AXS Staking Revamp – The Lunacian

Key Points

AXS Staking Reward Overview: After discussions with Axie Contributors, we’ve decided to make a few adjustments to AXS staking reward distribution. This will enable us to further support future development of Axie Infinity while experimenting with new incentive models. Note that the token unlock schedule will proceed as outlined in the whitepaper. However, the distribution of these rewards will change.

First Adjustment: AXS staking rewards will decrease by 5% every 9 days. This option was preferred by most Contributors, and enables staking rewards to continue indefinitely.

Second Adjustment: If everything goes according to plan, we’ll begin rewarding select Lunacians with high Axie Scores in January 2026. This experiment will involve snapshots, airdrops, and further discussions with our community.

Lunacians. For a while, we’ve discussed our collective desire to improve staking. Ideally, AXS staking is a mechanism that encourages long term accumulation of AXS by our community members. However, for staking to succeed long term, the utility it provides needs to exceed simple passive yield. Examples of staking utility can include in-game utilities such as progression boosts, yield-weighting add-ons, exclusive access, and other assorted DeFi features. We expect to test new staking-related features on App.Axie first before integrating them into Atia’s Legacy. However, this will require significant development time and resources.

Previously, we’ve hosted conversations in the community around how we might begin experimenting with staking rewards. We have listened to several contributors expressing concerns that changing the staking scheme and extending the reward distribution timeline might conflict with what was stated in the whitepaper four years ago. It might be useful to clarify the distinction between token unlocks and token distribution schedules. The original whitepaper described the token unlock schedule, which will proceed as discussed. However, we have flexibility to distribute those tokens as we wish, and to date we’ve distributed around 95% of the total staking rewards. We’d therefore like to proceed with using the remaining 5% as effectively as possible to improve the staking protocol, support future development, and experiment with future incentive models.

Therefore, as an experiment (Thanks to those who helped generate the discussion options and proposed separating on-chain passive rewards from off-chain semi-active rewards – an idea that significantly reduces the technical workload), and given the strong demand to integrate Axie score into reward distribution, we would like to introduce our first staking experiment:

For the current staking system, we will follow the option preferred by most Contributors who contributed to the conversation. In this system, rewards will decrease by 5% every 9 days, which has a nice byproduct of allowing staking to continue indefinitely. This setup helps us observe how TVL responds to changing emissions, rather than just market price movements. This update will start on 1st December.

Concurrently, we will begin an experiment of rewarding individuals with high Axie scores manually. We will reward via monthly snapshots and airdrops for users with high Axie scores (and potentially larger staked amounts). If things go to plan, this experiment will begin in January 2026.

These changes are part of an experiment intended to help us understand how staking behavior and TVL react independently of token price, as well as how we can utilize different reward structures that positively influence user participation. Because updating the smart contract that uses off-chain data like Axie score is technically complex, we will begin with a more manual and experimental approach by splitting the staking reward pool into 2 parallel runs.

This allows us to experiment with how semi-active, contribution-based rewards affect user behavior, and serves as a first step toward integrating Axie score into future distribution models in not only staking but Axie economy overall. Further information will be provided in upcoming notifications.

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