DappRadar X BGA Latest Games Report Highlights Resilience Of Blockchain Gaming Dapps In Q2

NEWS RELEASE BY DappRadar

Kaunas, Lithuania | July 13, 2022 11:00 AM, Eastern

DappRadar, the world’s dapp store that brings high quality, accurate insights on decentralized applications, shined the spotlight on a surprisingly bullish blockchain gaming sector that remains a hive of activity even as cryptocurrency prices crumbled dramatically during the second quarter.

DappRadar’s Games Report – Q2 2022, reveals that interest in blockchain games has stayed strong at a time when numerous verticals in the crypto industry have been left reeling due to macroeconomic pressure and the Terra ecosystem crash.

The biggest sign of this is the continued investment in the sector. Once again, money poured into the industry, with more than $2.5 billion in venture capital committed during the second quarter, matching the previous three months and surpassing the $4 billion in capital raised during the entirety of 2021 in just six months. Investment in blockchain games currently outpaces the total invested last year by 33%, and the market is on track to rake in more than $12 billion by the end of the year, the report shows.

With the rest of the crypto industry struggling, blockchain games have taken advantage to accumulate the lion’s share of unique active wallets (UAW). At the end of the quarter, 52% of all blockchain activity was driven by gaming Dapps. Blockchain games’ overall volume of UAW did fall slightly by 7% compared to the previous quarter, but once again this demonstrates the sector’s resilience - over the same period, DeFi saw a 17% drop in activity, while NFT activity fell by 24%. Moreover, blockchain gaming activity is still up by an impressive 232% compared to the same quarter last year.

Once again, Splinterlands remains the most-played blockchain game of all, with 283,729 UAW at the end of the quarter. The Hive’s trading card game retained the number one position in Q2 despite a 61% drop in its user base in June, due to a major revamp that disincentivized daily login bonuses. However, to promote longer-term growth, Splinterlands has shifted the focus of the game to better rewards for player engagement and consistent performances.

Another bright spot was Alien Worlds, the second-ranked game, whose player base remained more or less stable with UAW falling just 4% in Q2 compared to the previous three month period. Overall, Alien World’s UAW is up 4% from the same period one year earlier. Meanwhile, still sitting in third place was Farmers World, with 33% user growth registered in the quarter.

The emerging crypto winter has not been so kind to Axie Infinity, however. Formerly one of the most popular blockchain games of all, Axie Infinity has seen its user base collapse by 83% since the end of the first quarter, due to a recent hack that saw over $600 million worth of its native tokens stolen.

It could well be that Axie Infinity players are seeking out fresh pastures as the blockchain gaming sector evolves.

During the quarter we saw encouraging growth in new blockchain game titles such as Sunflower Lands on Polygon, which saw its UAW rise by 10,000% to over 11,000 users, and Gameta on Solana, which ended the quarter with more than 30,000 UAW.

On the other hand, the big drop in overall NFT activity did carry over to the gaming sector. Organic sales of gaming NFTs fell 29% compared to the previous quarter, while the price of in-game assets was also negatively

affected due to the fall in value of many game-related cryptocurrency tokens. That said, gaming NFTs held up better than most, with overall NFT sales volumes down 82% compared to the prior quarter.

Finally, as a sign of things to come, the renowned venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz announced during the quarter that it has created a $4.5 billion fund to invest in the development of blockchain games, the metaverse and other parts of the crypto economy.

Pedro Herrera, Head of Research at DappRadar said “Blockchain-based games have become one of the most promising sectors of Web3. Even with a drastic decrease in the value of playing rewards due to the collapse of game and metaverse-based tokens like JEWEL (- 99% down from January), SAND ( -81%), or SPS (-80%), web3 games still command 52% of the industry’s activity. And while gaming activity decreased 7% from the previous quarter, the downsides of other relevant blockchain categories such as DeFi (-17%) is more visible.

Furthemore, the amount of capital raised by game and metaverse related projects, along with the exodus of talent shifting from the leading traditional gaming companies to web3 game startups is just another positive sign. At this pace, over $12 billion will flow into web3 gaming projects by the end of the year to keep developing promising game projects. We are gradually seeing how Immutable-X, Gala Games, and other networks are positioning themselves to lead the rising category in years to come with impressive partnerships already in place.”

About DappRadar

Founded in 2018, DappRadar is the The World's Dapp Store: a global decentralized applications (dapps) store, which makes it easy for its base of more than 1 million users per month to track, analyze, and discover dapp activity via its online platform. The platform currently hosts more than 10,000 dapps from across 30+ protocols and offers a plethora of consumer-friendly tools, including comprehensive NFT valuation, portfolio management, and daily industry-leading, actionable insight.

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