State of the Blockchain Game Sector | July 2020
Welcome to DappRadar’s regular monthly reports — 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.
In this report, we are tracking the activity across all games and marketplaces running on the Ethereum, EOS, TRON, WAX, Steem and Hive blockchains.
DappRadar also tracks games running on a number of other blockchains, but currently these are operating at very low levels of activity.
Key Trends
Daily activity across all blockchain games rose slightly during July, up 3% compared to June 2020, ending the month at just over 22,000 daily active unique wallets, or 21,500 in terms of the trailing 30 day average.
The longer term picture remains negative, however, with Ethereum’s continuing high transaction fees — which started in late April and show no signs of easing — casting a broad shadow over the sector, at least in terms of daily user numbers.
Overall gaming activity on Ethereum is down 82% over the past six months, compared to a rise of 12% on EOS, although during July, gaming activity on EOS dropped as its most popular game Crypto Dynasty experienced a 29% decline.
Smaller chains have seen more positive trends. WAX is up 33% and TRON up 360% over the half year period, albeit from low levels.
Some individual games are also seeing impressive performance.
Now the most popular blockchain game, Splinterlands is up 36% since its transition from the Steem to the Hive blockchain on 1 June, regularly peaking at over 6,000 daily active unique wallets.
Ranking in the top 5, EOS-based mobile game Uplands is up 64% over the past three months as its gears up its open beta testing. It now attracts around 2,000 daily active unique wallets.
In this context, it’s interesting to track the growing importance of the top 5 games in terms of their share of the overall sector’s daily activity.
Looking back across 2020, the combined daily activity of the top 5 games of each day has remained broadly unchanged even as Ethereum-based titles have declined (replaced in the top 5 by games running on other protocols).
Hence, as overall activity has dropped, the top 5 games have accounted for a larger share of the total; peaking at over 75% on occasion, compared to less than 60% in February.
More generally, the market share of each blockchain hasn’t changed much in recent months.
Currently EOS remains the most popular blockchain for gaming with around a 40% market share of daily activity, compared to around 30% for Hive.
Ethereum, TRON and WAX each have around a 10% share.
Where’s the value
Things look very different, however, when considering where the blockchain game sector’s value is accruing.
Despite collapsing user activity, Ethereum remains the dominant player in terms of revenue.
Thanks to its strong NFT ecosystem, Ethereum accounts for over 75% of the $35 million of trading volume tracked in the blockchain game sector in 2020 to-date.
Indeed, Ethereum-based third party marketplace OpenSea has accounted for around $6 million of trading value in 2020; the most from a single dapp.
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.
About the Blockchain Game Alliance
The Blockchain Game Alliance is an organization committed to promoting blockchain within the game industry.
Our goal is to spread awareness about blockchain technologies and encourage adoption by highlighting their potential to foster new ways to create, publish, play, and build strong communities around games.
The BGA also provides an open forum for individuals and companies to share knowledge and collaborate, create common standards, establish best practices, and network.
Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/BGameAlliance
Learn more about the BGA: http://www.blockchaingamealliance.org
