Sky Mavis, the startup behind the Ethereum-based game Axie Infinity, announced this week that it has partnered with Bullionix, a platform that allows users to mint gold-backed Ethereum NFTs, to bring real gold rewards to Season 8 of the game’s community alpha, which started Monday.

According to the announcement, the prize pool for this season features 26.13 Digix Gold Tokens (DGX), worth 26.13 grams of gold or roughly $1,500. Of this, 25% will be distributed to the top players on the Season 8 leaderboard while the remaining DGX will be distributed to players for winning PvP battles.

DGX will be represented as DGX Coin in the game, with 100,000 DGX Coin = 1 DGX. Players can turn their winnings back into DGX in the personal dashboard of the marketplace.

“This is an exciting step forward for play-to-earn gaming,” writes Sky Mavis in the announcement. “While traditional gamers may still be unfamiliar with cryptocurrencies like Ether, gold has been an accepted store of value for thousands of years. We believe that interesting experiments that meld the physical and the digital realms will be a key element in bringing play to earn to the next generation of blockchain gamers.”

In addition to the in-game rewards, Bullionix has launched an Axie-themed collection of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) backed by DGX. These NFTs can be minted for 0.35 DGX until August 9.

You can download the Axie Infinity alpha here.

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Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice. Always conduct your own due diligence before making investments.