26 amazing stats on the GameFi industry starting in 2022

GameFi saw a lot of activity last year.

Axie Infinity, The Sandbox and The Sandbox were the most talked about projects. However, there were many other projects that went unnoticed by the public.

BNB, Ethereum Foundation and BNB were the most influential organizations within the blockchain industry. But the BNB ecosystem and Ethereum ecosystems did not attract the best or most active games.

GameFi received more investment by VCs than any other category within the blockchain industry, despite the fact that many popular titles fell into the death spiral and hundreds of them failed to attract even a small amount of players.

It’s a lot to wrap one’s head around. How can we better understand 2022 so that we are ready for next year?

Instead of telling you what to think, we’ve put together the most exciting stats related to the GameFi industry, so you can look into projects, chains and funds and draw conclusions from the data.

A Note about GameFi Metrics & Indicators

To assess blockchain games, we use a few metrics and statistics, including the number and volume of active users, total users and transactions.

These metrics are not unified, so a game or a chain that performs well in one indicator may not be able to do so in the other. For example, Axie Infinity had most users over the past year, Splinterlands had most active users and STEPN had most total users. DeFi Kingdoms had most transactions.

No one indicator shows a blockchain game is “winning” or leading the pack—each gives insight into a particular aspect that, together with other indicators, can help analysts build a holistic picture.

These articles will teach you how to use data analysis for better GameFi assessments, and investment decisions.

7 Statistics about the GameFi Industry

1. On April 1, GameFi tokens’ total market cap reached $25 billion.

This was $11B shy of the industry’s ATH of $36B in November 2021. Footprint Analytics calculates the market capital of tokens used for governance tokens and in game currencies for GameFi projects. This metric is tracked by Footprint Analytics.

Reference: GameFi Token MarketCap （Token only, excluding gaming NFT）

2. 717 new blockchain-based games were created by developers in 2022

About the same amount were launched in 2021. There are 2,171 GameFi Protocols with blockchain transactions (only a few are active).

Reference: Number of GameFi Protocols Per Chain

3. Only 14.5% of GameFi titles had more than 1000 users

A large majority of games don’t succeed. Even among the games that did gain significant player numbers, few of them were able sustain healthy, regular activity for more than a few months.

Reference: GameFi Dashboard

4. GameFi volume reached its 2022 peak on the week of January 2 – 8, with $916.5M flowing through protocols

Footprint Analytics defines volume to be the money that enters a protocol.

Reference: GameFi Volume By Week

5.GameFi transactions reached their peak the week of July 17 – 23, with 184.5K transactions

This shows that an increase in volume does not always correlate with more activity. However, transactions can also be characterized by a bearish sentiment (i.e. outflows and selling).

Reference: GameFi Transactions per Week 

6. From April to May, the largest monthly volume drop was in GameFi volume. This month, GameFi volume fell by 62%

What was the next step? Terra Luna, which was worth an estimated $60B, collapsed in the first quarter of May. However, transactions increased by 13.5% MoM. This is in line with Stat #7.

Reference: GameFi Volume by Month 

7. Volume increased 28% from July to August, the largest MoM increase.

In Footprint’s August GameFi report, we proposed 3 possible explanations: anticipation for The Merge, the beginning of less aggressive monetary tightening by the Federal Reserve, and a dead cat bouncing on the way to lower lows.

Reference: GameFi Volume by Month

7 Stats on Blockchain Games

1. There were 62 GameFi active projects as of December 25th, and 1,478 inactive.

Reference: Active/Inactive Games

2. STEPN saw 1.8M users, more than any other video game.

STEPN was the pioneer of Move-to-Earn last spring. Players can earn tokens as they run, jog, or walk in the mobile game.

Reference: GameFi Dashboard

3. Splinterlands was followed by Alien Worlds at the top of the leaderboard for active users. Each remained there for 6 months.

Splinterlands saw the greatest number of active users in February, March and April. They also had the highest numbers in May and September. Alien Worlds had highest active users in June July August October November and December.

Reference: Top 10 Games – Ranking of Players 

4. Farmers World was solidly third in terms active users. It had the third-highest total active users across all twelve months of the year.

Farmers World, a farming NFT title, is second on the WAX chain behind Alien Worlds. Players can develop farmland or trade NFTs in-game in the marketplace.

