According to the “Blockchain Games Report” by DappRadar, Polygon, a layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum, has become the second-largest blockchain gaming network, with 138,081 unique active wallets (UAWs) engaging in games in March. This represents a 53% increase from February, placing Polygon ahead of Hive and BNB Chain, with 84,000 and 80,000 UAWs, respectively. However, Wax remains the leader with 314,000 UAWs.
Polygon, formerly known for DeFi DApps, has now established itself as a gaming blockchain, thanks to Hunters On-Chain, a game by BoomLand that has seen a UAW increase of over 17,000% in the past 30 days alone. Hunters On-Chain is a Web3 adaptation of BoomLand’s mobile game Hunt Royale. It is a free-to-play role-playing game with nonfungible token (NFT) integrations and a similar look and style to Minecraft. On March 9, the game saw an all-time high UAW count of around 55,300. While it is unclear what specifically drove the surge in interest for the game last month, anticipation for an in-game NFT sale on March 31 may have contributed to it.
In March, all on-chain gaming activity decreased by 3.33% to 741,567 daily Unique Active Wallets (dUAW). Nonetheless, games still make up 45.6% of the DApp industry activity in Q1 2023.
Polygon has gained bullish momentum in recent months, particularly with regard to NFTs, gaming, and the metaverse. Polygon Labs, the team behind the network, has secured several big-name partnerships, including Warner Music, Starbucks, Adidas, Reddit, and Adobe, to develop and host NFT projects. On March 27, the team successfully launched Polygon’s open-source Ethereum Virtual Machine equivalent zero-knowledge rollup, which allows DApps to scale through transaction batching, unlocking higher performance while reducing gas fees to conduct transactions on the network.
