My Experience Launching an Axie Infinity Scholarship Programme

Hello readers! How has your week been? I hope everyone is doing well amid this Covid situation.

Today, we will be talking about one of my most sought after and requested review and that is: How to start an Axie Infinity Scholarship programme, how to breed and just more guides on getting into Axie Infinity.

Axie Infinity

The game’s idea and inspiration was taken from Pokemon and you can battle, collect, raise, and breed Axies. That is important to what Axie is, but the ecosystem is way more complicated than how simplistic it all sounds.

Behind the game itself, it is powered by the Ethereum blockchain, meaning it is open-source, and any player from any part of the world will be able to participate.

As long as you have a wallet that can hold ETH and buy/sell Axies or crypto tokens, you can access the game wherever you are.

If you are new, or have yet to read my more recent posts, then you must be new to Axie Infinity as well. What the heck is this funny sounding thing?

In essence, Axie Infinity is a play-to-earn game which exploded in popularity after a video documentary about the game in the Philippines blew up on Youtube.

SLP!!

You can earn in game tokens called Smooth Love Potion (SLP) when you win in the game in either Adventure mode (PvE) or Arena Mode (PvP). This SLP is different from normal games in that, the SLPs earned are ERC-20 tokens that can be converted into real money like USD/SGD/PHP.

They are crypto tokens based off the Ethereum blockchain and can be converted into other crypto tokens as well.

If you want to understand this in greater detail, you can check out my post here before moving on to read the rest of my post.

Scholarship Programme

If you are reading this, I will assume you already know the basics to how the game works, the tokenomics of AXS and SLP, and how scholarships work, all of which are covered in my previous article.

Are scholarships a Ponzi or pyramid scheme? Well, no.

In a pyramid scheme or Ponzi scheme, previous investors would gain money from more people joining in and siphon their capital, a constant need for new investors/users are required to keep the scheme working.

In Axie Infinity’s scholarship case, it does not work like that.

Axie Scholarships are like property investments

To put it into perspective, launching an Axie scholarship is akin to buying investment properties. How so?

One of my favourite Axies, destroy Terminator Reptiles/Birds/Backline Aquas in 1 turn, now used by my scholar!

Axies are NFTs or non-fungible tokens, which are unique and cannot be replaced. In a sense, it is as “real” an asset to own just like property, just that NFTs are digital properties that exist on the internet.

Yes I know, difficult to wrap your head around it but you will get used to it eventually.

With this digital real estate, we then rent it out to scholars, who are essentially like tenants. Because scholars simply gets to play the game for free with no start-up cost incurred, scholarship managers like me and my girlfriend can earn a cut of their SLP since we provided the Axies for them. It is the same concept as renting your property (which you paid for) out and getting rental payments every month as passive income.

Axies essentially are yield generating NFTs which are powered by human capital, as human time and effort is traded in exchange for monetary incentives in the form of SLP payouts.

When you launch a scholarship programme, you are dishing out initial capital to purchase a pool of 0/7 breed Axies to breed and start an infinite loop, or what we call the ABC or ABCD breeding method. I won’t be going into the details of the breeding process, but you can check out the video herefor more walkthrough.

Once you have started a breeding pool, you would have to dish out initial capital for 9 Axies (in my case for a Plant, Aqua, Reptile team) since each type requires at least 3 Axies to start an infinite loop.

Each time you breed, you also need to pay breeding fees in the form of 4 AXS tokens and a variable amount of SLP. The higher the breed count, the more expensive the breeding cost.

Essentially, when I first started my breeding pool and scholarship, we bulk purchased approximately 14,000 SLP from Binance and tons of AXS when it was around $11-$25 range.

So do keep in mind and calculate your initial capital carefully and I suggest having an excel sheet to keep track properly.

Initial Capital

The initial capital we dished out is roughly 10K USD at that point in time to start the breeding pool and start the first 2 generations of Axies for scholars.

Going back to the property example, this is a much more capital efficient method to break even faster and also a lower barrier to entry since the initial capital is comparatively lower.

To break even eventually, we need to make sure the scholars are trustworthy individuals with knowledge, hunger to earn SLP and passion for the game, and we calculated the initial breakeven period to be between 2-3 months depending on the price of SLP then.

This is currently the 3rd week since the scholarship programme’s inception, and we now have a total of 13 scholars and 3 additional scholars from me and my girlfriend’s parents capital. So in sum, there are currently 16 scholars under our management.

