First Quarter 2022 Chain Tour Report: Chain Tour Active Up 2000% Over Previous Year
First Quarter 2022 Chain Tour Report: Chain Tour Active Up 2000% Over Previous Year
The Chain Game Report Blockchain gaming activity remains stable despite the current challenging situation from both a micro and macro economic perspective. The recent 500 million hack of the Ronin bridge reminds us of the trade-offs interoperability needs to make. Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine and the negative performance of the cryptocurrency market have hampered the game's continued growth in the last year. Nevertheless, in the long run, blockchain gaming activity still grew by 2,000% over the previous year.
Source: Google Trends
Gaming dapps continue their continued growth, while the metaverse continues to bubble up with exciting opportunities in the blockchain industry. Venture capitalists and other investors continue to pump money into blockchain gaming and metaverse projects, with over $2.5 billion invested. Meanwhile, financial institutions are assessing the economic potential of the decentralized metaverse, with a market of at least $8 trillion.
Important points
With $2.5 billion raised in the first quarter, investment continues to pour into the blockchain game; at this rate, investment in 2022 will be $1,50% higher than last year.
Blockchain gaming attracted 1.22 million UAWs in March, accounting for 52% of industry-wide activity; while short-term usage appears stable, blockchain gaming usage increased by 2,000% over Q1 2021.
Sky Mavis has endured a challenging period following one of the most significant attacks in crypto history; despite this, Axie Infinity attracted 22,000 UAWs per day in March, while Cryptocurrency led a $150 million fund to recover assets from the Ronin Bridge hack.
The metaverse continues to evolve; The Sandbox Alpha Season 2, Decentraland's Fashion Week and NFT World's Value Assessment all demonstrate the potential of the sector.
Splinterlands, Alien Worlds and Crazy Defense Heroes drove blockchain game activity, averaging over 650,000 UAWs per day in March.
Catalog
52%'s blockchain active from the game dapp
Sky Mavis' Challenge Period
Games and metaverse projects raise $2.5 billion in Q1
The blockchain metaverse around you
Ranking well-known games review
Prospects
52%'s blockchain active from the game dapp
Blockchain gaming has maintained a steady level of usage amidst challenging circumstances. In the first quarter of this year, an average of 1.17 million UAW users accessed blockchain games each day, down 2% from the daily average in the fourth quarter of last year. however, the daily average in March exceeded 1.22 million, already showing signs of recovery.
From a blockchain active perspective, Matic has been gaining momentum as a challenger to leading gaming ecosystems Wax, Harmony and BNB Chain. Gaming dapps on the ethereum sidechain attracted an average of 114,000 UAWs per day in Q1, and an impressive 173,000 in March. Games such as Crazy Defense Heroes, Pegaxy, Arc8 and Aavegotchi have driven Polygon's game activity growth by 2,19% since the end of December last year.
On the other hand, Ronin and BNB Chain's on-chain activity has declined since the end of last year. With the exception of Mobox and Bomb Crypto, to some extent, the use of most gaming dapps in the Coin branded network is mainly erratic. Nonetheless, BNB Chain remains the third most active network for blockchain gaming, with a daily UAW of 165,000 in Q1, down 33% from last December.
Meanwhile, Ronin is going through its most challenging period since its launch nearly a year ago.
Sky Mavis' Challenge Period
On March 29, the Sky Mavis team announced that 175,000 ETH and 25.5 million USDC were stolen following an attack on the Ronin Bridge about a week ago. Hackers managed to take control of five of the eight multi-signature wallets needed to approve deposits and withdrawals from the bridge's escrow contracts, stealing the second largest amount of cryptocurrency in history.
While the hack forced Ronin's native dapps to cease operations, the dramatic drop in Axie blockchain activity is not entirely due to this recent attack; in fact, the numbers have been declining. The game's on-chain activity peaked in January, when the game's daily average UAW was over 55,000, and has dropped to nearly 22,000 in March.
The number of UAWs began to decrease in mid-February as Sky Mavis adjusted the SLP reward rate to make Axie's in-game currency sustainable in the long term. Despite this, Axie Infinity remains one of the top 10 most popular games in terms of daily usage, and according to off-chain data, the game still attracts over 1.5 million daily active users.
The attack on the Ronin bridge was a heavy blow to Sky Mavis. However, Ronin is a complete ecosystem. Katana proved to be a usable DeFi option after mining was turned on, and both the network and the community were managed by its token RON. In addition, general support was felt from the Axie Infinity user base and the Web3 community. Cryptocurrency launched a $150 million funding round with Animoca Brands and a16z to repay users affected by the attack. To help solidify and strengthen the core of its ecosystem, Sky Mavis launched a $1 million vulnerability bounty program.
Axie Infinity is likely to stay ahead of the game for a few months. In this challenging moment, it's easy to forget that Axie NFTs became the first collection to exceed $4 billion in historical transactions (excluding LooksRare). Furthermore, according to Sky Mavis, Origin's Beta was successfully released in April of this year, attracting over 220,000 people. Origin means that Axie's virtual world of Lunacia is one step closer to us.
Gaming and virtual world projects raised $2.5 billion in the first quarter
Investment in blockchain gaming in the first quarter surpassed the $4 billion invested in 2021. In the first three months of 2022, venture capitalists and investors have poured at least $2.5 billion into blockchain gaming and its infrastructure. At this rate, gaming revenue generation and metaverse-related projects will add $10 billion this year to continue building the future of the industry.
