How To Scale Your Axie Infinity Guild

I’m going to divide this guide into 4 key sections that form the pillars of scaling your Axie Guild. Also, I’m going to assume you’ve setup correctly which was explained in the initial “How to Setup Your First Scholarship” Guide. As such I assume you have a Discord server setup for your Axie Guild for live communication with your scholars and a Typeform recruitment form. The 4 pillars in which we’ll dive deeper are:

1. Management

2. Retention

3. Growth; and

4. Payment

Note that I’m going to use the terms “Guild” and “Clan” interchangeably throughout this guide.

You need to attend to all 4 to ensure you properly scale your Axie Guild. Let’s go through each one step-by-step now.

Management

Structure

Yes, I know we’ve kicked off with a pretty broad term. Bear with me, I’m going to explain each component. At a high level, you should view your clan as an organization from the get go. With any good organization there’s a structure to it so that the organization can function on its own in most cases and for your own sanity.

Now when I say management, I don’t mean it like a dirty word when your supervisor comes along and breathes down your neck. At least that’s not how I want to run my guild. But you set some expectations, culture and lines of communication with your guild members.

I’ve seen clans that are far on the Draconian end and punish 1 SLP below quotas. Heck some of my scholars joined from these guilds with their first questions asking about the daily quota. On the other end of the spectrum, you can be too blasé and end up with an absent clan. We want to find and maintain the right balance.

I also mentioned sanity above. You’ll know what I mean as your clan runs over the 50 members threshold. We all have our lives and possibly other projects to attend to as well. So being able to take a step away from your Guild from time-to-time without it collapsing into chaos is needed.

So, what’s the best way to solve for this? It will be your personal involvement and appointing clan managers.

Clan Managers

Like any well-run organization, it is essentially a machine. Even if you’re running a flatter structure, there’s no way you’re going to be able to do it on your own at scale. You need help and this is where Clan Managers come in. They can help you with:

• Recruitment

• Enforcement

• Support

• Guild events

• General clan engagement

• Reporting

• Any other tasks that can help your guild

They’re your right-hand men / women. Having trusted and competent managers will take your clan further than most out there. And the best place I’ve found to source them is within your guild. Why’s that? Well:

• They’ve joined as a player so they likely would have built rapport with the broader guild if not at least familiarity with each person. Likewise, they know the game and its meta whilst playing.

• If you’re applying a referral program for recruitment then they may already know members of the guild, can speak the local language and make it easier for support and enforcement.

• You know they can be engaged with the current SLP you’re paying them and so any additional payment and incentives can be well aligned. Compare this with an external hire who may request payment well above what’s appropriate.

What did I do when I started my guild? Well, I ran it myself up until about 30 guild members. I realised at that point that help would be much appreciated. I appointed my first recruit as a Clan Manager. Shortly after, I appointed my second recruit as another Clan Manager. Together they helped:

- Interview new candidates for guild growth. From shortlisting candidates based on pre-selection criteria from the Typeform application, video interviews and a recommendation of which people are suitable to join.

- Onboard new members. Even with pinned posts, a lot of new joiners would still ask for help with the basics such as syncing their Axie Inventory. While everyone in the guild chipped in where they could to help in chat, it was good to have Clan Managers spearhead this.

- Build rapport with all of Clan members as they were also from the Philippines.

- Check SLP data and report any issues. Although by this time, given my ongoing personal involvement, many members would let me know directly if they had to take time off or have any personal issues.

- Manage guild events. We’ll talk more about guild events later in this guide. They’re a great and underused tool to help you develop your guild.

- Brainstorm ideas for guild improvement. A lot of Axie players heard about the game from close contacts. These close contacts may be scattered across other guilds and can form a network of ideas and feedback.

We’ll talk about payment near the end of this guide. But yes, you need to reward Clan Managers more for their added help. This also provides something for other guild members to aspire to as you grow.

Tracking and Data

Boy oh boy is this one important! Before you laugh off bean-counting I freaking mean it when I say this is one of the most important aspects of managing your guild well. The importance of having clean data and records grows proportionately with the growth of your Axie Infinity guild, both in size and across time. What specifically do I mean from this? Well think about all the things you can track:

• SLP claimed per scholar every fortnight or month.

