Contents
The top games are thriving, and new rivals have entered the market.
The blockchain gaming space is growing at a dizzying pace, with GameFi being one of the hottest buzzwords, with over 50% industry usage and $748 million in funding. Top tier gaming is booming, and new rivals have entered the market. Get the latest updates in the UNITBOX x BGA Gaming Report.
More than just a buzzword, web3 aims to be a redesigned Internet that offers users gaming, social networking and financial services through decentralized applications, or dapps, running on the blockchain and managed by users’ own wallets.
Gaming-related companies, such as Australia-based Immutable, believe that gaming will be a major area for blockchain-based Web3 services, citing the enthusiasm of venture capitalists and the money flowing into the space as proof.
In August, an average of 847,000 unique active wallets (UAWs) interacted with blockchain gaming each day, down 11 percent from the previous month, but still exceeding the industry’s 50 percent usage rate.
The top protocol Wax saw an 8% decrease in the average number of unique active wallets per day from the previous month. However, 40% of gaming activity still occurred on Wax. Hive, the second largest gaming blockchain and home to Splinterlands, saw activity climb to an average of 169,043 UAWs per day, up 12% month-over-month (MoM).
Similarly, average daily UAW transactions on the BNB chain climbed 8% month-over-month to over 92,000. Solana continues to grow, up 21% month-over-month.
Two other bullish signals were the total volume of related NFT games traded, up 13.25% from the previous month, and the number of sales increased by 83.36%, with more than 1.3 million game-related NFTs being traded.
Regarding protocols, Ether decreased by 14.40% to $11 million, but Solana saw a monthly increase of over 171% to $1.7 million. Ronin also saw a total volume of $8.2 million, which translates into a monthly increase of 27.64%.
This report will highlight the most important recent developments that have made blockchain gaming the star of the upcoming web3.
Key Takeaways
- Since August 1, Web3 gaming and metadata projects have raised over $750 million despite a challenging economic environment.
- Trickshow Blitz, the new Flow-based game, attracted more than 400,000 unique active wallets (UAWs) while processing 4.6 million transactions in its two weeks.
- Splinterlands saw its third consecutive month of recovery after revamping the game’s economy last June.
- Axie Infinity’s historical NFT sales topped $4 billion, while the game has attracted an average of about 36,000 players per day over the past three months.
- Virtual Worlds game NFT generated a year-low $25 million in August; Sandbox kicked off its Alpha Season 3
- Xterio raises $40 million for mobile Web3 games, as only 12% of blockchain games are playable on mobile devices.
Contents
- Top Games Growing Despite Market Conditions
- Flow continues to thrive with its new game Trickshot Blitz
- Splinterlands surpasses 3 billion battles and continues to grow significantly
- Virtual Worlds sales down, but enjoys more sales
- Sandbox Alpha Season 3 and its multiple celebrity co-op live shows
- STEPN surpasses 3 million monthly user registrations and mobile payments continue to grow
- Blockchain gaming and metadata project raises $748 million
- Will blockchain mobile gaming lead to web3 adoption?
- It’s over.
Top games are growing, despite the market situation
In August, Alien Worlds was the most played blockchain game, with a daily UAW of 197,555, down 4% from the previous month. They announced a partnership with Zilliqa to integrate Alien Worlds into their platform via the Unity Software Development Kit. If you want to know more about this partnership and their future plans, watch the latest AMA we did during DappDays.
Gameta, a Solana-based game that launched on the BNB chain on August 27, has increased its average daily unique active wallet by 33% since July and has become the second largest number of users among the BNB chain’s decentralized applications (dApps) and the first among the GameFi project.
Axie Infinity has consolidated its on-chain player base at around 36k level daily wallets. This month, the game’s NFT series generated $4.24 billion in sales, followed by CryptoPunks at $2.92 billion. on August 11, they announced the start of Origins Season 0, marking the transition to Phase 3. With this new phase, the reward system will be changed and SLPs will be removed.
Finally, Era7: Game of Truth and Play Mining, both cemented their base players at around 24,000 daily unique active wallets, up 4% and 2% respectively from last month.
Flow keeps flourishing with its new game Trickshot Blitz
This month, Joyride Games Inc., the game publishing platform that launched the flow-based game Solitaire Blitz in July, also released Trickshot Blitz, a traditional 8-ball billiards game played for money, on the 15th. The game garnered over 400,000 unique wallet addresses and processed over 4.6 million transactions in its first two weeks.
Another major event was the partnership between Ticketmaster and Flow, which allows event organizers to issue NFTs attached to tickets. the latter can offer these NFTs before, during and after events, enabling customized experiences such as loyalty rewards or celebrity meet-and-greets, or simply sell souvenirs in the form of NFTs.
