Blockchain gaming and metaverse projects raised an incredible $1.3 billion in Q3 of 2022.
Web 3.0 games continue to be a driving force in the dapp business despite the challenging market conditions of the day.
Blockchain activity analyzed across 50 networks shows that in September 2022, about 900,000 daily UAWs (Unique Active Wallets) interacted with the smart contracts of games.
The metaverse company Hadean has built essential metaverse components and sealed multi-year partnerships with education, entertainment, and business digital twin service providers. They include Minecraft, Pixelynx, Sony, and Gamescoin, among others.
The new round of investments will accelerate Hadean’s capacity to equip producers in new and developing metaverse marketplaces with the means to transform every element of how we work, construct, purchase, and consume.
The Web 3.0 games Alien Worlds and Splinterlands saw over 160,000 daily UAWs in September 2022. The same month, UAWs on the gaming platform Gameta, first introduced on Solana, are now available on the BNB Chain as well, exceeding one million per day.
Similarly, the Polygon-based Benji Bananas climbed the rankings during the last quarter, attracting over 29,000 daily UAWs in September.
The influence of Blockchain games is also discernible in the NFT (non-fungible token) market, where the gaming group Gods Unchained cracked the top-5 collections by trading volume in September. Its game assets produced over $18 million.
Also, in September 2022, the blockchain gaming industry increased the average daily UAWs by 8% to 912,000, accounting for 48% of blockchain activity, a highly positive indicator for this category.
The number of investments demonstrates that despite the challenging and uncertain conditions of the digital asset markets, major investment entities remain bullish on the blockchain gaming industry.
The term ‘metaverse’ is frequently used to refer to what a lot of people believe will be the next important paradigm for how we use digital technology and networks to collaborate, communicate, and have a variety of virtual experiences. It is not a single piece of equipment, technology, or service that is offered by a business. Rather, it is the result of the fusion of multiple distinct technologies that are rapidly maturing enough for widespread usage.
Finally, we think it is important to highlight how early blockchain gaming is in development. According to a recent report, fewer than 2,000 gaming applications actually utilize the blockchain. Compare that number to the tens of thousands of gaming apps on the App Store in the first few years after launch.
Since a game’s development cycle is usually measured in years, we expect to see a lot more games released over the next few quarters and years, although that will be impacted by the time required to build development tools, infrastructure, distribution channels, and product design best practices. These were critical pieces for Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store to get right before seeing explosive growth in the number of apps they hosted. Even from this metric’s lens, blockchain gaming has a long way to go in actual mass adoption.
Overall, it looks like the blockchain gaming deal market is continuing to mature into its next stage. The companies garnering the most funding attention are no longer the ones building platform layers where future blockchain games could live, but rather blockchain gaming studios that can produce engaging content using blockchain gaming infrastructure. This does not mean that investors have lost their appetite for backing infrastructure companies, just that there are not too many more infrastructure opportunities entering the market. Lines have likely been drawn between current infrastructure competitors, and a fight for market share has begun.
That being said, both the deal number and deal value have slowed down further over the last quarter. If Q3 2022 performance is any indicator, deal activity should continue to normalize to realistic levels over 2022 and into 2023. The crypto winter continues to perform a massive market cleanup while investors get smarter with their bets and builders continue to build.
