Axie Infinity Co-Founder Jeff Zirlin Believes Play-To-Earn Games Will Fuel NFT Acceptance

Axie Infinity Co-Founder Jeff “Jiho” Zirlin, has seen both the highs and lows of his NFT, play-to-earn venture. The game has grown steadily in popularity, but was also the subject of an estimated $625 million hack recently, which threw a lot of the game’s reliability into question. On top of that, the market capitalization has fallen 19.76% since last August, and total revenue has also fallen about 99% in the same timeframe. Despite those troubling numbers, Zirlin is still supremely confident both in his product, and they play-to-earn ecosystem.

“Crypto is very cyclical, and sometimes you’re in a growth cycle and other times you have to build,” said Zirlin. “You can’t have exponential growth all the time; there is a refractory period.”

Zirlin has reason to stay confident, as Axie’s market cap has increased by 228.3% and the number of total business increased by 50,950.8% compared to the same period last year. The game has been attracting new users as well, thanks to the company’s new Axie Infinity: Origin, a free-to-play version of the game, which Zirlin said he hopes will attract more users in a try it before you buy it fashion.

“I think the free start of Axies is an important time for NFTs because people can fall in love with the IP and the universe and try it out and see if it’s for them before taking any huge economic decisions,” said Zirlin.

Zirlin’s next big plan for Axie involves building its digital game environment to be similar to the physical world, aka the metaverse.

“There’s more spending from the physical world being shifted to digital environments,” added Zirlin. “It might be hard for some generations to appreciate this, but more time has gone in front of screens, so that’s a major shift that makes more people think of the metaverse as a shift from physical to digital.”

Zirlin sees this as just the beginning of what he calls a “major realignment” in gaming. NFTs, play-to-earn…this is what is going to fuel the future of video games and/in the metaverse.

(All information was provided by TechCrunch)

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