As the world rapidly adopts decentralization, Flow has released a new decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) infrastructure, CAST. it is a voting system designed to facilitate community decision-making. proposals on CAST can be gated using any non-forgeable token (NFT) or FLOW token on the Flow blockchain.
Read our comprehensive guide on the Flow blockchain for more details.
Splinterlands exceeds 3 billion battles and maintains remarkable growth
August was also a big month for Splinterlands, a trading card game with gameplay running on the Hive blockchain. the Splinterlands team revealed that the game has reached 3 billion battles. As you can see from the chart below, this happened just a few months after the game reached 2 billion users in March 2022, indicating a steady increase in user engagement.
Spinterlands’ average daily unique active wallet grew 14% month-on-month to 168,000, primarily due to the following announcement.
On August 5, it was revealed that $SPS (Splinterlands) will be listed on the Huobi exchange in partnership with EMP Money, an Ethereum-linked token that players can use for in-game transactions.
The Major League Soccer Players Association (MLSPA) announced on August 8 a partnership with Splinterlands to build and develop a blockchain-based soccer game (P2E) that will enable MLSPA players to engage with fans in new ways on desktop and mobile platforms.
The two announcements prompted the price of Splinterlands cryptocurrency (SPS) to spike 38% in the first week of August, before prices began to fall. According to coingecko, the price of SPS was 0.052 on August 31, down 13% from the beginning of the month.
After a test poll on August 23rd to ensure the system was working and measure participation, the Splinterlands team continued with the first poll that will affect Splinterlands’ gameplay. This specific poll involved a restructuring of the SPS award distribution, which has already been debated.
This idea specifically addresses the distribution of SPS prizes in ranked tournaments. Instead of having several smaller pools of SPS tokens, everyone shares a huge pool of SPS tokens. The plan proposes to move most of the prizes to higher levels.
While the idea has now passed with 85% of the votes in favor, there are concerns that this reform will only benefit the rich. Currently, there is already a fee to earn Diamond and Championship rankings. You are not allowed to play in the Diamond League until you have a collection capacity of over 250,000, which equates to about $6,400 worth of cards.
Now, they want to offer 30% of the total SPS rewards to the first few hundred players who occupy the highest positions. Currently, higher levels have been given a larger share of the rewards and larger bonuses for those rewards. But allocating a third of the entire supply to a small group of people seems excessive.
The Splinterlands team has said they are open to changing the numbers in the future; however, would a new proposal and vote be required to make this adjustment? We will be watching these developments closely.
Virtual Worlds see a decrease in volume but enjoy more sales
The Virtual Worlds program experienced a down month as the category saw a 28.90% month-over-month decrease in volume to $22 million. However, the number of sales rose 38.62% to 19,354, indicating that demand for these types of projects is still quite high.
Otherdeed for Otherside, which saw a 27.41% drop this month compared to the previous month, still accounted for 73.23% of total transactions in the virtual world. on August 28, Eminem and Snoop Dog performed at the Otherside Metaverse for the Music Video of the Year Awards with their Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs.
Likewise, Decentraland had a monthly drop of 23.86% below $1.5 million, the lowest we have registered since January 2021. Also NFT Worlds had a 76.43% decrease, the lowest volume ever recorded.
On the other hand, Worldwide Webb Land, a 2D metaspace inspired by Steven Spielberg’s movie Ready Player One, saw an 87.12% month-on-month increase in total volume to over $500,000. This growth is due to the latest announcement that allows users to manually submit potential integrations to its metaspace.
So instead of a project having to work with Worldwide Webb Land to get its avatar into the Worldwide Webb metaverse, users can now manually submit the NFTs they want to be integrated.
Somnium Space also saw a 36% increase over last month, driven by the launch of a new social media platform for the platform. Called Authencity, it will have a straightforward monetization model where fans can support creators without interruption. They will essentially get a share of every profile they support and will reap the benefits of its wave of success.
In addition, Arcade Land grew by 46.24% compared to last month, driven by the latest partnership with Ookeenga, a 3D NFT game project developed by CROS Game.
Live look at The Sandbox Alpha Season 3 and its multiple celebrity partnerships
After last year’s Season 1 of The Sandbox Alpha and Season 2 of Alpha earlier this year, gamers are enthusiastically anticipating the release of Season 3 on August 24.
Sandbox Alpha Season 3 is free and available to all players, however in order to receive Sandbox prizes from the game you must have an Alpha Pass or other Sandbox NFT. in addition, Sandbox offers a new KYC criteria for prize eligibility. This is the result of dishonest gamers creating many accounts to improve their chances of winning prizes.
This alpha season contains over 90 experiences from numerous sources. These experiences come from partners including The Walking Dead, Snoop Dogg and The Smurfs, The Sandbox Team, The Game Maker’s Fund, 12 user-created experiences, and 16 experiences submitted from previous gaming contests.
