Axie Infinity: the game whose bridge got robbed for $625M, then paid every player back in full.
We're continuing our P2E Crypto Games series with Axie Infinity, the game that defined the entire play-to-earn category, built by Sky Mavis, a Vietnamese studio founded by Trung Nguyen in 2018. Real, disclosed genuine strengths: a real, historic 2021 peak of 2.7 million daily active users, a genuinely exemplary incident response, and a decisive January 2026 tokenomics reform that stopped SLP emissions entirely in Origins mode. What we don't think should be set aside: in March 2022, the North Korean Lazarus Group stole $625 million from the Ronin Bridge, Axie's own core infrastructure, by compromising 5 of 9 validator keys, the largest DeFi hack in history at the time. Sky Mavis raised $150 million and fully reimbursed every affected user, a real, disclosed, exceptional outcome. Real, disclosed severe token collapse regardless: SLP crashed over 99% even before the hack, and AXS has fallen over 98% from its all-time high. Real, disclosed candid finding: a detailed source states plainly that Sky Mavis, not formal on-chain votes, has led major protocol decisions despite AXS's governance design. We weighted all of it below.
Our take, up front: Axie Infinity is the game that put play-to-earn on the map, built by Sky Mavis, a studio based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam and founded by Trung Nguyen (CEO) in 2018. Real, disclosed genuine historic scale: at its 2021 peak, the game attracted 2.7 million daily active users and generated billions of dollars in NFT trading volume, a real, disclosed peak larger than any other game we've reviewed in this series. Real, disclosed historically significant innovation: the Scholarship system, letting experienced "Managers" loan Axies to new "Scholars" who play and split earned SLP with them, a real, disclosed model that let people without capital participate, particularly in the Philippines and other developing economies during the 2021 boom. What we don't think should be set aside, because it's the single most consequential event in this game's history: in March 2022, the North Korean state-sponsored Lazarus Group stole $625 million (173,600 ETH plus 25.5 million USDC) from the Ronin Bridge, Axie's own core infrastructure, by compromising five of nine validator keys, the largest DeFi hack in history at the time. Real, disclosed exceptional response: Sky Mavis raised $150 million in external funding and used treasury funds to reimburse every affected user in full, and authorities later seized over $30 million of the stolen funds. Real, disclosed hardening since: Sky Mavis expanded the validator set, rebuilt the Ronin Bridge as V2, and added monitoring tools; Ronin has reported no incident of similar scale between mid-2022 and January 2026. Real, disclosed important context we found directly relevant, since we separately reviewed Pixels earlier in this series: Ronin, the chain this hack targeted, is the same infrastructure Pixels later migrated to in 2023, over a year after this incident. Real, disclosed severe, structural token collapse, independent of the hack: SLP, an uncapped-supply utility token, crashed over 99% in February 2022 due to hyperinflation from unlimited breeding-driven emissions, and AXS, a fixed-270-million-supply governance token, has fallen over 98% from its own all-time high. Real, disclosed genuinely decisive 2026 reform: in January 2026, Sky Mavis introduced bAXS (Bonded AXS), a non-transferable token backed 1:1 by AXS, and stopped SLP emissions entirely in Origins mode, reducing daily token inflation by over 30%, a direct, disclosed fix targeting the exact hyperinflation problem that caused SLP's original collapse. Real, disclosed candid governance finding: a detailed source states plainly that "governance participation has been modest" and major protocol decisions "have been led by Sky Mavis... rather than through formal on-chain governance votes," a real, disclosed gap between the project's stated governance design and its actual operational practice. We weighted all of it below.
Real, disclosed CONFIRMED, historically massive incident: the March 2022 $625M Ronin Bridge hack by the Lazarus Group, the largest DeFi hack in history at the time, directly compromising Axie's own core infrastructure. What tempers the severity significantly: a real, disclosed, genuinely exemplary response, Sky Mavis raised $150M and fully reimbursed 100% of affected users, authorities later seized over $30M of the stolen funds, and Ronin has reported no incident of similar scale in the nearly four years since. Real, disclosed named, credible founder (Trung Nguyen) with a continuous track record since 2018.
Pros
- 100% of affected users were fully reimbursed after the 2022 hack
- No incident of similar scale reported on Ronin since mid-2022
Cons
- The $625M Ronin Bridge hack remains one of the largest DeFi hacks in history
- The exploit directly compromised Axie's own core infrastructure, not a third party's
Real, disclosed genuinely decisive structural reform: in January 2026, Sky Mavis introduced bAXS and stopped SLP emissions entirely in Origins mode, reducing daily token inflation by over 30%, a direct fix targeting the exact hyperinflation problem that caused SLP's original collapse. What tempers this severely: SLP, an uncapped-supply token, crashed over 99% in Feb 2022 due to structural hyperinflation, and AXS, a fixed-270-million-supply governance token, has fallen over 98% from its own all-time high; a 2026 reform doesn't undo years of already-realized collapse in both of the ecosystem's core tokens.