• SLP paid to each scholar every fortnight or month.

• Bonus SLP paid to scholars.

• Change in scholars.

• Scholar performance during events vs day-to-day play.

• Scholar demographics e.g. age, gender and location.

• Scholar rankings.

• Axies and team by scholar.

Now think about how you can gain insight from this data once you have a decent collection. You might notice that certain scholars performed better during events where bonuses were paid. Yet the same scholars complain shortly after about having weak Axie teams or teams that are not in the meta. If you look at the data, they clearly did quite well during the event, well at least better than they could now. This can then factor into your decision making as to who to prioritize swapping Axies.

Perhaps a scholar is protesting that you underpaid him. Well rather than freaking out and having to dig through the Ronin blockchain, you can quickly check your master spreadsheet and see if this is the case, explain what has happened and suggest he double checks Ronin.

Or let’s say, you see scholars from one country are outperforming those from another. With this you can narrow down whether it’s due to any major national issues, is there someone toxic in a particular group or is the data coldly pointing out that hiring people from the other country will lead to better results because of a cultural difference.

Some of you might not be proficient at excel. This is a great opportunity for you to become attuned. Start with tracking your first few scholars and google what you don’t know. There are of course neat tools to help supplement tracking out there but I’ve yet to find one I can rely on and edit the data as I want to as much as excel.

Keep in mind that as your guild grows, there’s going to be more for you to handle and manage and it may hit you at the same time. So, continuously updating this spreadsheet helps keep you cool and suave during those times. I update mine every 2 weeks when I run payouts.

Side note: if you’re interested in this Axie Infinity excel spreadsheet, please drop me a line or a comment. If there’s enough demand, I’ll put together a template for you guys to help.

Retention

Your Personal Involvement

Even with the appointment of Clan Managers, your personal involvement is paramount. You have to step up Sir / Madam. You’re the founder of your guild. You need to lead by example. This means:

• Showing up and starting dialogue.

• Engaging with guild members and finding out more about their lives and remembering the details.

• Playing the Axie Infinity game yourself and staying in tune with the Axie meta.

• Staying up to date on Axie Infinity news across multiple channels.

• Thinking about ideas and ways to improve your Axie guild and helping everyone in your clan.

Sitting back, claiming and paying SLP only is not going to cut it. If that’s what you’re planning to do forever, you’re NGMI. Guilds like mine are going to eviscerate yours and poach all your scholars. That’s just how it is mate. But it’s not that hard to take these extra steps. Looking around, there aren’t that many guild founders that are doing it. So, now that you know why, go that little bit extra to be on the winning side.

Events

A great and underused tool that I’ve been applying ever since I started my guild is events. Events are games on top of the Axie Infinity game. You don’t have to go out and develop another game. It’s simply adding some extra flavour. For example, one event could be splitting your scholars into teams. The winning team with the highest average MMR (PvP ranking) gets a bonus payout. This will also help you as team members will begin to coach each other, interact, boost morale and improve PvP rankings. Or it can be something as simple as a drawing competition of one of your Clan Managers to showcase some fun, talent and/or humour.

I’ve applied both of those examples and more complicated events so, yes, they do work. To this day, I’m surprised at how a lot of other guilds out there simply don’t do this. The Hyperion Clan’s retention rate is 90%+ and this is throughout the period where SLP fell from its high of $0.45c per SLP to below $0.01c per SLP. Use this force my friends.

Updating Axies

Are your early scholars still using the same team even after a few rebalancing Axie Infinity updates? Maybe it’s time to ask them if their team is still working? Maybe it’s time to ask them if they need to swap out any Axies? I bet some of your scholars will take you up on this offer in a heartbeat. The meta changes and sometimes old Axies in certain teams just don’t cut it anymore. Have regular intervals where you give your scholars a chance to swap out some Axies where it makes sense.

