Contrary to the obvious explanation, this massive whale wallet does not belong to Axie Infinity or the company behind it, Sky Mavis.
For nearly a year, the mysterious Axie Infinity wallet has quietly been collecting billions of Smooth Love Potion (SLP), the in-game cryptocurrency at the heart of one of the industry’s most popular P2E crypto games.
As of Wednesday, the anonymous whale wallet now holds just over 22 billion SLPs — more than 50% of the total tokens in circulation.
The wallet in question was brought to the attention of Cointelegraph by Axie Infinity player and tech co-founder Michael Benko, who first became aware of the mysterious wallet on August 25.
Benko told Cointelegraph that he’s worried about the wallet given the amount of SLP he’s accumulated in a relatively short period of time, potentially damaging the game’s ecosystem.
“The importance of having a wallet with so many SLPs when it’s one person gives that person tremendous control over the economy, especially in an economy where minting a token is so difficult.”
On August 31, the mysterious wallet of Sky Mavis co-founder Jeffrey Zirlin was unveiled as a Binance Ronin Gateway contract.
Axie Infinity, launched in 2021, is a blockchain-based game where players buy NFTs from cartoon creatures they breed and fight other players in turn-based games.
SLP is earned by players by completing daily quests, fighting other players in Arena mode, or playing against AI in Adventure mode. SLP can be used to farm Axes, create runes and spells (buffs) in the game, as well as sell on exchanges.
Benko noted that according to last season’s update, the average Axie Infinity player can generate between 10 and 70 SLP per day depending on how well they play:
“So it’s a concern if someone is sitting there with 22 billion SLPs […] they can hold the price steady or keep it low when it should go up due to natural market conditions.”
The cryptocurrency is currently trading at $0.004, down 99% from the all-time high of $0.40 on July 13, 2021, according to CoinGecko.
Whose is this?
Benko originally speculated that the wallet was “a system needed by Axie Infinity to automatically distribute SLP to the players who earned it.”
However, Alexander Larson, co-founder and COO of Sky Mavis, told Cointelegraph that neither Sky Mavis nor Axie Infinity own any of the game’s cryptocurrencies, stating:
“All existing tokens were created by players.”
Gabby Dizon, co-founder of Yield Guild Games — one of the main Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) for Axie players — said that YGG does not own the wallet and suggested that it could be a wallet used by the exchange to maintain liquidity.
Related: Solved! The mysterious owner of the giant wallet Axie Infinity SLP is revealed
“Don’t assume it’s ours as we usually use all of our minted SLPs for breeding,” Dizon said, adding that “the most likely explanation is that the exchange is holding them because of their liquidity.”
However, Benko noted that although Binance is seen as the sender or receiver of many transactions in many SLP transactions, when viewing the transactions, he does not believe that this is a wallet owned by a crypto exchange:
“Looks like Binance [already] has an official wallet, and it looks like it’s not the right wallet.”
Cointelegraph has reached out to Binance for comment, but has not received a response at the time of writing.
Update: Added confirmation from the co-founder of Sky Mavis on August 31st that the wallet is owned by Binance.
