The amazing community is part of what makes Axie Infinity so special. Today, we’re ecstatic to share with you an interview with one of our most passionate Axie community evangelists: Exhuman! Exhuman has been a part of the Axie community since January 2019, and comes all the way from Poland!

What got you interested in Axie Infinity?

At the beginning of 2019 I was trading crypto and it was stressing me out. I also worked for a large crypto company managing their crypto capital. I knew that I had to change something because it turned out that trading was ruining my health, despite the decent gains I was making. I was sure that I wanted to remain connected to the blockchain field — I just didn’t want to trade anymore. I started researching Nonfungible tokens and blockchains games which landed me in the Decentraland Discord. I thought that I could use my trading skills for flipping parcels in DCL. It was there (thanks to Napoleon) that I learned another blockchain game was also selling plots.

In January 2019, my adventure with Axie began. As soon as I showed these online monsters to my wife (she is a painter and I always trust her “visual intuition”) she was hooked and we began to build up a collection. We’d both I fallen in love with the design and appearance of each Axie. I also adore the special player-developer relationship that the Axie core team has cultivated. I’ve been a part of various crypto-related communities in the past and this one is a shining example for all the rest in terms of moral values, communication, and atmosphere.

Can you tell us a bit about your experience earning through Axie?

I’ll start with a simple statistic from my account after a year of playing Axie Infinity. I’ve put around 30 ETH into my Axie collection and sold Axies from my collection for around 60 ETH so far.

During the first week of my Axie adventure, I knew that in order to fully experience the benefits of the game I need to do a lot of research on how to optimize my strategy. The game is very deep and quite complex.

I like to say that I treated my Axie account as a startup. For example, I carefully followed which Axies were in demand and bred similar Axies. I also noticed that building relationship with other players was a core part of my success. My Twitter account has grown from 200 followers to almost a thousand in a year thanks to various giveaways I’ve done and Axie content I’ve created.

With the launch of the community Alpha, SLP farming suddenly became a new avenue for play to earn in the Axie universe. I think this was an awesome experiment and is just an early iteration of playing to earn a liquid token in Axie.

I live in a country where 30+ ETH gain in one year is pretty much enough to pay the bills. For most of 2019, Axie was my only source of income and I spent between 6–12 hours a day managing my collection.

You and your wife Exhto, have become awesome content creators/artists around Axie — what are some of your favorite things you’ve made so far?

My lovely wife Exhto is a painter. She was very impressed with the graphics and art which inspired her to try her hand at creating some awesome Axie-themed pieces. The Axie characters are so memorable and expressive that they’re a perfect medium to be inspired by.

You can view all her Axie work in Cryptovoxels here: https://www.cryptovoxels.com/play?coords=W@332E,3U,229S

What are you most excited about for the future of Axie?

The biggest hope is connected with the fact that Axie will eventually become not only a game for blockchain enthusiasts but also attract a mainstream audience. We are starting to see signs of this as the play to earn narrative has attracted players from all over the world. I hope that the land gameplay will be built a bit like Animal Crossing where players are rewarded for returning to the game every day. Axie, to me, is an experiment on the border between sociology and technology. As the Axie community consists of many outstanding people, I believe that this will only improve, and playing Axie Infinity will become similar to golf — people will meet new business partners and connections through the game. We are starting to see this happening already.

Tell us a bit about your path to DeFi. How did Axie contribute to this journey?

Axie has introduced the community to strong DeFI projects like MakerDAO and Kyber Network through promotions and token drops through the Arena. I think it’s been great to mix a fun game with blockchain education.In addition, I learned a lot about different DeFi projects right from the Axie Infinity discord, sometimes I feel its better place than 4chan /biz. In my opinion, the game Axie Infinity is a hub and it is a gate through which people from the mainstream (outside of crypto) enter the world of DeFi and cryptocurrencies in general.

Thanks for reading our first player spotlight! If you’d like to meet Exhuman and ask him about his adventure, make sure to join Axie Discord!

The Axie Infinity Team

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