Scholar Scouting and Onboarding

Axie Infinity Discord Server

We created a Discord server to manage our scholars. To scout for them, we leveraged upon Axie Infinity’s main discord server and shortlisted scholars to be interviewed.

Not all scholars are who they claim to be, so my tip here is to ask specific questions like “Name a few meta cards right now” if they claim they understand how the game works.

It is also important to make sure you adhere to the Axie Infinity’s game guidelines, so you do need to have a proper system in place.

Once you have found a favourable scholar and ready to onboard, I personally ask for a selfie with their ID card and make sure they are not under-age.

I had a few instances where we were onboarding the scholars and the candidate lied that they were 18 when they were just 17 or even lower. So you do need to have proper guidelines in place to protect your scholarship programme from being banned.

I pay my scholars through Ronin wallet and they will cash out to Binance PHP based on a YouTube guide I sent them.

Scholarship Programme is pretty much being a Business Owner

As a business owner or boss, you are responsible for the well-being of your scholars, make sure they are properly incentivised, and they understand how to play the game.

I gave them a minimum daily criteria of 150 SLP which is just finishing adventure and Daily Quest, and most of my scholars are exceeding expectations and earning beyond 150 SLP per day already.

I also came up with attractive prizes for top performers so they will be motivated to work hard and earn more SLP, which is a win-win for both the scholar and the manager.

In this case, managing a scholarship programme is also like managing your own start-up, and scholars are essentially like your employees, so you got to motivate them and also instil discipline if needed.

It is human capital management in a nutshell.

Passive Income Scalability

Here is the juicy part where everyone is excited about.

Most scholarship programmes do a 40/60 split of SLP where 40% goes to the scholar and 60% goes to the manager (so does my scholarship) at the start and slowly scale up scholars payout the more they earn.

There are different ways to do this but just don’t be blinded by greed and give absurd splits like 20/80 or 10/90 which is basically slavery. They are humans too, reward them accordingly for their time and effort. Underpaying can also result in dire consequences such as quitting halfway, slacking off or lack of motivation.

Based on the current price of SLP, 13 scholars (not counting the extra 3) will generate roughly net $13,600 SGD for me and my girlfriend combined, after subtracting the payout to the scholars. In other words, we both get roughly $6800 SGD each passively each month from the current SLP price and current count of 13 scholars.

In that scenario, we will breakeven in 1-2 months if SLP prices remain stable and even if it does drop lower, we will just hold on to SLP, since we plan to be farming SLP from the scholarship programme over the long term and reinvesting it back to breed more Axies anyway.

After the breakeven stage, any amount of additional SLP earned will just be profits for me and my girlfriend.

As time goes by, we will still scale up the scholarship and hire more scholars to play the game, so we expect the passive income to scale up as we reinvest our SLP and breed more Axies to hire more scholars.

This is also not a pyramid scheme because your returns is proportionate to how much you reinvest back into it, and not us benefitting solely from new players joining the game, so skeptics, your doubts are cleared here 🙂

Time Commitment

As with any other passive income stream, starting the scholarship programme from the ground up can be extremely time consuming and daunting to say the least.

There were many excel sheets to work on and optimise, the scouting and interviewing of scholars, setting up a proper discord server, coming up with a proper payout model and tons of backend admin work.

Also, to read up more on Axie gameplay, understanding the meta, breeding the right Axies, selling the bad ones and buying quality Axies to breed, as well as shortlisting potential scholars. The list goes on and on so if you want to start a programme yourself, be sure to know what you are getting into. Things can get overwhelming easily if you are not tracking the SLP properly or if a scholar misbehaves etc.

So while the passive income stream is ultra lucrative when compared to other methods like property investing or dividend investing, there are tons of initial time and effort you need to put in to set up this passive income stream.

Also, if you don’t have foundational knowledge into crypto, blockchain or DeFi, it might be an entry barrier as well since you will need to toggle with different wallets, setting up scholar accounts and managing their payouts through the blockchain. Many factors to consider as this is a business in and of itself.

You also need to understand the game economy thoroughly and build your own community and keep your scholars motivated and happy. You got to be a leader and guide the scholars through the initial stages, so I think it is super important that you know what’s going on first before jumping into scholarships for the money.

