On Wednesday, market tracker DappRadar and blockchain Gaming Alliance (BGA) released their blockchain gaming report for the first quarter of 2022. The latest figures show total investment in the first quarter at $2.5 billion, after a previous report noted $720 million in February for blockchain games and infrastructure. Venture capitalists and other investors raised $4 billion in 2021.
The biggest deals listed in the report included Animoca Brands raising $360 million, valuing it at $5 billion and making it the leading Web3 brand. Polygon (MATIC) raised $450 million in funding led by Sequoia Capital, And Yuga Labs, the studio behind Bored Ape Yacht Club's (BAYC) non-homogeneous token (NFT), has received a $450 million investment led by Animoca Brands, With The Sandbox, FTX, and Coinbase, it launched its P2E (Play while You Earn) gaming meta-universe, Otherside.
Blockchain games attracted 1.22 million unique active wallets (UAW) in March, according to DappRadar, with more than half of the industry activity coming from gaming decentralized apps (DApps) or gaming apps with rewards for playing. Splinterlands was named the Number one play-while-earning DApp. Polygon is a tier 2 (L2) side chain with top P2E games like Crazy Defense Heroes, Pegaxy, Arc8, and Aavegotchi.
Cointelegraph caught up with Sebastian Borget, co-founder of The Sandbox Metasomes and president of The Blockchain Gaming Alliance, to ask him why he thinks that compared to other ecosystems like Wax, Harmony, and BNB Chain, Polygon benefits most from the P2E mechanism and NFT. He cites several main reasons: Polygon is still compatible with Ethereum virtual machines, and the Polygon Foundation strongly supports them in terms of marketing and funding. Another reason is that guilds can easily migrate their users to Polygon while using MetaMask as their primary wallet.
Borget also noted that Polygon is the first NFT layer 2 blockchain on OpenSea, which brings additional liquidity to NFT. He predicts that the emergence of NFT and blockchain-based games on ImmutableX (IMX), Tezos (XTZ), Solana (SOL) or BNB Binan Smart Chain (BSC) "will definitely change the distribution in the second half of 2022."
"NFT creates an economy for game developers to create games that players can own; The holder community is both an early supporter of the game and a major player in its development and a real stakeholder in its success."
The report also found that the meta-universe is "one of the most exciting opportunities in the blockchain industry." While transactions in virtual worlds declined slightly from q4 2021, they reached over $430 million in Q1 2022. Platforms like The Sandbox, which has completed its second season of Alpha beta, are attracting players and brands like Warner Bros., Ubisoft and HSBC. Meanwhile, lifestyle Metauniverse Decentralized held a fashion week in March to further connect the brand with consumers.
DappRadar highlights an important point when it comes to the metasurverse: "Ownership granted by NFT, along with the underlying financial ecosystem supported by cryptocurrencies and play and earn games, will change the traditional metasurverse paradigm limited to virtual reality and augmented reality."
Also, while Axie Infinity(AXS) is one of the top 10 games in daily usage, the report noted a decline in its UAW following the $650 million hack of Axie Infinity's Ronin Bridge in mid-February.