In addition, Alpha Season 3 allows players to use avatars from various series such as Steve Aoki, Bored Ape, and Moonbird NFT within the game.
Prizes for Season 3 will be modified to include guaranteed rewards for specific NFT holders. While Alpha Pass holders continue to receive the most prizes, individuals with sandbox lands, avatars and “NFTs” can also earn them by completing stages.
Please visit our recent article for further information on Sandbox Alpha Season 3.
In conjunction with the launch of the new season, Sandbox has partnered with Gordon Ramsay to bring his highly successful Hell’s Kitchen to the virtual world and with Paris Hilton, who will be replicating her Malibu Mansion inside the Sandbox with a rooftop party hosted by herself as a DJ.
With all these celebrity collaborations and the launch of the new season, unique active wallets grew 40% from July, reaching a high of 1,680 the day after the launch of Alpha Season 3.
On September 1st, UNITBOX spoke with Sebastien Borget, COO of The Sandbox, and if you want to learn more about their vision and roadmap, check out this article.
STEPN registers over 3 million monthly users as move-to-earn continues to evolve
Move-to-earn apps are growing in popularity with gamers from every conceivable background. Thousands of people are drawn to the rewarding motivation of physical activity, and there are huge communities of fitness app enthusiasts around the world.
STEPN remains one of the most popular M2E (mobile money making) dapps with over 3 million cumulative monthly users, over 700,000 shoes mined and is establishing its first physical office at Cyberport, a Hong Kong government-run startup gas pedal, making the city its first regional headquarters outside of Australia.
The decision comes at a time when other cryptocurrency-related businesses are leaving Hong Kong in droves to prepare for a new exchange licensing regime. Quarantine procedures related to Covid-19 have also led to the relocation of businesses.
In addition, they announced a partnership with Atletico Madrid and cryptocurrency exchange WhaleFin to develop a new collection. This collection will contain 1001 pairs of Atletico Madrid sneakers with the possibility of winning personally signed items and match tickets from the club. In addition, this collection will be compatible with the app’s Run for Money game.
Besides STEPN, a handful of apps are climbing the M2E bandwagon, although most of them are still in their infancy.
Genopets, another Solana mobile money-making app that uses augmented reality in a similar way to Pokemon Go, allowing users to capture creatures that move in the real world, has now added habitat management for its gamers.
In Genopets, players can build crystals, habitats and Terraform seeds. In the future, they will also offer additional features through crafting and crystal refinement. Owners select a fee percentage and assign a tenant, who can then take advantage of the selected habitat features.
With the deployment of habitat management, the mobile revenue economy on Genopets officially begins. Any levels of energy accumulated during the beta period are wiped out and everyone must start from scratch.
Sweatcoin has just announced the launch of its own digital token, SWEAT, in partnership with DAO Maker. its IDO aims to facilitate the transfer of the sweat economy to the global Web3 ecosystem.
Along with the introduction of SWEAT, the fitness app’s development team will offer its own cryptocurrency wallet, Sweat Wallet, an all-in-one terminal for a cryptocurrency-centric version of Sweat Economy with attractive yields, a unique NFT and a robust set of tools.
OliveX is a digital health and fitness company backed by Animoca Brands with dapps such as Dustland, Zombies Run and Lympo Squat. the business has now released Dustland Rider, a new game in which rides can be used to collect in-game prizes. The release date has not been disclosed.
As part of the planned strategic investment, Keith Rumjahn, founder and CEO of OliveX, will join Silentmode as a non-executive director to provide advice and insight on currency matching, marketing and exchange connectivity.
The company has also reached an agreement with game developer Parasol Corp Pty Ltd to collaborate on three new games over the next three years. Each of these games will be backed by the DOSE utility token, which is a token for the entire ecosystem. The first game, tentatively titled “We Fight Monsters”, is designed for players who enjoy bodyweight workouts.
Everyone from walkers to Olympians are using Move-to-earn apps. Some might argue that they have fundamentally changed the way individuals interact with the world of physical exercise and encryption. For the past five years, Web3 and metaverse have only been relevant to cryptocurrency enthusiasts and NFT traders. However, many individuals are increasingly participating in the trend of making money on the go.
$748M raised by blockchain games and metaverse projects
Following the trend witnessed throughout the year, blockchain gaming partnerships and investments continue to emerge, raising another $748M in August, a 135% increase from the previous month, but still 16% less than June.
One notable investment was $200 million, or 27% of the total, raised by Gabriel Leydon, founder and former CEO of Machine Zone, the mobile gaming studio behind Game of War and Mobile Strike, for a new blockchain called Limit Break chain startup called Limit Break. The project gained popularity after the successful launch of its DigiDaigaku free mint NFT series, which we analyze in this report.