Summary TLDR

• Understand how Axie Infinity works and why Play-To-Earn is viable

• Set up proper excel spreadsheets to keep track of your profit/loss/cost/Axies etc

• Set up a breeding pool by buying at least 3 Axies of the same type for breeding infinite loops

• Set up wallets for scholars accounts for you to transfer the Axies into the scholar account for them to access

• Understand the guidelines, Dos and Don’ts and ban-able activity

• Set up a discord server to scout and onboard scholars

• Hatch the eggs and continue to breed every 5 days and onboard scholars using the same breeding method used and keep track of the Axie generations

• Motivate your scholars and pay them consistently to keep them incentivised

• Rinse and repeat and scale your scholarship business over time

The list above is not exhaustive as there are a lot of minor details which I am unable to fully cover in this article.

The moral of the story here is: There is no free lunch in this world.

If you want to get rewarded with the awesome passive income which is real and can be attained, you need to put down capital, time and effort with the right knowledge and understanding of this ecosystem before jumping in and launching your scholarship programme.

If you jump in without fully understanding first, a lot of things can go wrong, such as:

• Breeding cost is more than buying from marketplace (Not profitable)

• Your breeding Axies turn out to have bad recessive genes and have parts which are detrimental to the Axie type

• Scholars lie to you about their age, you did not check and the game bans your entire scholarship

• Buying the wrong Axies and scholars are unable to earn SLP because terrible Axies = terrible win rates = terrible SLP earning

• Overpaying for Axies – Prolongs your breakeven period, or you don’t breakeven at all

• Not having a proper spreadsheet to keep track of things

• Not backing up you seed phrase and ends up losing your Axies and assets

As you can see here, there are many things that can go wrong. So if at this point you can’t even wrap your head around what NFT is or how to send crypto tokens from address A to address B, then this strategy is not for you.

You got to put in the effort and due diligence before diving deeply into this ecosystem.

On the other hand, if you have been doing your research about Axie Infinity and have been keen about launching a scholarship programme yourself, then I hope this article has been helpful for you.

These are first-hand experiences I encountered while launching the scholarship programme and even though I watched tons of videos on starting scholarships, breeding strategies etc, I still faced a lot of unforeseen circumstances which arises here and there.

It won’t be smooth sailing at the start, but if you want to get that sweet, juicy passive income, you got to put in the effort and do your homework.

Parting Words

Axie Infinity is a blockchain-based game off Ethereum, so it is important that you understand what Ethereum is in the first place and basic things like setting up a Metamask wallet, transferring ETH from an exchange into Metamask, and purchasing Axies using ETH. I will leave a few helpful links to help you onboard faster, but do note that none of these are financial advice, and you should do your own homework if you really want to get started on this game.

If you truly want to be profitable and make extra income from it, then you will need to commit time to the game and earn your SLP to make your investments worth your while, but who knows, maybe 1 year from now, 10 million people or more will be playing this game and your Axies can easily worth 4-5 times more than when you bought it. NFT is a magical new asset class with immense potential.

Here are some links which you may find useful for your Axie Infinity journey:

Axie Infinity Whitepaper/Guide

Axie Infinity Road Map

Axie Infinity Breeding Simulator

Axie Infinity Pricing Calculator

Axie Infinity Starter Guide with Good Info

Axie Infinity Market Place

Axie Infinity Scholarship Guide (Walkthrough)

If you think all these are still too complicated, you can consider joining my telegram group where I share articles, investment opportunities and more research based content on an almost daily basis. You can also ask questions, and take part in polls to see how others think as well!

Join My Tele Channel Here For Blog Updates And More!

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What is Bitcoin? Answers here

Or do your due diligence on Bitcoin in my post here where I debunk some of the myths regarding Bitcoin.

What is Ethereum? Simple Guide Here

I did a bite-sized article on Ethereum for you to get a crash-course on what the buzz word is all about here.

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Alright that’s it! For now, think long term, tune out the noise and avoid the temptation of gambling meme stocks, think of the companies that will do well in the long run simply find bargains/dollar cost into your positions. If you need some inspiration for companies to research, you can check out my post on 5 stocks to buy if the market crashes here.

Disclaimer:

The content here is for informational purposes only and should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice. It does NOT constitute an offer or solicitation to purchase any investment or a recommendation to buy or sell a security. In fact, the content is not directed to any investor or potential investor and may not be used to evaluate or make any investment.