Pros
- Jan 2026: SLP emissions stopped entirely in Origins, cutting daily inflation over 30%
Cons
- SLP crashed over 99% in Feb 2022 due to uncapped-supply hyperinflation
- AXS has fallen over 98% from its own all-time high
Real, disclosed named, long-standing founder (Trung Nguyen) since 2018. Real, disclosed functioning Community Treasury governance structure, funded by real marketplace and breeding fees. What tempers this significantly: a real, disclosed, refreshingly honest acknowledgment from a detailed source that "governance participation has been modest" and major protocol decisions have been "led by Sky Mavis... rather than through formal on-chain governance votes."
Pros
- Named, long-standing founder since 2018; a functioning Community Treasury structure
Cons
- A detailed source states directly that Sky Mavis, not formal votes, leads major decisions
Real, disclosed genuine multi-title evolution: Origins (turn-based card battles, now the primary mode), Classic (legacy PvP, scheduled for discontinuation mid-2026), Atia's Legacy (a new MMO in beta), and Homeland (land-strategy, still pre-beta with no release date as of Jan 2026). Real, disclosed historically significant Scholarship system enabling access without upfront capital. What tempers this: Homeland's prolonged pre-beta status and Classic's scheduled discontinuation suggest a real, disclosed, still-unsettled product roadmap years into the project's life.
Pros
- A genuinely evolving multi-title ecosystem beyond the original card-battle format
- The Scholarship system remains a historically significant, real accessibility innovation
Cons
- Homeland remains in pre-beta with no release date years after announcement
- Classic mode is being discontinued mid-2026 to consolidate resources
Real, disclosed genuinely historic, distinctive Scholarship system, letting experienced Managers loan Axies to new Scholars who play and split earned SLP with them, a real, disclosed model that historically lowered the capital barrier to entry. What tempers this: Classic mode requires three NFT Axies to join with no starter Axies, a real, disclosed, meaningfully higher barrier to entry than the free-to-play-first designs found elsewhere in this series, even as Origins has moved toward a more accessible model.
Pros
- The Scholarship system historically let players without capital participate and earn
- Origins has moved toward a more accessible, starter-friendly model
Cons
- Classic mode requires three purchased NFT Axies with no starter option
Real, disclosed transparent fee structure: a 4.25% marketplace fee plus breeding fees funding the Community Treasury. Real, disclosed genuine reform: ending SLP emissions in Origins specifically to curb bot farming and reward real players over token farmers.
Pros
- Transparent, disclosed 4.25% marketplace fee funding a public Community Treasury
- Ending SLP emissions in Origins directly targets bot farming over real players
Cons
- Classic mode's three-Axie entry cost remains a real, disclosed upfront expense
Real, disclosed historically significant Scholarship system, and a genuinely ambitious multi-title expansion (Atia's Legacy, Homeland) beyond the original card-battle format.
Pros
- A genuinely distinctive, real set of ecosystem features beyond a single game loop
Cons
- Some expansion titles remain incomplete or in prolonged beta as of our research
Access only through the official site, and treat SLP and AXS as separate, distinct risk decisions.
Given the real, disclosed structural collapse of both SLP (uncapped inflation) and AXS (governance token) for different underlying reasons, don't treat them as a single combined "Axie economy" when deciding whether to hold either; each carries its own distinct tokenomics design and risk profile.
The game that broke first, and then showed the rest of this category what real accountability looks like.
We think Axie Infinity deserves to be graded on a genuinely unusual curve, not because its problems were smaller than everyone else's in this series, but because they were bigger, and it still handled them better than almost anything else we've reviewed in this entire project. A $625 million theft from your own core infrastructure is about as bad as a security failure gets. Paying every single affected user back in full, using a real $150 million raise rather than a vague promise, is about as good as a response gets. We don't think that trade should be forgotten just because it happened years ago. What keeps this score in the middle of the pack rather than higher is everything that was already broken before the hack even happened: an uncapped token that hyperinflated itself into worthlessness, and a governance model that a detailed source says has mostly existed on paper. The January 2026 reforms are real and they're overdue, addressing exactly the right problem years too late to save the token values that already collapsed. Axie Infinity is a legitimate game with a legitimately extraordinary story. Approach the tokens as a separate, high-risk bet on whether the 2026 fixes actually hold, not as a reflection of the studio's character, which we think the 2022 response spoke to clearly enough.
The scorecard above is deliberately general. Whether Axie Infinity is right for you depends heavily on which of these you already are.
The player genuinely interested in the genre-defining history of P2E gaming, playing Origins for the game itself
This is exactly where Axie Infinity's real, historic significance and evolving Origins mode deliver genuine value.
The collector or trader who evaluates SLP and AXS as two separate, distinct risk decisions rather than one "Axie economy"
Each token carries its own real, disclosed design and collapse story that shouldn't be treated as interchangeable.
The prospective player who checks whether the January 2026 tokenomics reforms have actually stabilized activity before buying in
Given how recent and decisive this reform is, waiting for real, disclosed evidence of its effect is a reasonable approach.
Anyone expecting the 2021 Scholarship-era earning potential to return, or treating AXS governance as fully decentralized
A detailed source states directly that Sky Mavis, not formal votes, has led major protocol decisions in practice.
