The journey to turn Axie Infinity into a global fever NFT game of Sky Mavis CEO Nguyen Thanh Trung

Many years after Flappy Bird by Nguyen Ha Dong, the new world gaming community is bubbling with a game developed by Vietnamese people. That’s Axie Infinity.

“At the beginning, no one knew that Axie Infinity was Vietnamese. Because at first, a startup didn’t have too much time to think about how to incorporate culture into the product, because they had too many problems to think about. like how to survive,” Nguyen Thanh Trung, founder and CEO of Sky Mavis, the owner of the Axie Infinity game, shared at an event in April 2022.

Starting the wave of games for money (“play to earn”) and also the founder of one of the most expensive NFT games in the world, Nguyen Thanh Trung is considered the “quintessential” representative of the crypto world. cryptocurrency (crypto) of Vietnam. Trung once entered the top 10 most influential figures in the crypto world in 2021, according to the rankings published by CoinDesk .

Born in 1992, Nguyen Thanh Trung is a student majoring in Mathematics – Information (High School for the Gifted in Natural Sciences, University of Natural Sciences, Hanoi National University) and was recruited directly into FPT University and studied Software Engineering.

However, in the second year, the 9x guy decided to pause his studies to start a business with Lozi – the forerunner of Loship (a culinary startup) – as the CTO (Chief Technology Officer) of this startup. .

Failing to reach consensus with the other founders of Lozi, Trung left the project, hid for a while then returned to continue completing the remaining years of his university degree.

Relationship with Blockchain

After graduating from university, with the mindset to find the goal of his life, Trung “crushed” on blockchain.

In an interview with a newspaper, Trung once shared that he hates blockchain because people talk about this technology often about the price of Bitcoin and ICOs (financial mobilization for cryptocurrency projects).

However, after learning about blockchain and playing a game that incorporates blockchain, CryptoKitties, he realized how to use it is up to people to decide.

During this period, Trung met the co-founders of Axie Infinity. Two of the five co-founders are foreign, including Aleksander Leonard Larsen from Norway and Jeffrey Zirlin from the US.

“I met my 2 co-founders on the internet because I have the same interest and interest in blockchain games. During the first time building a team, 2 of them were in 3 countries, I was in Vietnam – Aleksander Larsen (COO) in Norway and Jeffrey Zirlin (Growth Lead) are in the US,” Trung said.

The project was officially launched at the end of 2017. Initially, Axie Infinity was simply a blockchain application game, not an NFT game name.

This is the first game using blockchain technology in Vietnam and Southeast Asia, built in the context of a universe of pets (called Axies).

Once the product was in place, Axie Infinity started crowdfunding by letting people order in-game characters. $500,000 was the first amount the startup team raised.

Trung realizes that holding people’s money is really responsible for this money. Therefore, he decided to quit his job and devote all his time to the game Axie Infinity, not just a personal hobby and an adventure without calculation.

NFT game pioneer

In the summer of 2020, Axie Infinity became a phenomenon in Cabanatuan north of Manila, Philippines. Unable to go out due to Covid-19 prevention measures, people in the island country come to this game to make money.

From items and gifts earned in the game, players can “synchronize and swap” AXS via Ethereum (trade in AXS/ETH pairs on cryptocurrency exchanges). The highest record that an Axie was sold recently was 300 ETH (nearly 1.6 billion).

The point that makes the game globally famous is to help gamers both satisfy their gaming interests and earn money. And Axie Infinity is a very successful pioneer of the wave of gaming for money in the cryptocurrency market.

In May 2021, Trung and the founding team successfully conducted a series A round for Axie Infinity with an impressive amount of $ 7.5 million.

By October 2021, Axie Infinity successfully completed a series B funding round with the amount of up to 152 million USD. As a result, Sky Mavis becomes the third Vietnamese “tech unicorn” valued at over 1 billion USD, reaching 1 million daily users by August 2021 and having the largest valuation of more than 4 billion USD. USD.

Besides the Vietnamese co-founder, Sky Mavis has a team of about 200 employees around the world.

In March 2022, Axie Infinity faced a huge challenge – a hacker stole $ 625 million worth of cryptocurrency.

This is a sensational event in the world and many players due to the game’s leading position in the blockchain gaming industry. The hack forced Sky Mavis to shut down Axie Infinity’s system to prevent massive token withdrawals.

To address the crisis, Sky Mavis successfully raised $150 million in a funding round led by exchange Binance, according to Nikkei .

The money is used to compensate users affected by the attack. This extremely important move can help regain users’ trust.

“All members of Sky Mavis have never intended to stop. Now, if they want to continue, there is only one option that is to maintain their reputation, overcome the consequences and return lost money to users. “, Trung shared his views right after the incident.

“To start a successful business, you need to think big, set bigger goals and dare to do, dare to face challenges. And starting a business is not an easy journey, you have to be patient and persistent,” Trung said. Perhaps because of that, the game he founded is constantly developing and innovating.

In September 2022, the AxieCon Conference was held in Barcelona (Spain) attracting more than 1,000 attendees from around the world.

Sky Mavis revealed that Axie Infinity: Origin will be renamed ‘Axie Infinity: Origins’ to create a more distinct franchise.

Sky Mavis also shared a long-term project called “Land” with the ambition to “break the existing boundaries” of games in the Web3 platform.