Imagine you were in their shoes playing a team of plant, beast and aqua. This seriously becomes a grind after a while when you get trapped in a certain ranking range as you encounter the same team that has the advantage over your team. Carve a chunk out of your SLP earnings to budget for this and you’ll see your retention rates improve.

At the same time, if some scholars have extra capacity to use more energy, it’s worthwhile contemplating parking more Axies in their accounts. As you grow, your time can be better used to find new ways to improve your guild and so actual gameplay can be handled by your strong performing scholars. They’ll be glad they can generate more SLP for themselves too. This is especially useful in periods where SLP prices are low and naturally some scholars will fall away. Rather than let accounts of 3 Axies sit idle, you can move them to your more loyal scholars that can use the extra energy boost.

Growth

If you’re not growing, you’re dying. People crave progress. Nothing says progress more than an expanding team of people. If you believe that an investment in Axie Infinity is going to result in a net positive then growth will amplify returns for you too. You’ve setup the foundation and structure to manage this as we discussed earlier in this guide. The question remains, what’s the best way to go about growing headcount?

Referrals

The best way I’ve found to date is to grow by referrals. Referrals from existing guild members can streamline your growth process. They come pre-vetted and vouched for. I have a dedicated channel to this in our guild’s discord server. We still run them through the form and interview process but you’ll find the quality of candidates is a step up on a percentage basis as compared to going out cold again for new recruits. You can also experiment with other structures to further align incentives e.g. the person who referred the new recruit gets a percentage cut of the recruit’s SLP earnings. This may reduce the management load on you as they are motivated to help the new recruit push their SLP earnings.

Ongoing Investment

It’s going to cost you more investment to grow your guild. Get comfortable with this. The best way would be to carve a portion of your SLP earnings for re-investment. Be disciplined with this and don’t blow it all on some other moon coin out there. You’re going to need the funds to pay bonuses, swap out axies, buy new axie teams and possibly other investments to expand your presence in the Axie Infinity ecosystem such as buying Axie Infinity land.

Lateral Expansion

Remember, it’s your responsibility for growth as the leader and visionary. Something like building this dedicated Axie Infinity website, YouTube or Twitch are lateral ways to grow your guild’s presence. This is the frontier which we’re all exploring alongside the broader crypto space so keep your eyes and mind open to opportunities in the Axie Infinity metaverse.

Payment

Payment Amount

Underpinning all of these is pay. Without money, the other 3 pillars fall apart. That’s real and it doesn’t discount the importance of making sure you have solid management, retention and growth. People need the money to support and improve their own lives. And this is an area for you to immediately stand out by paying well and on time.

You need to be competitive with how much you pay your scholars. A lot people read competitive as though paying them 5% above the lowest out there is going to make you benevolent. This is not true and you’ll delude yourself into poor guild management. I know it’s your money being invested but you need to put yourself in the scholar’s position.

Let’s take the example that the average wage in the Philippines is 30,000 Philippine Peso (PHP) per month. Yes, this isn’t minimum wage and we’re building in some buffer here. You can’t just run off the assumption that everyone will tolerate minimum wage; realistically most people sit higher in the bell curve. So, 30,000 PHP converts roughly to US$600, give or take based on the exchange rate.

You then agree to pay 30% of SLPs to your scholar. So, let’s say they generate 100 SLP per day or 3,000 SLP per month. 30% of this equates to 900 SLP. Now what does this look like based on various SLP prices:

SLP Price (US$ / SLP) Value of Scholar’s Monthly 900 SLP (US$)

0.30 270

0.25 225

0.20 180

0.15 135

0.10 90

0.05 45

0.01 9

It’s all happy days when the price of SLP is at all-time highs and your scholar is earning whilst playing a game. But when the price of SLP stabilizes then splits become ever more important as scholars need to pay for internet and they are taking away time they could be using to earn money elsewhere.