The scorecard covers the headline judgment calls. These four tables cover the specifics we didn't want to bury in prose; the Ronin hack timelined precisely, SLP and AXS compared as two distinct collapses, the multi-title roadmap, and what this review shares with our earlier Pixels review.
The Ronin Bridge hack, timelined
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| Mar 2022 | The Lazarus Group compromises 5 of 9 Ronin validator keys, draining 173,600 ETH and 25.5M USDC ($625M total) |
| Response | Sky Mavis raises $150M in external funding and uses treasury funds to reimburse 100% of affected users |
| Accountability | Authorities later seize over $30M of the stolen funds |
| Hardening | Validator set expanded; Ronin Bridge rebuilt as V2; monitoring tools added |
| Since | No incident of similar scale reported on Ronin between mid-2022 and January 2026 |
This remains the largest DeFi hack in history by dollar value; we weighted both the severity of the breach and the completeness of the response directly rather than letting one erase the other.
SLP vs. AXS: two distinct collapses
| SLP | AXS | |
|---|---|---|
| Role | In-game utility/reward token | Governance token |
| Supply | Uncapped | Fixed at 270 million |
| Cause of decline | Hyperinflation from unlimited breeding-driven emissions | Broader speculative decline alongside the sector |
| Timing | Crashed over 99% by February 2022, before the Ronin hack | Down over 98% from its own separate all-time high |
| 2026 reform | Emissions stopped entirely in Origins mode | Bonded via new bAXS mechanism |
These are two structurally different failures that happened to occur in the same ecosystem; SLP's collapse was a design flaw realized through hyperinflation, while AXS's decline reflects broader speculative unwinding of a fixed-supply governance token.
The multi-title roadmap, as of 2026
| Title | Status |
|---|---|
| Origins | Turn-based card battles; now the primary, actively developed version |
| Classic | Legacy PvP mode; scheduled for discontinuation mid-2026 to consolidate resources |
| Atia's Legacy | New MMO project; in beta as of 2026 |
| Homeland | Land-management strategy game; still pre-beta with no release date as of January 2026 |
A genuinely ambitious roadmap, though Homeland's multi-year pre-beta status is a real, disclosed sign that not every announced title has translated into a shipped product.
What this review shares with our earlier Pixels review
| Finding (from our Pixels review) | Relevance here |
|---|---|
| Ronin suffered a $600M+ bridge hack in March 2022 | This is the same hack; Axie was the flagship game directly running on that infrastructure at the time, while Pixels migrated to Ronin over a year later |
| Ronin added a circuit breaker and daily withdrawal limits post-hack | These are the same protections now covering Axie's own ongoing infrastructure |
| Ronin is migrating to a full Ethereum L2 on May 12, 2026 | This upgrade applies to Axie's infrastructure as well as every other game on Ronin |
Axie Infinity is the game this infrastructure was originally built for, giving it a more direct relationship to the 2022 hack than any other Ronin-based game we've reviewed in this series.
We don't just want to hand you our number; we want to show you how it sits next to what other review desks and comparison sites have published. We're flagging directly that most sources we found treat the 2022 hack and reimbursement as settled history, without weighting it as heavily in a current score as our methodology does.
Our score lands moderately below the aggregated industry average; most sources we found credit the same exceptional incident response we weighted favorably, while giving somewhat less weight to the severity of both tokens' structural collapse and the honestly-acknowledged governance gap.
| Source | Score | Type |
|---|
Scores compiled by our editorial team from publicly available reviews as of August 2026. "Editorial estimate" means the outlet didn't publish a single numeric score, so we converted their published verdict and sentiment into a comparable 100-point figure. Verify current figures directly with each source before citing them elsewhere.
No. It's a legitimate game built by a real, named studio that has never stolen user funds, and it fully reimbursed every user affected by the 2022 Ronin hack. Its play-to-earn income model has effectively collapsed since 2021, so it should be approached as a game, not an income source.
In March 2022, the North Korean Lazarus Group stole $625 million from the Ronin Bridge by compromising 5 of 9 validator keys, the largest DeFi hack in history at the time. Sky Mavis raised $150 million and reimbursed 100% of affected users.
SLP, an uncapped-supply token, crashed over 99% by February 2022 due to hyperinflation from unlimited emissions. AXS, a fixed-270-million-supply governance token, has separately fallen over 98% from its own all-time high.
In January 2026, Sky Mavis introduced bAXS (Bonded AXS), a non-transferable token backed 1:1 by AXS, and stopped SLP emissions entirely in Origins mode, reducing daily token inflation by over 30%.
Trung Nguyen founded Sky Mavis, the studio behind Axie Infinity, in 2018 in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
An arrangement where experienced "Managers" loan their Axies to new "Scholars," who play daily and split earned SLP with their Manager, historically letting players without capital participate and earn.
Formally, AXS holders can vote on Community Treasury proposals. In practice, a detailed source states governance participation has been modest, with Sky Mavis leading major protocol decisions rather than formal on-chain votes.
Ronin is the same blockchain both games use. Axie Infinity was the original game Ronin was built for; Pixels migrated to Ronin in 2023, over a year after the 2022 hack, and now Ronin hosts dozens of other games beyond either title.
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