AXS Skyrockets 137% After Axie Infinity Overhauls Game Rewards System

Axie Infinity's governance token just pulled a Lazarus act. AXS surged a staggering 137% in the wake of a fundamental rework to the game's core economic model—proving, yet again, that in crypto, tweaking the numbers can be more profitable than building the game.

The Catalyst: A Rewards Revolution

The team didn't just adjust a slider; they rebuilt the engine. The update targets the delicate balance between player earnings and long-term ecosystem sustainability—the perpetual tightrope walk for every play-to-earn project. It shifts incentives, redefines value accrual, and aims to convert short-term farmers into long-term stakeholders.

Market Mechanics in Motion

Traders aren't just betting on a patch note. They're pricing in a potential revival. A well-structured rewards system acts as a flywheel: better incentives attract players, increased activity burns tokens, and genuine utility creates demand that outlasts speculative hype. This pump suggests the market believes Axie might have finally found that formula.

The Cynical Take

Let's be real—this is a textbook 'tokenomic tweak pump.' A double-digit percentage move on protocol changes is the digital asset equivalent of a stock popping on a buyback announcement. It rewards the existing bag holders, creates a narrative for new ones, and gives everyone a reason to ignore the underlying question: is the game actually fun, or just a financially-engineered hamster wheel?

The Verdict

Axie Infinity just reminded everyone that in the crypto-gaming arena, code is law, but tokenomics is king. A 137% move is a powerful vote of confidence in the new direction. Whether this marks a sustainable turnaround or just another volatile chapter in the play-to-earn saga depends entirely on whether players show up for the game—and not just the gain.

Axie Infinity aims to curb bot activity with new changes to the game

Axie Infinity was introduced in 2018 as a blockchain-based game, then exploded in mid-2021 after it released AXS tokens. The blockchain-based game airdropped 800,000 Axis Infinity Shard (AXS) tokens to its early adopters and enabled stacking. The changes allowed gamers to lock in their rewards and earn additional returns. 

Lunacians, we are on the verge of a massive evolution in how we secure our digital nation.

bAXS (Bonded AXS) is backed 1:1 by AXS, and designed to keep value circulating within our ecosystem and rewarding our citizens.

This is the start of a transformative year for Axie… pic.twitter.com/rpqAt1DZ1G

— Axie Infinity (@AxieInfinity) January 17, 2026

The ability to earn AXS tokens attracted many gamers and made most of them profitable. Many gamers in developing countries, especially in the Philippines, earned up to $600 a month by playing 5 to 8 hours a day. The game quickly became an arena for bots as the number of gamers dried up. Fewer real gamers could no longer earn a living from the game, since bots had taken over. 

The latest change to the AXS token rewards, coupled with previous changes, is expected to change the game and continue benefiting real gamers instead of bots. As a result, the AXS token has surged over 1326% since its launch and over 208% in the past 30 days, reflecting the impact of the latest changes to the game. At the time of publication, the token was up 11% on the daily chart, trading at $2.59, with a market cap of $431.9 million. 

According to the game developer, the changes are designed to benefit real players by removing incentives for bot-driven activities observed across the game. The changes will curb bot activity in the game and reward real Axie Infinity gamers. 

Axie Infinity released approximately 10 million AXS tokens in 2025, worth approximately $23.5 million at the current rate as gamer rewards. As more AXS are consumed when gamers breed, ascend, or evolve Axies, investors speculate that the new situation will squeeze the number of tokens available and create a supply shock, which in turn will drive prices up. 

Axie Infinity game plans to decrease AXS supply via burn mechanisms

Gamers who receive bAXS tokens can still convert them to AXS at a fee and trade them on the market. Long-term gamers will pay lower fees to reward long-term contributors while discouraging short-term ‘farm and dump’ behavior.

Axie Infinity developer has also hinted at potentially decreasing the supply of Axie creatures needed to play the game through burn mechanisms. According to Sky Mavis, the game developer, the only viable paths to increasing the value and utility of every Axie are restructuring plans and addressing the Axie oversupply. 

The GameFi sector has attracted explosive investor interest recently, driving the overall market cap to roughly $6.51 billion. Axie Infinity is among the tokens leading the space with bullish momentum. According to CoinGecko, other tokens performing well across the space include Ronin (RON), The Sandbox (SAND), Smooth Love Potion (SLP), Decentraland (MANA), and Illuvium (ILV). 

AXS leads with a 137% gain this week, followed by KO (Kyuzo’s Friend), with a 47% gain over the past 7 days. The Sandbox (SAND) and Smooth Love Potion (SLP) trail third and fourth with 33.7% and 33.5% gain over the past seven days. 

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