Keep in mind you should pay your Clan Managers an extra amount for their extra efforts. As you grow, if you’ve brought on the right people, you’ll find a handful of scholars that are just more engaged, interactive and supportive. And so, by nature and values, they’re willing to lead and work a bit more if you have the right culture. Paying them a higher percentage above all other guild members can be the base model. This can range between 10-15% more in SLP. In times of high SLP price, you’ll be fine. When the price of SLP gets a bit shakey then you may need to explore other alignment models such as a percentage of total guild earnings. This latter model would further align incentives. While there are many different ways to cut this and the beauty is that there are no hard rules yet, the foundation should always be finding Clan Managers that start with a strong moral and hard-working base.

Payment Frequency

Now there’s a case for more frequent payment. Paying more frequently is helpful when you start out with a smaller number of clan members. There are two advantages to this:

1. More than likely, most of your scholars will be rushing to convert SLP to cash equivalents. And so being able to do that more often, psychologically feels more comforting for them.

2. This can be used to advertise as an added benefit of the clan when recruiting. This is also comforting for new joiners who put their trust in you, some random person across the world, to pay them their fair share of SLP.

For example, when I started my clan, I committed to SLP payouts every 2 weeks. The drawback of this is that processing payments is repetitive and time consuming. It takes me a good day to claim and transfer SLPs, provided I don’t fall asleep. So, to do it every 2 weeks can become tedious as your guild scales above 70 members. This has been acknowledged by Sky Mavis and the Axie Development Team so hopefully a more streamlined way is figured out in the future.

A lot of guilds run just fine on monthly payments. Your clan can naturally progress to monthly payments too once you reach that point where it becomes too cumbersome. Make sure to explain this to your guild ahead of time with a good amount of notice so they can personally prepare for it.

As the period between payments increases, the stronger the need for you to pay exactly on time. Actually, paying on time is another gem of a benefit that adds to your guild being a standout. So, if you pay every two weeks on a Friday, make sure it gets done on the Friday. Don’t party up and then do it on the Monday. There are cases where Ronin is down or doesn’t quite function and it’s fine to let your guild know that payment may be delayed because of this. They would be able to scope this out themselves. You obviously get more leniency over time as you build trust with your scholars after multiple payments. From their eyes, your flight risk will be reduced so if you need a day to handle other matters you can let them know.

Now, if you haven’t figured it out already, paying on the same day as claiming SLP will make it easier to track your SLP finances. Claiming SLP is locked every 2 weeks to ease the congestion on the Ronin network. So, if you claim SLP today from an account, you have to wait another 2 weeks before you can claim SLP on this account again. I’m a wizard enough with excel and let me tell you it became tiring to claim SLP and pay a different amount to scholars. It is so much easier to time your claiming with payouts. This explains why most guilds are running on a 2 week or monthly pay cycle. Timing it simply means that if you claimed 1,000 SLP from your scholar’s Axie account and you have an agreed pay rate of 50% then you would pay your scholar 500 SLP for that pay cycle. If the scholar earned 100 extra SLP while you were claiming and paying then that 100 SLP will go to the next pay cycle.

Payment Flexibility

We’ve talked about being as strict as you can when adhering to SLP payment schedules. Conversely, you should allow a degree of payment flexibly when it’s helpful for your scholars. This is simply to support your guild and as a sign of goodwill. Sometimes, people need payment at a certain time or need something tangible to put their minds at ease.

To help and build trust, I’ve also paid some scholars upfront. This was more useful kickstarting guild growth. Once I had a community of members, new members could see existing members engaging and were a lot more comfortable joining an established group.

Bonuses

There are no rules saying you can’t pay bonuses to keep morale high or reward great behaviour. Of course, bottom line is that this will come out of your share. However, if you’re in this for the relatively longer term (I say relatively because this is crypto after all), which I believe you are because you’re setting up scholarships instead of flipping Axies, land and items, then building a stronger base of scholars with less turnover and headaches is worth the extra investment.

I know this has been more text heavy but each component has been well thought out, tested and applied in my Axie guild. You’re falling deeper into the rabbit hole now. If you’re like me and enjoy this journey I’ve got more tips and tricks from experience lined up for you on this. Be sure to checkout some of these other gems:

Ultimate Guide to Breeding Axies

Ways to Make Money with Axie Infinity