“For vetting my scholars, I conduct a video interview over Zoom, which is less of an interview and more just me explaining my scholarship guidelines,” Asthana continues.
“This kind of game works really well with a university student’s schedule,” he explains.
(He’s currently seeking a degree in computer programming.) Asthana tells me that as he sifted through the hundreds of scholars on Discord, he was looking specifically for college students. Padrique says he plays around four hours a day, leaving him with plenty of time to focus on school. Today, roughly 18 months later, there are over a million people on the servers at any given time. Last May, 29,000 people in the Philippines had downloaded Axie Infinity. Not that this fact has deterred scholarship seekers, most of whom live in the Philippines or Venezuela. To that end, Asthana tells me that his initial $600 investment has ballooned to between $10,000 to $13,000. That said, the bulk of the money is being made by managers like Asthana, who can invest in teams of scholars to play the game for them. It’s perhaps a meager sum for those of us in the U.S., but in a country like the Philippines or Venezuela - where the average monthly wage is $53 - players are making more than mid-level managers who work regular 9-to-5 jobs. For perspective, if a scholar is earning 200 potions per day, half of which go to their manager, they end up with roughly 35 bucks. Still, despite his earnings, Asthana admits that in terms of actual dollar value, the money can be “really volatile.” In early August, at the peak of how much a player could earn by playing Axie Infinity, each SLP was equivalent to about 35 cents. “I’ll be breeding some more then,” he explains. “Now, I have a 60 percent cut,” he says.Ĭurrently, Asthana has 47 Axies with plans to hit 50 over the weekend. They used to split the earnings 60/40 in favor of Asthana, but recently, Padrique got a raise. Last month, Padrique earned Asthana 5,000 SLP, or a little over $400. But unlike Pokémon, Axies can earn in-game currency called Smooth Love Potion (SLP) that can be traded on a cryptocurrency exchange for real money. Like Pokémon, the tiny monsters inside this virtual landscape fight and fuck and go on adventures. But the goal for every scholar posting their resume on Discord is the same - to convince a manager like Asthana to hand over access to his Axies. Many resumes include cover letters that focus on their expertise in other games, and some, like Padrique’s, include the reasons why they want to earn money playing the game. For his part, Padrique put down his name, age, nationality, marital status, a list of his devices and the quality of his internet connection. It doesn’t help either that most of the resumes look pretty similar. That’s because everyday, hundreds of candidates bombard the Discord channel with their credentials. If applying for jobs online feels like a hopeless proposition, then posting your information on the Axie Infinity Discord channel is like putting your resume in a glass bottle and heaving it into the ocean.
After studying some of the mechanics of the game from YouTube videos, Padrique posted his resume on Discord.
“They let me watch them while playing and even suggested applying as a scholar in the Axie Infinity Discord ,” he says. Padrique first learned about Axie Infinity ’s scholarship program from his older brother and his brother’s friends. That’s where scholarships come into play - they’re for those who can’t afford to buy Axies on their own. In fact, the most affordable ones on the marketplace cost around $250 each. To play Axie Infinity, a player needs three Axie non-fungible tokens (NFTs), or units of data stored on the blockchain. For now, though, the scholarship program is helping him and Padrique make money inside this first-of-its-kind, play-to-earn video game and perhaps blockchain’s most revolutionary contribution to date. He’s one of 12 people sponsored by 28-year-old Samir Asthana, a recent graduate from the University of Southern California’s Marshall Business School who is actively looking for work within the entertainment industry. Padrique, who lives in the Philippines, is currently on an Axie Infinity scholarship. “I’m spending my earnings to provide something for my family because I want to help them,” he tells me. Every time he completes a daily quest or wins a battle, he earns actual cash, which he uses to pay for his school books, his internet bill, and most of all, to help his parents. The 21-year-old is battling tiny monsters inside a multi-billion-dollar pixelated metaverse known as Axie Infinity.
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