Scholarship (Play-to-Earn)

A scholarship, in play-to-earn gaming, is a deal in which someone who owns the NFTs needed to play a game lends them to another person, the scholar, who plays and shares the token rewards with the owner, often called a manager. The model grew up around Axie Infinity in 2021, when the creatures needed to start playing cost more than many players in the Philippines and other lower-income countries could afford. Guilds such as Yield Guild Games organised thousands of scholars and took a share of their earnings. Supporters described scholarships as a path to income; critics compared them to piecework with the platform and managers taking most of the value. When Axie's reward tokens fell sharply in price in 2022, and after a large hack of the game's Ronin bridge that March, scholars' earnings collapsed. Also see GameFi.