Written by: Stella L
Cryptocurrency markets faced tough times in August, with both Bitcoin and Ethereum falling sharply in value. Bitcoin fell 9.3%, while Ethereum fell even more severely, by 21.4%, reflecting market volatility caused by global economic factors. Despite the decline in token market capitalization, activity in the Web3 gaming sector remained resilient. Daily active users (DAUs) grew 6.88% and transaction volume increased 8.94%, driven by platforms such as Ronin and opBNB. However, the blockchain gaming industry has not completely escaped the overall market's woes, with the market capitalization of gaming tokens falling 13.2%.
Despite the turbulent market environment, the continued development of Web3 innovation remains a focus of the industry as industry giants like Sony make progress in the blockchain field.
Macro Market Review
Both Bitcoin and Ethereum saw significant declines in August. Bitcoin started the month at $65,290 and ended the month at $59,246, a drop of 9.3%. Ethereum’s downward trend was more pronounced, falling by 21.4% from $3,220 to $2,531.
Data source: Bitcoin and Ethereum price trends
The Bank of Japan unexpectedly announced a rate hike in late July, a move that sent ripples across markets. Strategies such as short-term volatility strategies and FX arbitrage saw returns decline significantly, leading to a sharp decline in cryptocurrency values in the first week of August. Bitcoin and Ethereum both hit their lowest points of the month on August 7.
Continued selling pressure continued throughout the month, exacerbated by factors such as multiple government actions and the legacy of Mt. Gox, although the impact of these factors has gradually weakened.
Meanwhile, Ethereum is undergoing an important transition that has caused uncertainty among some investors. The blockchain plans to scale by moving more transactions to the Layer 2 network. This year, activity on the Ethereum Layer 2 network has increased significantly, with giants such as Sony launching projects such as Soneium in this ecosystem. However, the shift in activity to Layer 2 has led to a decrease in Ethereum's fee income, which could affect the value of Ether.
At the end of the month, after Telegram founder Pavel Durov was arrested in France, the market's focus increasingly turned to the relationship between blockchain technology and digital privacy. Although Federal Reserve Chairman Powell clearly "hinted" at the possibility of a rate cut in late June, market sentiment remained generally negative throughout the month.
Overview of the blockchain game market
The market capitalization of blockchain gaming tokens fell 13.2% in August from $1.82 billion to $1.53 billion. In comparison, Bitcoin’s market capitalization fell 8.6%. The blockchain gaming industry, like the rest of the crypto market, has had a tough month.
Data source: Blockchain game token market value and Bitcoin market value
Despite the market downturn, the number of daily active users (DAUs, calculated by unique wallets/addresses) of Web3 games reached 4.15 million in August, up 6.88% from July. This growth was mainly due to the activity on Ronin and opBNB.
Data source: Number of daily active users of blockchain games
The average daily transaction volume of blockchain games reached 8.86 million, a slight decrease of 0.46% from July. One notable trend is the surge in transactions on chains such as Aptos, mainly driven by Telegram games such as Tapos. Due to the game mechanics, each click generates a transaction, resulting in more than 50 million daily transactions on Aptos at its peak. At present, we have not included this data in the statistics because we intend to observe this trend over a longer time span.
Data source: Daily transaction count of blockchain games
The daily transaction volume of blockchain games reached 17.04 million, an increase of 8.94% from July, which excludes some abnormal data points from last month.
Data source: Daily transaction amount of blockchain games
Overall, although daily active users, transaction volume and transaction amount all achieved month-on-month growth in August, the decline in the market value of blockchain game tokens still highlights the challenges facing the overall crypto market, and both the price and market value of tokens are showing a downward trend.
Against the backdrop of market volatility, Soneium has become a hot topic. On August 23, Sony Blockchain Solutions Labs, jointly initiated by Sony Group and Startale Labs, announced the launch of Soneium, a new Layer 2 network based on Ethereum. The network will use Optimism's OP Stack technology, spanning the fields of gaming, entertainment and finance, combining Web3 innovation with consumer applications.
Soneium
In the week following the announcement, Soneium made rapid progress, including the launch of the "Minato" testnet, the launch of the "Soneium Spark" program for developers, and a partnership with Transak to provide global fiat currency deposit services. As industry giants like Sony continue to enter the blockchain field, more and more people are optimistic about introducing more users to the Web3 ecosystem.
Blockchain Game Public Chain
In August, a total of 1,492 games were active on various blockchain networks, down 5.45% from July. BNB Chain, Polygon, and Ethereum led the market with 20.2%, 17.4%, and 17.0% market share, respectively.