Animoca Brands has raised a $360 million investment at a $5 billion valuation, cementing its position as one of the leading Web3 brands. Last month, Sequoia Capital invested $450 million in Polygon, a blockchain that has fostered one of the most compelling blockchain gaming ecosystems.
In March, more than $785 million was invested in different projects. Yuga Labs, the studio behind the famous NFT series Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), received a $450 million investment led by Animoca Brands, with The Sandbox, FTX and Coinbase also participating. This investment further solidifies Yuga Labs' position in Web3. It also boosts the team's metaverse plans as they prepare for the launch of Otherside, which will be an interoperable metaverse platform involving play-to-play games, fashion and media.
Also worth mentioning is the $200 million investment in Immutable-X (IMX) led by Temasek. The investment brings the Sydney-based ethereum scaling solution's Series C valuation to $2.5 billion. imX has two popular blockchain games, Gods Unchained and guild of Guardians. in the next few months, Illuvium and Ember Sword will also join the queue for these dapps. The funds raised will be used to build and expand further for IMX products.
The blockchain metaverse around you
Interest in the metaverse began to cool after Meta announced its name change in Q4 2021. Compared to Q4 2021, trading volume in the virtual world fell by 12% to reach over $430 million in Q1 2022. decentraland and The Sandbox plummeted by 40%, while trading volume on these two platforms fell by 20% and 60%, respectively. despite this, the overall view of the metaverse platform still bodes well for the outlook of such projects in general.
The Sandbox completed its second Alpha season, attracting over 325,000 players with 35 experiences open to early players. Approximately $30 million in SAND tokens were distributed in the second season. In addition, brands such as Warner Bros, Ubisoft and HSBC have all formed close partnerships with the virtual world that makes money from gaming.
Meanwhile, Decentraland and Boson Protocol hosted Fashion Week during the last week of March. leading fashion brands such as D&G, Estee Lauder and Forever 21 provided an immersive experience in the platform's fashion district, a virtual parcel acquired by Metaverse Group for $2.4 million.
Also notable is the performance of NFT Worlds, a virtual world of 10,000 parcel NFTs that allows its owners to customize their parcels to provide a gaming experience. The project demonstrated its utility through its WRLD airdrop and pledge pool, which in turn led to a surge in user demand for NFTs. NFT Worlds was the second most traded metaverse project, generating $95 million in transactions, behind only TheSandbox ($113 million).
The potential of a blockchain-based metaverse is well known. Microsoft, Google, Disney, Sony and several other leading companies will undoubtedly try to grow their brands in the metaverse. However, the ownership that NFTs have and the potential financial ecosystem that comes with cryptocurrencies and play-to-earn games will change the paradigm of traditional metaverse limited to virtual, augmented reality.
Ranking well-known games review
It feels like the top play-to-earn games and GameFi dapps have found a way to engage their respective communities. splitterlands is established as the #1 play-to-earn dapp. in March, Hive's card game attracted more than 366,000 UAW users per day, up 15% from december 2021. the deck supply updates, including revenue ratios, have built a solid community in the game.
Polygon games Crazy Defense Heroes (CDH) and Pegaxy were among the top performers. Tower defense game CDH has seen a steady increase in player numbers, attracting over 134,000 UAW players per day in March. This represents an increase of 5,40% compared to the end of December. similarly, Pegaxy's on-chain activity grew by 4,20% over the same time period, attracting over 16,000 UAWs in March.
Both BNB's Mobox and Harmony's DeFi Kingdes (DFK) maintained positive on-chain metrics. blockchain activity on Mobox increased by 10% over the previous quarter, thanks to a stable roadmap around Momoverse. As for DFK, its on-chain activity numbers remained relatively stable despite a negative growth trend in the DeFi space and a 12% drop in the price of JEWEL, the game's native token. Both games demonstrate the potential of GameFi as the lines between DeFi and games begin to blur.
On the other hand, Wax's Alien Worlds and Coinan's Bomb Crypto are struggling to keep blockchain activity on par with last year. Alien Worlds lost some ground last August after attracting more than 300,000 UAW users. the Space mining GameFi dapp still attracts more than 188,000 UAW users per day, and its TLM token has been one of the most popular game-based cryptocurrencies. Based on the history of other BNB games (such as CryptoBlades and CryptoBay), Bomb Crypto's project is worth watching.
While the top 10 blockchain games are largely established, other game dapps are worth keeping an eye on, such as Avalanche's Crabada or IMX's Gods Unchained, which are also trying to compete for the market of existing blockchain games.
Prospects
All in all, blockchain gaming remains one of the most attractive areas of the dapp industry. Despite the seemingly stagnant demand for blockchain games, gaming dapps continue to drive the majority of the industry's on-chain activity numbers. Notably, well-known games were still able to attract their player base during a challenging first quarter.
Support for a decentralized and interoperable metaverse based on blockchain gaming is swarming. Venture capital firms and investors are pouring money into Web3 gaming projects at a record pace. Meanwhile, top brands such as Ubisoft, Warner Bros. and Adidas are beginning to make their presence felt in the space.
What's more, financial institutions such as Morgan Stanley predict the economic potential of the metaverse to be at least $8 trillion. the Sandbox's second Alpha season, Decentraland's Fashion Week and the high demand for NFT Worlds point the industry in the right direction.
However, security issues like this one with the Ronin Bridge and the challenge of achieving full interoperability remind all involved that there are still a few steps to go before it becomes a mainstream application.
Blockchain gaming will need to play a significant role in this process to get to this point. As with NFTs, gaming dapps will be key to achieving the mass adoption points needed to take Web3 to the next level.
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