Axie Infinity’s Katana Breaks $1B in TVL After Launch of Governance Token

Katana, the new automated market maker for Axie Infinity’s side chain Ronin, has attracted more than $1.2B in total value locked since launching on Nov. 4, as users load in liquidity in order to farm the sidechain’s new governance token, RON.

The market has three pools, but 99% of the value is in two of them, AXS-WETH and SLP-WETH, because those token pairs are getting daily rewards of the new RON token.

Play-to-earn gaming has been one of the most dynamic features of the crypto economy in 2021, with Axie Infinity being the standout project. The game has brought in $185M in revenue over the last 30 days, according to TokenTerminal.

Ronin Sidechain

Katana, the automated market maker (AMM) is the latest effort by Sky Mavis, the company behind Axie Infinity, to reduce friction for players who are earning crypto assets with their play-to-earn game. It was announced Nov. 4, and liquidity mining for RON went live about a day later.

While the game was originally built on Ethereum, The Ronin sidechain has enabled Axie Infinity to scale its economy and lower the costs of participation for its users, many of whom rely on the game for their real day-to-day income. RON holders will likely have control over the treasury that’s now being made by 0.05% of each trade on Katana.

Each day, 1,111,1112 RON will be distributed to Katana’s liquidity providers in those two pools, with half going to each. This initial distribution will run for 90 days, Jiho Zirlin told The Defiant in an interview.

Katana Pools

“Obviously we want to get these to the people who are helping us,” he said.

The AXS-WETH pool has far more funds in it than the SLP-WETH pool, at $742M and $444M, respectively. The remaining pool, USDC-WETH, has $9M, which lacks RON rewards. There has been $112M in volume traded over the last 24 hours.

Of the one billion RON in existence, 10% are being distributed now to liquidity providers in the two Katana pools featuring Axie Infinity native assets. SLP is the utility token for breeding Axie characters and AXS is the governance token.

$2.9B worth of AXS has been staked since that function was enabled. Stakers share in daily AXS rewards of 64,516 fresh AXS.

The AXS token is trading at $153.13, up 14% from the beginning of the month, when it traded at $132.79, according to CoinMarketCap.