Ethereum gaming starts to recover
Welcome to DappRadar’s regular monthly report – in conjunction with the Blockchain Game Alliance – on the state of the blockchain game sector.
The Blockchain Game Alliance is a non-profit organization counting over 150 members and committed to promoting and spreading awareness about the advantages of blockchain technology within the game industry, and DappRadar is providing its industry-leading data to assist in this goal.
Key Trends
During October 2020, the average number of daily active unique wallets playing games across the blockchains tracked by DappRadar was 26,912.
This total was up 6% compared to September’s figure, and up 33% compared to May when high gas fees on Ethereum first impacted what was then the leading blockchain for gaming.
The start of the recovery of gaming activity on Ethereum was the most important trend during October.
Average daily activity across all Ethereum games was up 100% compared to September, although this is still down 70% compared to April’s total.
The other big blockchain trend is the rise of Thundercore as a hypercasual gaming platform.
The mobile-focused protocol is successfully incentivizing its users to play casual HTML5 titles such as Color Craze, Galaxy Blocks and Word Search Blitz. It will be interesting to see if developers can leverage this player base into more substantial experiences in the coming months.
Axie Infinity – Ever sharper
As highlighted in previous reports, Axie Infinity has been growing in popularity since July and its momentum continues to build.
One element of this has been the price of the most valuable Axie NFTs, which rose from 150 ETH in late September to 200 ETH in October (and now 300 ETH in early November).
The result of this can clearly be seen in terms of the growth of daily activity within the Axie Marketplace, which is the primary trading hub for Axie NFTs.
Daily activity is now regularly over 500 unique wallets, demonstrating the game is attracting more traders and speculators.
Other activity – notably breeding and battling to collect the Small Love Potions – remains the most popular element of the game, however, occasionally spiking beyond 2,000 daily active unique wallets. Of course, off-chain activity is multiples higher again.
No doubt, all will be boosted in the coming months as the functionality required by the just-launched Axie Infinity Shards (AXS) token becomes integrated into the overall project in early 2021.
For real-time daily activity and revenue data from the blockchain games sector, go to DappRadar’s Games category.
Developers should also check out DappRadar’s new Developer Area, which provides details about how to onboard with new blockchains, information about development tools, and everything you need to ensure your dapp is making the most of DappRadar’s audience.
For more information on the Blockchain Games Alliance, including its activities, check out the BGA website.
