Information correct as of September 14 2021
SLP. It is the in game token received while playing Axie Infinity, with the purpose of facilitating woohoos (breeding) between Axies. SLP has also been the token that sparked the #PlaytoEarn Revolution, with people around the world being able to put food on the table, pay for medicines, etc by buying and selling it for breeding in Axie Infinity.
Today, SLP is not just able to be used in game, but has also extended to to real world! In the Philippines, some merchants have begun accepting SLP as payment for items and services (some examples can be found here in this CoinDesk article as well as this community newsletter from Blackpool Academy. This has also spread to other South East Asian countries
There seems to be a LOT of confusion about SLP in general, and with the recent flurry of discussion in recent weeks about SLP, I decided to just compile some information about it for the benefit of those who may be new to the community.
SLP was first called Small Love Potions and was introduced on the 20th of December 2019, replacing the initial Experience (EXP) system needed for breeding. Fun fact: Did you know that it was initially called small love potions because the team initially envisioned having medium and large love potions as well? There is a reason why I picked Axie Chat as my top Axie Infinity content creator to follow in my twitter thread. This fact was casually dropped by Baronar in Episode 53 (its roughly around 37:30)...these guys have loads of info from being in the community for so long. Listen to Axie Chat guys. Its amazing.
SLP was then reclassified as Smooth Love Potions (after the Luther Vandross album; someone in the team must be a fan. The name fits perfectly with its purpose too🤣) on the 28th of April 2021. This was done in tandem with The Great Migration, when Axie Infinity moved its marketplace onto the Ronin Sidechain.
SLP has one purpose (for now; who knows in future?). It is used for breeding Axies. As such, '...It is tied to the breeding of Axies and correlated to the Axie price.
SLP is 'mined' in game through playing Axie Infinity, either by completing ruins in Adventure mode, or winning PVP matches in the Arena (as long as your MMR is above 1100). It is then 'burned' by breeding Axies.
Not at all. There are two tokens currently in the ecosystem, SLP (uncapped supply, which means that the amount of SLP available could literally go to infinity) and AXS - Axie Infinity Shards which has a 270,000,000 supply cap. This means that there will never be more than this amount. Both of these tokens are currently required for breeding (scaled amount of SLP + 2 AXS per breed).
There may also be more tokens in the ecosystem in future when more features are released (possibly during Landplay) as mentioned by Psycheout in his tweet here. Some of the speculated tokens are resource tokens that are speculated to be used in game for crafting, so they may include wood, stone (maybe mud?) as seen in the pic below
The short and simple answer is that SLP can be sold by the player to a breeder who will use it to breed more Axies. Axies are currently only available to be bought from other players (the Dev team did sell Axies in the past directly to players, but the last time this happened was in 2018 via the MEO labs) and as new players continue to enter the space, breeders are always looking to breed.
Of course, this may mean that one day there may be too many Axies. The good news is that the Axie Infinity team are aware of this issue and already have plans to tackle them.
Lets look at the facts:
For roughly 6 months after it was first released, each SLP was worth less than a single cent (as can be seen by historical charts on Coingecko). In fact, the only real time that the price of SLP spiked was a few days in the second week of July, when it hit a high (at the time) of 19 US cents per SLP, but prices very quickly restabilized again. The chart below from Coingecko shows the average daily price of SLP from when it was first listed until 25 August 2020.
On August 26th 2020, an article "The NFT Game That Makes Cents for Filipinos During COVID" was published on Coindesk. However at the time the game was still on the ETH network, and that meant that every cashout would involve ETH gas prices, which would eat into a players earnings at the time.
If we look a little further, the prices of SLP continued to be below 5 US cents per SLP, all the way till the end of January 2021. I picked the end of January 2021 as that was the time that the Play to Earn mini documentary was being filmed. Remember, this was still on the ETH network, so it has the same gas issues.
The price of SLP only really began to take off after the release of the Ronin Network (April 28, 2021), which was also when SLP was reclassified as Smooth Love Potions.
And so now we are here. As mentioned above, SLP is used for the purposes of breeding and from the facts, it seems that the spikes in prices is more of an anomaly. As history has shown, there will be spikes in prices again in the future, as well as falls. This is normal in the world of crypto, which is why you are always advised to never invest more than you are willing to lose.
I'm not a financial advisor, but I've outlined what SLP is used for above (its for woohoos/breeding). Its a commodity. I'd suggest you look at AXS instead, but you have to be responsible for your own financial decisions. Everyone has different levels of risk and my goals may not be similar to yours.
I hope that the above info has been helpful for you in further understanding SLP and its use. If you are a scholar I empathize with your situation, and I hope you are getting a fair split from your manager. When the first scholarships were set up in September 2020, it was on the ETH network so there were extra gas charges as well. The difference was that fair splits were provided to scholars (which unfortunately is not the case with some scholarships nowadays). You can read more about it here. I also empathize with those who may be overexposed and are heavily affected by the current prices.
However, this is the world of crypto and price fluctuations are normal. SLP prices are controlled by the supply and demand from the community. Releasing something before it is ready could cause another spike which may overload the servers again, potentially for weeks like the last time (I don't know about you, but I do not want to go through that again). The Axie Infinity team has been building for many years and continue to build with the long term in mind. If you can't wait, you don't need to stay and I wish you all the best in your future endeavors. For me, in a year or two this won't even matter :)
Stay safe, and see you all in Lunacia!
