Axie Infinity Surges 89% on Tokenomics Revamp Amid GameFi Rally

The catalyst for Axie Infinity’s dramatic 89% weekly gain was a significant restructuring of its tokenomics, announced last week. The overhaul aims to revitalize the play-to-earn game’s internal economy and address long-standing issues such as bot farming, which had eroded token value and user experience. According to CoinGecko data, this news propelled AXS to a 16.7% gain in just 24 hours, bringing its total weekly performance to 88.5%. The positive sentiment spilled over to other major gaming tokens, with The Sandbox (SAND) rallying 15.3% over the week, while Decentraland (MANA) and Smooth Love Potion (SLP) posted more modest gains of 4.4% and 0.7%, respectively.

Illia Otychenko, lead analyst at CEX.IO, emphasized that these moves are pronounced precisely because they start from a depressed baseline after a sustained downtrend. “The recent outperformance in gaming tokens has more to do with local, project-specific catalysts,” Otychenko told Decrypt. He explained that Axie Infinity’s localized developments likely helped lift sentiment across the broader GameFi sector, even in the absence of a clear, macro-driven narrative shift from other crypto sectors like privacy tokens.

The surge has led to competing interpretations from market observers. Bertie Wrench, founder of the Web3 gaming NFT project Bad Bikers, views the activity as speculative churn. “Realistically, this momentary defiance in gaming tokens is purely capital rotation and high-risk speculation,” Wrench told Decrypt. He noted that trader attention has simply shifted following the sustained run in meme coins, a pattern likely to continue across multiple sectors given the pressured macroeconomic outlook, including factors like Japan’s bond market crisis.

In contrast, CEX.IO’s Otychenko disagrees with the broad capital rotation thesis. He argues that the rallies in AXS and SAND are too specific and tied to their own developments to be merely part of a sector-wide speculative wave. This analytical split highlights the uncertainty surrounding whether the gains reflect a genuine reassessment of GameFi’s value or fleeting market dynamics. The divergence in opinion is mirrored in broader market sentiment; users on the prediction market Myriad, owned by Decrypt’s parent company Dastan, have grown more pessimistic following Bitcoin’s recent decline, now assigning just a 71% chance that BTC will rally to $100,000—down from 84% less than a week ago.

Despite the week’s green candles, both experts concur that a true and lasting revival for the GameFi sector remains a distant prospect without foundational changes. “The current move looks more like a local rally than a structural shift,” Otychenko cautioned. He tempered investor expectations by pointing to sobering data from research firm Delphi, which shows the sector is still under significant pressure, with activity down roughly 75% in 2025 and funding approximately 55% lower last year.

The core challenge, as identified by the analysts, is a lack of fundamental utility and demand. For GameFi to move beyond speculative rallies, tokens like AXS, SAND, and MANA need to be integral to compelling gameplay experiences that drive consistent user engagement. Otychenko noted that only a small number of games consistently “exceed 100,000 weekly active wallets,” underscoring the sector’s struggle to achieve mainstream adoption and retain users. Therefore, while tokenomics overhauls can provide a short-term boost, a sustainable recovery hinges on building games that generate organic, utility-driven demand for their native digital assets, moving beyond the boom-and-bust cycles that have characterized the space.