Reference: Top 10 Games – Ranking of Players 

5. With 112.6k users, Cryptokitties was the most popular game on Ethereum.

Although Ethereum is the largest crypto ecosystem by market capital, it was not a major player within the GameFi industry by 2022. This is due to its congestion and gas charges.

Reference: GameFi Dashboard

6. The largest cash injection in any month was made by the Sandbox, which gained approximately $504M volume in February

The Sandbox announced at the end of January a partnership between Snoop Dogg’s and Warner Music. Following the announcement, 40% of token prices went up.

Refer to: Top Volume Games for 2022

7. MOBOX retained 56% of its players one month after it was launched. This is out of all the major titles.

“Major title” is somewhat subjective in this stat, but it refers to games consistently in the top-10 throughout the year for a number of users.

Reference: Top Weekly Retention GameFi Programs in 2022

7 Statistics about GameFi Chains

1. GameFi’s most active channel was Wax, which had 351K active users. The Daily Active User Ratio was 57%.

Hive was next active, with 360K users and a DAU ratio 98%. Splinterlands accounts to 99% of the transactions and users on Hive.

Reference: GameFi Users Chain Comparison

With 40.47%, 2.Wax possessed the largest market share for gamers followed by Hive (20.86%).

Wax is more varied than Hive. Alien Worlds accounts for about 66.99% of Wax’s users, and Farmers World accounts for 19.67%. Rest of the data is scattered among a dozen titles.

Reference: Tree Map: GameFi Users:

3.In 2021, 63 blockchain-based games were deployed on 2/3 chains. In 2022, 149 chose to go multichain.

GameFi projects are becoming more multi-chain in order to increase their user base and reduce risk. Some games even launch their own chains like DeFi Kingdoms. This game went from being entirely on Harmony and created its AVAX-based DFK Chain.

Reference: Multichain has a large number of GameFi Protocols

4. BNB had 748 projects by the end, and was the most popular GameFi protocol chain.

BNB is well-known for its low gas costs and easy launching protocols. This allows BNB to offer products of different quality along the chain.

Reference: GameFi Protocols by Chain

5. 87 new GameFi protocols were launched in January, more than in any other month, and most of these—57—were launched on BNB

This number is still less than the number launched in November and December 2021. In January, the market was already experiencing a downturn.

Reference: 2022: Chains according to the number of projects

6. BNB Chain was the most active project manager at 226 by the end the year

Polygon is an L2 EVM-chain that has seen strong technical performance over the past year and steady growth. Benji Bananas is the game with the highest number of users.

Reference: Monthly Active Games by Chain

7. Solana had 20 GameFi protocols by the end of the year, compared to just 2 at the start.

Solana is the preferred chain for Move to Earn projects, in particular. The 2 largest GameFi protocols on the chain are STEPN and Walken—the two largest M2E projects.

Reference: Monthly Active Games by Chain

5 Stats about GameFi Investment & Fundraising

1. Epic Games, which received $2B from Kirkbi and Sony, secured the largest round of funding to help build its metaverse.

Epic Games is the studio behind Fortnite, and there is speculation that it will soon create a Lego-themed metaverse.

Reference: GameFi Project Financing Amount and Financing Time in 2022

2. Animoca Brands raised $434M over two rounds of fundraising and distributed funding in 61 rounds. This makes it one of the most significant recipients of funding. GameFi is the largest investor

The Sandbox was created by Animoca Brands. It has become a major player in the GameFi sector with its investments in Axie infinity, OpenSea as well as CryptoKitties. Phantom Galaxies is just one of its major projects.

Reference: Investors: GameFi Projects

3. GameFi 2022 closed four Series B rounds, and two Series C round in 2022.

This is expected in a new industry such as GameFi.

Reference: GameFi Investment List 2022

4. Gaming projects received 16% more blockchain industry investment than any other type.

With 7.79% of total funding, metaverse projects, often in overlap with GameFi, came in second.

Reference: Funding-Number for Investment by Category (2022).

5. From 2021 to 2022, gaming investment increased 84%

Even though the GameFi category did better than other categories like DeFi or CeFi, 2022 was a difficult year for the whole blockchain space.

Reference: GameFi Investment Trend

Footprint Analytics community, Dec. 2022 contributed this article

Data source: Footprint Analytics – Stats about the GameFi industry in 2022

The Footprint Community is where crypto and data enthusiasts from all over the world can come together to share their knowledge and insights on Web3, DeFi, GameFi and other areas of the emerging blockchain technology. Here you’ll find active, diverse voices supporting each other and driving the community forward.