📅July 2022, BitMetis
Author: BitMetis; Realresearch DAO; SnapFingers DAO
Data Source–Footprint Analytics; My MetaData
This monthly report aims to provide a comprehensive and accurate market macro trend, allowing Gamefi enthusiasts to have a better grasp of the current Gamefi market. It is believed that the bull market belonging to Gamefi is in the near future.
- In general, the overall situation of the GameFi market in July is no better than that in June, and is even shrinking further. Since macro factors reduce the liquidity of financial markets, which directly affect cryptocurrencies, and GameFi is a high-risk investment target, it is difficult for the GameFi market to recover in the short term under such dual pressure.
- Stpen, current gamefi leader, the attempts to revitalize on ETH seems to have failed: less newcomers and declining transactions, main reason for this lies in that users on ETH and Solana/BSC are two different groups focusing on different aspects.
- GameFi projects that got financing in the first half of this year are gradually advancing, but due to the bear market, it is hard for them to break the ice. Mechafightclub, for example, despite the two rounds of $45 million financing led by a16z, still did not set off a high fever upon NFT mint, and the floor price of NFT gradually fell below the mint price.
- NFT Worlds was pushed into the limelight because of Minecraft's NFT ban, which will be a precursor to the cut-off between Web3 games and Web2 games. Through this event, more Web3 game developers should realize that rigidly copying Web2 games is not a shortcut, the success of a Web3 game depends more on their own innovation.
- The above article mainly focuses on new games, what about old games? Axie Infinity officially unveiled the Lunacian Summer Festival on July 14 and then opened the Axie World Championship Registration on July 27, with a month-long qualifier followed by a live tournament in Barcelona in September. Axie infinity has proved to us that not all old games are stagnant or even declining, the team is still striving in Web3.
- Although it is difficult to reinvigorate the crypto market in the short term with macro factors, more projects are continuing to advance and grow, and we believe that there will always be high quality games presenting to us until the market eases.
Gamefi Market Overview
1. 35 Newly Released Gamefi Projects, An Increase of 2.2% MoM.
By 31th July, 35 new gamefi projects had been released, the number of gamefi projects stood at 1595, up 2,2% MOM. Compared to the increase of May(1.8%) and June(3.2%), new gamefi projects are slightly emerging and the market is still surrounded by fear.
Almost every chain is stagnating in the birth of new games, especially for ETH and BSC. The high gas fee with much congestion on ETH greatly curb the growth of new games, while many of new games on BSC are not qualified for retention.
Polygon and WAX are in a better situation: 20 out of 35 new games were launched on these two blockchains. Unlike ETH, the low gas fee and high transaction speed on Polygon and WAX provide a better environment for the growth of new games.
2. Gamefi Monthly Active Users Down 21% MoM, New Users Drops from 559K to 483K.
Although there are 35 new games being released in July(aforementioned), gamefi user numbers are still declining overall. The macroeconomic environment and volatility of the crypto market pushed the number of active users down from a peak of 3.58 million in January to 1.19 million by the end of July, a sharply decrease of 69%. The number of new users also continuously decreased to 483k, down 13.6% MoM.
The degree of user numbers on different chains varies considerably:
In general, Polygon is taking back the dominant position in Gamefi’s chain selection; Splinterland drives Hive much forward among the best gamefi chains; BSC still has a place because of its large foundation and number of games.
3. 54.8% Decrease MoM in Transaction Volume, But Axie Infinity is Rebounding
This downturn in trading volume started from last December, in July, it came to the rock bottom, from 52.17 Billion to 172.4 Million, down 99.7%.
Although the market volume is in drastic shrink, Ronin turned out to be the opposite: ranking 1st in trading volume taking 78.3% of the total market share. Such performance is due to the Land Staking in Axie Infinity, which jack the price of AXS Token and increase the trading volume to a large extent.
4. Gamefi Financing up to 204.3 Million, an increase of 16.6% MoM.
In July, the Gamefi market rebounded slightly in Financing: up by 29.1M, or 16,6%. And capital mainly flowed to the Web3 category, counting up 98% of the total funding.
Among the 22 rounds of Financing in Gamefi, It’s worth mentioning that there were more seed rounds than any other type just like always.
In the 22 financing projects, SEED,a MMO simulation game, raised $41M in a funding round led by Animoca Brands, making it one of the few dark horses in this bear market.
5. Stable Market Mood with Rising Gamefi Trending Topic.
In July, the overall market mood was relatively stable, people were getting used to the downturn in the bear market, and were discussing more Gamefi topics.
Besides, the most discussed games by Twitter KOL are as follows:
The Otherside became the hottest game in July by virtue of hosting the first Otherside voyage. StepN was down to the 7th hottest game despite its collaboration with BAYC and launching NFT shoes on ETH. StepN’s legend is hard to maintain.
6. Web2 Gaming Giants Marching into Web3 with Bigger Step
As aforementioned, many leading Gamefi projects, such as Axie Infinity and Stepn, are stagnating in Growth, but their impact on Web2 games cannot be underestimated. Besides, current mobile games are eating into much of the market share of Web2 Gaming Giants, forcing them to find a way out. Luckily, Metaverse offers these Gaming Giants an olive branch.
According to the latest report from Blockchain Gaming Association(BGA), NFT games created $2.32 Billion profits in Q2 2022, taking up 22% of the entire NFT trading volume. This explains why Gamefi projects are still favored by Capitals even under such a bear market in recent months.
For example, EpicGames, a famous Web2 gaming platform, announced $1 Billion fundraising to march into Metaverse development after massive losses in successive years.
Zynga, the causal Gaming Giant in America, announced partnership with Forte, a blockchain gaming platform, to co-build blockchain games with Zynga brand.
Moreover, Voodoo, who specializes in Mini games, also announced that they will go into Dapp games, investing over $200 Million in Gamefi projects in 2022.
One thing is for sure, Gamefi projects will have no options but to promote game quality and playability, the whole pay-to-earn mode may be substituted by a better mechanism. The participation of Web2 Gaming Giant will drive Gamefi much forward in a high-quality, diverse and healthy way.
Game with Best Performance
Here, we mainly refer to two metrics: MAU and Trading Volume.
The chart above shows that Solitaire Blitz had remarkable growth in MAU(+305.17%) and trading volume(+177.29%), undoubtedly making it the best game in July.
Solitaire Blitz is actually a mini game on the Joyride platform, while Joyride Games is a platform for building and operating blockchain-powered mobile games, who raised $14 million in seed round invested by Animoca Brands, Solana Ventures, BITKRAFT, Coinbase Ventures, etc.
Big News
- In July, two month after the Terra(Luna) collapse, around 50 projects formerly on Terra had begun to migrate to Polygon(MATIC).
- The Sandbox announced a new partnership with Playboy to create a Playboy MetaMansion in the Sandbox metaverse.
- Stepn APE Realm OG Shoeboxes were launched and began to be tradable on OpenSea.
- Minecraft Official claimed that blockchain technologies are not permitted to be integrated inside Minecraft client and server applications nor may they be utilized to create NFTs associated with any in-game content, including worlds, skins, persona items, or other mods
- Step App announced the partnership with Usain Bolt, the world-famous athlete, as its Brand Ambassador.
- Samsung announced the launch of Space Tycoon, which is a metaverse based virtual playground targeted towards the Gen Z crowd. The metaverse based gaming experience has been built on the Roblox world.
- Polygon was chosen to be the only blockchain as a part of the Disney 2022 Accelerator Program.
- Sorare announced a new multi-year exclusive partnership with AC Milan, the 2021/22 series A champions.
- Wharton School launches a metaverse-focused business course.