Mystery of the whale wallet holding 50% of Axie Infinity’s SLP supply

cointelegraph.com:

For nearly a year now, a mysterious Axie Infinity wallet has been quietly amassing billions of Smooth Love Potion (SLP), the in-game cryptocurrency powering one of the industry’s most popular play-to-earn (P2E) crypto games. 

Today, the anonymous whale wallet now holds a little over 22 billion SLP — more than 50% the total circulating supply of the token.

The problem? No one knows who it belongs to and what their intentions are.

The wallet in question was brought to Cointelegraph’s attention by Axie Infinity player and tech co-founder Michael Benko, who first caught wind of this mysterious wallet on Aug. 25.

Benko told Cointelegraph he became concerned about the wallet given the amount of SLP it had gathered in a relatively short amount of time, which could potentially wreak havoc on the game’s ecosystem.

Launched in 2021, Axie Infinity is a blockchain-based game in which players purchase NFTs of cartoon creatures which they breed and fight against other players in turn-based gameplay.

SLP is earned by players for completing daily quests, battling other players in the “Arena” mode or playing against AI in the “Adventure” mode. The SLP can be used for breeding Axies, crafting in-game runes and charms (power-ups), and can be sold on exchanges.

Benko noted that as per the latest season update, an average Axie Infinity player can generate between 10 to 70 SLP per day, depending on how good they are at the game.

The cryptocurrency is currently priced at $0.004, down 99% from an all time high of $0.40 on Jul. 13, 2021, according to Coingecko.

Theories explaining the existence of the wallet have only led to dead-ends so far.

Benko initially theorized that the wallet was “some system Axie Infinity had to automatically distribute