I’ve been wanting to check out Axie Infinity as well but find myself in the same boat.
A couple of people are trying to get me interested into a number of ETH games and then I hear they say $15 in gas to sell their NFT and that just a hard no from me.
While there have been talks about having a 2nd layer on Hive for smart contracts (something other than hive engine). Those talks have also stated to cover the costs there would need to be some kind of gas fee with it's own kind of token. Which I'm not the most thrilled about.
Whenever I hear gas fee, it's a complete shutdown for me. I'm also kind of sceptical eth 2.0 will come any time in near future to fix things.