Contrary to the obvious explanation, this massive whale wallet does not belong to Axie Infinity or the company behind it, Sky Mavis.
For almost a year, the mysterious Axie Infinity wallet has been quietly accumulating billions of Smooth Love Potion (SLP), the in-game cryptocurrency at the heart of one of the most popular P2E crypto games in the industry.
As of Wednesday, the anonymous whale wallet holds just over 22 billion SLPs — more than 50% of the total supply of 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 mystery wallet on August 25.
Benko told Cointelegraph that given the amount of SLP he has amassed in a relatively short amount of time, he is worried about his wallet, which could hurt the game’s ecosystem.
“The value of a wallet with so many SLPs when it’s an individual gives that person tremendous control over the economy, especially in an economy where minting a token is so difficult.”
On August 31, Sky Mavis co-founder Jeffrey Zirlin revealed the mysterious wallet as the “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, craft runes and amulets (buffs) in the game, as well as sell on exchanges.
Benko noted that according to the latest seasonal update, the average Axie Infinity player can generate between 10 and 70 SLP per day depending on how well they play:
“Therefore, it is worrying when someone is sitting with 22 billion SLPs […] they can actually keep the price the same or keep it low when it should go up in line with natural market conditions.”
The cryptocurrency is currently worth $0.004, down 99% from its all-time high of $0.40 on July 13, 2021, according to CoinGecko.
Whose is this?
Benko initially speculated that the wallet was “some sort of system by which Axie Infinity should automatically distribute SLP to the players who earned it.”
However, Sky Mavis co-founder and COO Alexander Larson told Cointelegraph that neither Sky Mavis nor Axie Infinity own the game’s cryptocurrency, stating:
“All existing tokens were created by players.”
Yield Guild Games co-founder Gabby Dyson — one of the large decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) for Axie players — explained that YGG does not own the wallet and suggested that it could be an exchange-created wallet. Used to store liquidity.
Related: Solved! Secret owner of giant Axie Infinity SLP wallet revealed
“Don’t assume these are ours as we typically use all of our issued SLPs for breeding,” Dizon said, adding that “the most likely explanation is that the exchange is holding them for 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:
“It 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.
