AXS Holders Have $2.5B Staked in Axie Infinity in Two Weeks

Axie Infinity has just under $2.5B of its governance token, staked on its Ronin sidechain. That’s more than a quarter of AXS’s total circulating supply.

If Axie’s total value locked were tracked by DefiLlama, it would be the 21st largest protocol on there, as of Thursday afternoon Eastern Time, right behind the lending protocol Liquity and just ahead of the Huobi’s wrapped bitcoin asset, hBTC.

Holders are earning annual returns of over 130% for staking AXS tokens, according to Axie Infinity’s staking dashboard. Staking rewards come from a portion of the initial supply of AXS that was set aside for this purpose.

“This is an important step towards our long term goal of genuine co-ownership of Axie Infinity with community members that contribute meaningfully to our rapidly growing movement,” the Axie team wrote in their newsletter when staking went live on Sept. 30

AXS, or Axie Infinity Shards, were introduced in late 2020. They will eventually have governance powers over the community treasury, which currently has almost $2.8B in assets.

As we’ve previously reported, the Axie Infinity game has had stunning revenue this year, earning much more than Ethereum’s own miners were until recently. All of those earnings go into the community treasury.

The AXS token is up 223X over the course of 2021. While aspects of its economy have been rocky at times, the game platform has still brought in $186.6M over the last 30 days, according to Token Terminal.

Axie Infinity did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Defiant.