Gaming Dominates On-Chain Transactions in April as Arbitrum Users Surge

Blockchain gaming has continued to make up a substantial portion of all on-chain transactions, says data firm DappRadar. In a report examining April market data, 38% of all crypto transactions were related to gaming—despite seeing 10% fewer daily active wallets (roughly 672,000) compared to the previous month.

DappRadar blamed the ongoing “meme token craze” for the user dropoff, citing PEPE’s billion-dollar market cap that recently ballooned to $1.7 billion before crashing by 63%. It also partially blames the meme token boom for the 74% decrease in virtual worlds trading in the past month, but noted that games like The Sandbox and Topia continued to see growth.

But it also noted that the new gaming-oriented network Sui, which launched its mainnet just last week, has already made massive gains. Sui’s namesake token has already appreciated 3,800% since its ICO, according to the report. And despite being brand new, Sui already has 40 games being built on its network.

But which gaming chains are seeing the most activity right now? WAX, home to Splinterlands and Alien Worlds, continues to take the top spot, but Ethereum sidechain network Polygon may be coming for its throne. Polygon is the second-most popular chain for gaming, per the report.

DappRadar noted that bot activity may be an ongoing problem with some WAX games, and named both Splinterlands and Alien Worlds as games that have eliminated numerous bot users from their titles this year.

DappRadar reported that Ethereum scaling solution Arbitrum also saw a spike in users in April, growing over 118% compared to the previous month, while Immutable X grew about 9%. 

Simon Davis, CEO and co-founder of studio Mighty Bear Games that is building on Polygon, told Decrypt via email he believes that Arbitrum’s spike is primarily due to the network’s late-March token airdrop.

“The decentralized gaming ecosystem Treasure and its users received a significant portion of the airdrop allocation, inspiring other high-profile projects (such as Pirate Nation) to also move to Arbitrum, increasing the ecosystem’s visibility,” Davis said. “Arbitrum is gaining strong momentum and establishing itself as one of the top destinations for Web3 gamers.”

As several blockchain networks vie to attract gaming projects to their chains, it increasingly appears that a multi-chain future is in the cards for Web3 gaming.