.
As of Thursday, more than $2.8 billion in game tokens had been transacted, according to Cryptoslam.io.
Sky Mavis, which produced the game, is the NFT gaming space's first unicorn. In October, it raised a $152-million Series B at a valuation of nearly $3 billion, putting it alongside some of the largest gaming companies in the world.
The game's creators also unveiled RON, which will act as the new native token of the Ronin blockchain.
"It will eventually be used to pay gas fees and secure the network for both Axie Infinity and future games/products hosted on the chain," the announcement reads. "RON’s primary purpose is to ensure that Ronin will always be a blockchain owned by our community."