Data source: Percentage of active game projects on each public chain
Ronin, opBNB, Nebula (SKALE subnet), and NEAR performed well in terms of DAUs, averaging 1.34 million, 691,000, 349,000, and 321,000 respectively during the month. As of the end of August, these chains accounted for 28.0%, 23.8%, 8.8%, and 6.6% of the DAU market share, respectively.
Data source: Daily number of active game users on each public chain
Ronin's DAU market share continued to decline during August, from 38.1% on August 1 to 28.0% on August 31. Despite this, Ronin's average DAU in August was still nearly twice that of opBNB, which followed closely behind. This downward trend was mainly caused by the performance of the game Lumiterra, whose DAUs dropped from 600,000 at the beginning of the month to 150,000 at the end of the month.
Additionally, on August 6, the Ronin cross-chain bridge was suspended due to a white hat hacker attack that exposed a critical misconfiguration in the cross-chain bridge upgrade proposal. Approximately $12 million worth of cryptocurrency was transferred. Although the issue was quickly resolved and all funds were recovered, the incident had a certain impact on the activities of the Ronin ecosystem.
Conversely, opBNB’s DAU share rose from 17.5% to 23.8% in August. As of August 31, its market share nearly doubled from 13.1% on July 1. SERAPH: In The Darkness, a game launched on opBNB in mid-July, has gained significant traction, growing from 187,000 DAUs on August 1 to 515,000 by the end of the month.
Nebula’s market share also increased, from 7.6% to 8.8%. As a SKALE subnet that adopts the “zero gas fee” model, Nebula’s growth was driven by games such as Yomi Block Puzzle, moteDEX, and Haven’s Compass.
Overview of Blockchain Games
In August, the blockchain gaming ecosystem contained 3,401 games, of which 1,254 were active. Of these 1,254 active games, 290 games attracted more than 1,000 monthly active on-chain users (MAU), accounting for 8.5% of the total number of games and 23.1% of the number of active games.
Data source: Number of monthly active blockchain games
As mentioned above, the launch of the Telegram game Tapos on Aptos in August marked an important development. This strategy shows that in addition to the TON network, more and more blockchain platforms are actively seeking to attract traffic and users through Telegram games.
Additionally, Hamster Kombat, one of the most popular games on Telegram, announced plans to launch its HMSTR token on TON on September 26 and will airdrop for players. Although Hamster Kombat claims to have attracted 300 million players, it looks like only the token will be integrated on-chain. The core mechanics and user activity of its game are expected to remain off-chain, so the direct impact on blockchain metrics is expected to be limited.
Blockchain game investment and financing
In August, the blockchain gaming sector received a total of $61.5 million in investment, involving 17 rounds of financing activities, a 61% increase in financing amount compared to June. Among them, four financing activities did not disclose the specific financing amount.
Investment and financing events in the blockchain gaming sector in August 2024 (Source: crypto-fundraising.info)
It is worth noting that GAMEE appears twice in the above financing chart, which is not a statistical error. GAMEE, the mobile gaming platform behind WatBird and a subsidiary of Animoca Brands, successfully completed two rounds of financing in August. On August 16, GAMEE announced that it had received investment from TON Ventures, and on August 21, it announced that it had received investment from Pantera Capital. With more than 4 million users connecting their TON wallets to WatBird, GAMEE is focusing on attracting more gaming and Web3 communities, GameFi investors, and Telegram users through community-driven activities on its Telegram Mini App.
GAMES
Animoca Brands led or participated in 6 of August’s 17 funding rounds, demonstrating their unwavering commitment to advancing the Web3 gaming industry despite macroeconomic volatility.
The interest of industry giants in the Web3 gaming sector continues to grow. For example, double jump.tokyo announced that it has raised more than $10 million in its Series D funding round, led by SBI Investment and participated by Sony Group. The funds will be used to accelerate the development of blockchain games and infrastructure, including Oasys, a blockchain platform developed by double jump.tokyo.
In addition, two projects, SatsRush and UniWorlds, have also completed financing, aiming to build games based on the Bitcoin ecosystem.
The data for this report comes from Footprint Analytics' Games Research page, a real-time data dashboard that provides comprehensive and reliable statistics on Web3 games. If you find any chain or game that is not included and would like to include it in the dataset, please contact us.
You can also submit the contract by yourself through this link:
https://www.footprint.network/submit/contract
