It has felt like the crypto sector as a whole has been doom and gloom for months on end — and in many ways it has. We’ve seen the Terra (LUNA) capitulation and catastrophic fallout, we’ve seen 3AC floating around on a yacht while their business sinks, and every crypto detractor out in full song. But, there has been a continuous — albeit quiet — story of how Web3 gaming has acted as a safe haven.
There are a few resources I treasure for current information and analysis on crypto, one of which — and they sit near the top — is DappRadar. In fact, I gladly bought into their Pro membership for the stellar reports that are released into it, and that is what inform’s today’s article.
The DappRadar Industry Report for May 2022 showed that blockchain games were performing well despite the markets plummeting. “Investments keep piling up to Blockchain games. The gaming category is resisting the crypto crash with only a 5% decrease in activity and 197% growth year-over-year.” This nod at investments is of note because we are on course for $10 billion invested in blockchain games by the end of the year, if not more. To contrast that — and I’ve rolled this comparison out often — in 2020, $80 million was invested in blockchain games.
Well, DappRadar’s latest report (which you can read here but does require a Pro membership) continues on that front. In a section titled, “Blockchain Games Defying the Market Trend”, DappRadar observes a number of key markers:
- Solana increased in activity by 311% since May
- WAX, already a highly active gaming chain, grew by 6%
- Axie Infinity is the most searched NFT collection in 112 countries
- Year-over-year game-related transactions is up 19%
Now, I have cherry-picked these stats. There are a lot of reductions in activity, for example, Ronin (likely due to the hack) and “BSC” which I presume refers to BNB (Binance Smart Chain). Nevertheless, any growth during this sort of bear market is impressive, and Solana’s 311% since May cannot be overstated; that is staggering.
We at Token Gamer have been, writing about, streaming, and making YouTube videos on a lot of games, many of which are on Solana and WAX. Those two ecosystems have begun to separate themselves from the pack to my eyes and Solana is gunning for the top of the podium.