DeFi Kingdoms, Axie Infinity Lead GameFi Declines in May

*An art concept from the upcoming Ethereum-based RPG “Illuvium”*

The number of active daily cryptocurrency gamers declined just 5 percent in May compared to the previous month, according to new data, despite bitcoin’s price plummeting by more than 20 percent over the same period.

A total of 1.15 million unique wallets engaged in daily interactions with play-to-earn games for the month, according to the data published in a Monday DappRadar/BGA Games report. Splinterlands beat its counterparts both in overall ranking — with 350,000 average daily players — and in user retention, showing a decline of just 4 percent for the month. The game, developed and launched by Matthew Rosen and Dr. Jesse Reich in early 2021, is a rarity in the industry for offering an app compatible with iOS and Android devices.

Alien Worlds ranked as the second most popular game for the month, with 182,000 average daily users, followed by Farmers World (133,000) and Upland (47,000). Farmers World managed to defy the industry trend by increasing its share of users, posting a gain of 18 percent compared to April, while Upland increased its share by a respectable 4 percent.

The project that experienced the most growth was Sunflower Land, which bills itself as a “play-to-own crypto farming game” on the Polygon (MATIC) Network. Sunflower Land saw a whopping 129 percent increase in players, allowing it to clock in at seventh place for overall size, with 17,000 average daily users.

On the other end of the spectrum, DeFi Kingdoms (DFK) was among May’s biggest DeFi losers, posting an active player decline of 41 percent compared to April. It was exceeded only by Polygon’s Crazy Defense Heroes, which experienced a 61 percent loss. “To be fair, the steep decrease in on-chain activity of these games is directly tied to the crash of their respective tokens – JEWEL and TOWER,” DappRadar noted. “JEWEL has lost 99 percent since April while TOWER is 92 percent down in the same timeframe.”

On-chain data showed DFK retained roughly 10,000 daily active users during the third week of June, while Crazy Defense Heroes retained about 7,000. Player activity on Axie Infinity — one of the oldest games on the list — fell by 39 percent compared to April, but was still up 55 percent year-over-year. That project retained around 30,000 daily active users as of mid-June.

The upcoming game “Illuvium,” meanwhile, generated one of the industry’s largest financial events for the month with a sale (or “minting”) of its digital land (or NFTs). The project reported selling 19,969 plots through a Dutch auction process that yielded 40,417 Ethereum — for a per-plot price of $564, calculated according to Ethereum’s price on Tuesday, and a sum total of $74 million. (For perspective, JEWEL and TOWER held a combined market capitalization of $28 million as of Tuesday.)

Illuvium’s developers said they would redistribute 4,018 Ethereum raised in the sale to users who held the game’s native ILV token, an increasingly common practice among projects hoping to escape future penalties related to unregistered initial coin (and NFT) offerings. Illuvium is several months behind schedule, but is set to launch on the Ethereum blockchain later this year.

Market capitalization for play-to-earn projects stood at a cumulative $6.3 billion as of Tuesday, according to a tracker maintained by CoinGecko, 75 percent less than the start of January, when they were valued at $27 billion.