Temasek, Singapore’s national investment fund and the world’s largest investor, has invested $100 million in Animoca Brands via convertible bonds. Just last month, Animoca raised $75 million in a financing round led by existing investors Liberty City Ventures, 10T and Kingsway Capital.
Across the board, we observe that 38% of the investment went to infrastructure, 33% to gaming and metadata projects, and 27% to investment companies.
In the last quarter, investors pumped $3.1 billion into the blockchain gaming industry, and expectations around total investment in this growing sector this year have been raised by 20% to $10.2 billion.
The amount of investment indicates that major investment entities remain bullish on the GameFi industry despite the challenging and uncertain conditions in the digital asset market.
Will blockchain mobile games bring web3 adoption?
Mobile games have come a long way in the last 20 years. Starting with Snake and Breakout on outdated Nokia phones, the mobile gaming business has since grown tremendously, gaining unprecedented popularity with titles such as Candy Crush, Bloons Tower Defense and Angry Birds. In the past few years alone, the mobile gaming space has taken a huge leap forward with more technologically powerful cell phones and web3 technology making the gaming experience more immersive.
As of today, most of the leading blockchain games such as Axie Infinity, Upland, Gemeta, Splinterlands, etc. have mobile versions of their games. In fact, only about 12% of web3 live games are playable on mobile devices, according to Mirror World.
This month, Coda Labs and Laguna Games partnered to release four new casual games for iOS and Android smartphones. The four minigames scheduled for release in Q4 2022 are Unigatchi, Bumper Corns, Mob Run and Rainbow Rumble.
Xterio, a cross-platform publisher and producer of high-quality mobile and Web3 games, received another notable investment of $40 million last month. FunPlus, FTX Ventures, Makers Fund and XPLA led the investment, with Hashkey, Foresight Ventures Headline, Matrix Partners and Animoca Brands also participated in the round.
The cash will be used to develop and publish its own games as well as those of its partners, produce new world-class intellectual property, and continue development of the Xterio platform, which will include a marketplace, social community hub, and other features.
Despite the economic downturn, the conflict in Ukraine, rising inflation, the cryptocurrency winter, and the new gaming downturn, the funding suggests that gaming investors are starting to get excited about blockchain mobile gaming. And Web3 teams with compelling proposals are still likely to receive a massive round of funding.
Moreover, as Web3 games are adopted in the mobile space, one of the multiple challenges faced on the road to adoption is
One of the multiple challenges faced on the road to adoption is the existing friction with web3 technology. This obstacle is particularly evident in the mobile space, where changing poor user experiences can lead to low levels of retention.
Spanning multiple applications to perform actions typical of web3 games, such as logging in, completing blockchain transactions, or trading on the NFT marketplace, can lead to a poor customer experience.
Platforms like X-terio and Mirror World will benefit the entire industry. The Mirror World SDK helps developers integrate the blockchain layer in a smoother way. According to Chris Zhu, co-founder and CEO of Mirror World, “developers don’t need to build their own stack separately.”
Mirror World also strives to improve the user experience when interacting with blockchain-related goods. Chris mentioned that “users often need to leave the app to sign a deal with Metamask or Phantom, forcing them to leave your mobile Dapp and resulting in a 25% conversion loss with the current onboarding process, which is a devastating number for any game looking to generate revenue and expand its audience”.
With this in mind, the platform has an integrated login and authentication where users can interact with the game via social credentials (Google, email, Twitter, etc.) and a cryptocurrency wallet is automatically tied to them.
Users are often asked to jump out of the app and sign a deal with Metamask or Phantom, forcing them to leave your mobile Dapp, losing 25% of conversions in the existing onboarding process alone, a devastating number for any game expecting to generate revenue and grow its audience.
On the same page, it also has a mobile marketplace where developers can easily build a built-in NFT marketplace that enables users to buy and sell game NFT assets directly in the game.
On the importance of the SDK and similar tools as web3 prepares to board the next big wave of users, he affirms.
“Similar to how adoption of online payments was minimal before PayPal and Stripe, we see an urgent need to provide low-code solutions with SDKs that enable developers to create an integrated user experience in any mobile app, from social login to self-hosted wallets and marketplaces”.
Chris Zhu, Co-Founder and CEO, Mirror World
Closing
Blockchain gaming, the latest addition to a still young field, has yet to lose its mystique. Many people still don’t know what it’s all about, and the ever-changing gaming ecosystem offers little help.
However, those heavily involved in blockchain gaming see its promise of player-owned assets and a revolving token economy as an inevitable development in entertainment that will change the way the world views gaming.
We are still in the nascent stages and have tremendous growth potential. There are still several areas that need improvement, but the industry is evolving and inventing.
The future of GameFi looks bright and is becoming a leader in the move to web3.
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