Blockchain Gaming Powers Up as Daily Active Wallets Crosses Above One Million

According to DappRadar’s latest report, blockchain-based games recorded massive growth in October, crossing above one million daily active wallets on several dates. In September, crypto games collectively garnered over one million active wallets on three days. Last month, these games recorded more than one million active wallets on four days. This month, the blockchain games have seen over one million active wallets on six days.

Although the figures are impressive, DappRadar released its report at a time when most of the biggest crypto games are struggling to eliminate the rising number of automated bots.

This is not the first that games have witnessed over one million daily active wallets. In 2021, games like Axie Infinity, Splinterlands, and Alien Worlds helped the blockchain gaming space record more than 1.2 million daily active wallets. Similar figures were seen in April this year.

The Bot Problem

But as mentioned, crypto gaming faces the issue of bots, making it difficult to know how many gamers are humans. There have been several cases of malicious actors deploying bots in crypto games in an effort to automate and increase their rewards without even playing the games themselves.

Several top blockchain gaming firms have reported the presence of bots in their games over the last few years. In 2021, Axie Infinity took to X to inform its followers that it had banned 86 bots while warning that whoever planned to do so would also be banned.

In October 2023, Alien Worlds revealed that over 1.5 million user accounts in its game were bots. It is suspected that these bot accounts are likely to have contributed to last month’s inflated totals.

Games With the Most Daily Active Wallets

Per DappRadar’s report, games like Battle Left Center Right, Splinterlands, SecondLive, Sweat Economy, and Alien Worlds recorded the highest figures of daily active wallets in October. While the 132,500 daily active wallets registered last month by Alien Worlds could be bots, the founder of Sweat Economy, Ole Fomenko, whose move-to-earn game recorded 72,900 daily active wallets in October, has said that he doubts there are many bots in his game.

Fomenko argues that he and his team have spent more than eight years working to ensure that moves made only by humans are rewarded with SWEAT, the Sweat Economy’s native token that is used to incentivise people to stay fit. However, Fomenko admits that there might be a few bots in the game, which his team is constantly working to detect and get rid of.

Since October 30, popular farming game Pixels has seen a growth in its users. For the better part of last month, Pixels registered less than a hundred daily active wallets, but when the game was migrated to Ronin, an Ethereum sidechain that hosts Axie Infinity, at the end of last month, it started averaging 6,000 in daily active wallets, until November 6, when the figure dropped to 50,000, per DappRadar’s data.

However, On Wednesday, Axie Infinity founder Jeffrey Zirlin shared a chat on X showing that Pixel’s daily active users had crossed above 100,000. When asked by an X user why his number differed from that of DappRadar, Zirlin said the blockchain analytics company might have underrepresented the number of actual gamers.

Pixels Players Claim Bots are Inflating Game’s User Accounts

Nonetheless, some Pixels players are convinced that Pixels’ numbers have been inflated by bots. X User @Pleun_V reported on Thursday that a lot of bot movement had been detected this week.

Pixels founder Luke Barwikowski also told his X followers last Thursday that they had detected several bot accounts and removed them. He said his team was already working to devise countermeasures to block the bots from accessing Pixels.

Last year, a Gaming analyst at Naavik, Karak Gaikward, wrote a long blog post arguing that the active wallet numbers were prone to bots; thus, they should not be used to determine genuine user activity. Instead, he said transaction volume was a better metric.