About the Editor: Spencer Noon is an independent angel investor. Looking to get in touch? DM him on Telegram or reply to this email and say hi 👋
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EXCLUSIVE ONCHAIN COVERAGE:
Gaming 🕹
① GameFi Sector Overview 👾
👥 Cody Garrison | Dashboard
📈 1.3M active Web3 gaming wallets in November, a 19% MoM increase
The web3 gaming sector has been one of the most highly funded and anticipated sectors of the crypto industry. It’s expected that many game developers who have been heads down building during the bear go to market for the first time in 2024. November saw an 19% MoM increase in active gaming wallets, moving from 1.1M on November 1 to 1.3M on November 30.
When it comes to L1 dominance in the gaming sector, BNB Chain (964), Ethereum (781), and Polygon (479) sit as the top three most active chains for games to be built on. However, the most popular web3 game by DAU according to the onchain data from Footprint, is Sweat Economy, which is built on NEAR Protocol. It boast 142,700+ daily active users.
Demonstrating the continued growth of the web3 gaming sector, the aggregate market capitalization of GameFi reached 10% of BTC's total value for the first time in December.
② Immutable 🏛️
👥 Nigel | Website | Dashboard
📈 Over 220 games building on the Immutable ecosystem
Immutable is an L2 ecosystem for ETH focused on gaming. It was built from the ground-up to be an end-to-end solution for games. As a result, it is the common choice for games with 46% of the market choosing with Immutable. Recent partnerships with Polygon and Merit Circle/Beam exemplify this choice.
Games have switched to the Immutable en-masse. At 56 migrations during the year, the Immutable and Polygon partnership is the leading choice for games after they've initially tried to build on other chains.
As an example of one of the games building on Immutable and within the Immutable Studio portfolio, Guild of Guardians had its recent "Friends & Family" demo which notched 1.12 years of playtime from 555 invited players.
💦🔬 Tx-Level Alpha: This is a $0.01 transaction. Cheap transactions like this enable games and mainstream users who don't understand "gas" nor have the appetite to pay for it in a casual day-to-day context.
③ Sandbox 🌎
👥 Maus | Website | Dashboard
📈 Sandbox Land crosses $110M in Volume, floor picks up 50%
Sandbox Land plots are running on both ETH and Polygon. With the floor up 50% at $600 - both floor prices usually differ in the range of 10% with a constantly changing lead. This trend translates into volume. Shares with Polygon tend to take a lead in volume in times of uptrends in floor price. Last week’s volume of $150k makes up only ~1% of the peak which came in early 2022 at $12.5M.
Since launch, Sandbox Land and Assets accumulated a combined $150M in volume. Land made up 2/3 of volume. While volume has been in a downtrend since launch, it has picked up in the last weeks but is still far away from the peak reached in early 2022. That week’s $12.7M volume still represents 8% of the all-time figure.
All top 10 transactions of Sandbox Land were done on Ethereum in 2022. The biggest transaction at $81k, or 28ETH, is nearly double of the 10th biggest. Currently 90% of all wallets holding Sandbox Land are underwater with only 10% at break even or higher.
💦🔬 Tx-Level Alpha: While most price and volume parameters for Sandbox are in a downtrend, some wallets are accumulating Sandbox Land. This transaction, for instance, was done via a wallet that accumulated 26 land plots over the last weeks. The transaction also took a spot in the top 10 transactions by volume in the last month.
④ Star Atlas ⭐
👥 Cody Garrison | Website | Dashboard
📈 Star Atlas accounts for >8% of Solana's daily transaction volume
Star Atlas is a virtual gaming metaverse built on the Solana blockchain with over 6,000 daily active users. It currently accounts for ~8% of Solana's daily transaction volume, having peaked at 13% in November 2023.
SAGE Labs is an early access browser-based open-world game with real-time gameplay and an active in-game economy simulation. Resource extraction from asteroids is a major component of SAGE. These asteroids can be mined for resources (R9). R9 transaction volume over the last week has averaged 150k+ daily ATLAS volume, with Carbon being the most traded resource.
In-game trading volume has seen a surge since mid November, peaking on December 3. The surge generated $63K USDC and $15k ATLAS in marketplace fees in November. Volume in December, at $34k USDC and $8.3k ATLAS in fees through the 15th, is on pace to surpass the previous month. Trading of ships is the primary volume driver in the game.
⑤ Base Games 🔵
Dual Arena
👥 Peter | Website | Dashboard
📈 Duel Arena sees more than 3,055 ETH ($6.9M) worth of in-game wagers
Cambria is a ⚔️ Duel Arena where players can challenge anyone to a high-stakes 1v1 duel to the death with different mechanics. Players can wager any amount of Base ETH on their Duels with other players, winner-takes-all. Last month Cambria saw over 25k battles, 2.3k players, and $6.9M staked in duels. The game is expected to re-open on 20th December with massive upgrades to gameplay.
Across the over 25k battles, 38% of the wallets maintained a 40%+ win rate. The next biggest cohort was 21% of the wallets that had a 50%+ win rate and followed by 18% of the wallets with a 30%+ win rate.
💦🔬 Tx-Level Alpha: USD45,800 - this transaction on Cambria records the biggest battle so far. Each player wagered 10 ETH each, with 0x86f7292f055739552d7874c2327257379c50365e (64% win rate) emerging as the winner against 0x7ca79f63dcb45c157e3db73e639adbc136710303 (46% win rate). The winner took home 20 ETH.
Fren Pet
👥 Peter | Website | Dashboard
📈 Fren Pet sees 6.1K+ players
Fren Pet is an indie game on Base where pets can be groomed onchain. To date, there have been 585K+ in-game actions. 67% of the wallets growing pets to attack other pets, while the others (1235 wallets) chose to pamper their pets with items only. 272 wallets have engaged in a luxury shopping spree, buying up items that are priced out of the rest.
The in-game actions show the players' motivation for their pets. 33% of the items purchased were spent by owners on beer for pets to drink. Meanwhile, 27% of the items purchased were tea cups where owners tried to extend their pets' lives. Lastly, 22% of items purchased showed players to be poop-whisperers, showing unparalleled dedication to their pet's cleanliness.
⑥ Crypto Unicorns 🦄
👥 Peter | Website | Dashboard
📈 Crypto Unicorns: $1.6M in marketplace volume, 2.6M + in-game events over the past 30 days
Crypto Unicorns is a new blockchain-based game centered around NFTs which players can use in a farming simulation and in a variety of mini games like jousting, unicorn party and rainbow rumble. In total, the game saw $48.5M in secondary sales volume with $1.2M royalties gained from 72.7k sales. As of Dec. 13, there are 2.3k monthly active players which is a 13% increase from last month. Daily in-game actions have been hovering around 90k.
Beyond onchain sale activity, Crypto Unicorn also hosts an in-game marketplace (Rainbow Marketplace) that has seen $11.3M sales volume made from six different types of items. There have been 7.2M sales total. Sale peaks can also be observed during the "Asian" weekends with 65% increase in sales compared to weekdays.
Crypto Unicorns was built with the premise that DAO could be involved in their game development. To date, there have been 35 proposals with an average turnout of 410 voters. Implemented proposals include grant distribution, changes to gameplay mechanics, and bounty rewards.
💦🔬 Tx-Level Alpha: $8,645 USD: The Crypto Unicorns community are scratching their heads why this in-game item (Shadowcorn) has been the most expensive sale since July 2023. It was previously thought that unicorns and lands would bring the most value, but that has not the been case.
Quick Links: Disclosures
