AXS Staking is Here!

CRYPTODAY 050

1. SkyMavis launched their long-awaited AXS Staking feature yesterday, and because the crypto life is weird, I was both lucky and unlucky about it at the same time. I was lucky because I happened to buy a sizeable chunk of AXS earlier that day at $69, literally hours before it pumped by 15%. But then I was unlucky because I set up a yield farm with that AXS on Sushi.com, not knowing that the internal staking pool for Axie Infinity was about to launch. So I had to buy another sizeable chunk of AXS in order to have something to stake, only this time, at the new price of $75. Oh well. Sometimes my timing is just weird.

   

2. As with all staking programs, the AXS Staking feature is meant to take tokens off the market, which induces scarcity and keeps the price moving in the right direction. Why would you want to do that with your AXS? Stakers receive rewards for locking up their AXS tokens, which is described in more detail here. I’ve been seeing rough calculations indicating an 80% annual rate of return on AXS staking, but we’ll see something more definitive in the coming hours when the rewards functionality actually kicks in for the first time. In parallel with the staking announcement, SkyMavis simultaneously airdropped 800,000 AXS ($60M) to players who were active before Oct 26, 2020. Without the staking tools, this much new AXS entering the economy would’ve caused a sharp price decline, but instead, the price has stayed strong above $70.

3. The CurioCards auction at Christie’s NYC is happening tonight at 930pm Manila time, and I’ll be joining the other original artists in a TwitterSpaces hangout from 9pm onwards. You can read about the auction in more detail in my previous newsletter, but the main headline is that it’s the first NFTart by a Filipino to be auctioned at Christie’s, and may even be the first example of a Filipino artist to ever be auctioned at their New York location. We’re going to try to get a restream going on Facebook so people can follow along, but if that’s not possible, please follow me @helloluis and @myCurioCards on Twitter so you’ll see the Space notification later tonight.

4. Today’s featured CPAG artist is Nathalie Osma. I first spotted Nathalie’s lovely paintings on Facebook several weeks ago, and I was surprised to find out that she had just turned 19 this year. When I was 19, I was busy rejecting my art school education and instead spent most of my time learning how to program web apps in PHP and JS. I guess I’ve come full circle with the art guild.

5. Unbelievably, this is my 50th Cryptoday newsletter, and it’ll be my last one until next Friday, Oct 8th. I’m switching to a once-a-week, every-Friday format, so I can give the writing the time and attention it deserves. If you’ve been following along, I am a bit overextended right now, with YGG, CPAG, AxieArchipelago.org, Cryptoday, and four NFTart collaborations in different stages of production. I need to turn down the volume on at least one of these things in order to avoid burning out. If you follow me on Facebook and Twitter you’ll still see regular updates about all of these projects (including some new ones that I couldn’t announce yet!) but those posts will be more real-time and not in the M-W-F cadence.
   

See you all next Friday, cryptofam, and have a great weekend!