[Disclosure]: The information contained in this article is for reference only and does not constitute investment advice, and Chain Capital assumes no responsibility for the information or the results resulting from the use of the information.

1. Global Gaming Market Overview

In 2021, the number of players in the world will reach 3 billion, and the global game market revenue will be 175.8 billion US dollars, a year-on-year decrease of 1.1%. Changes in the PC and mainframe markets were the main reasons for the decline, with annual revenue falling by 2.8% and 8.9% year-on-year, respectively. The future game market will be further reshaped due to post-epidemic effects. Although the global overall game market revenue has declined slightly, from the perspective of the growth in the number of global gamers (as shown in the figure below), the number of gamers has steadily increased since 2015. According to conservative forecasts: by 2024, the number of global players will be maintain a steady growth rate.

1.1 Player distribution

Although the game consumption of players from Europe and the United States accounts for 40% of the total game market revenue, most of the players in the global game market are located in the Asia-Pacific region (as shown in the figure below), accounting for about 55% of the total number of global players. Maintaining a relatively high year-on-year growth rate (4.8%) from the base of 2019, which also creates our emphasis on the field of games and blockchain games in the Asia-Pacific region.

2. An overview of the development of the GameFi

2.1 Number of the GameFi

As of April 2022, among the top 10,000 blockchain projects in terms of market value, 1,457 blockchain game projects have been accounted for. If Gambling (gambling) is also classified as games, the proportion of projects in the game field will reach 30%. become the largest field.

From May 2021 to May 2022, the overall number of chain games will increase from 757 to 1,479, an increase of 95.4%. This growth rate will slow down in the first quarter of 2022, and new chain games will be launched in the first quarter. 224 models. The following figure shows the statistics of the number of chain games in each chain: the Ethereum chain is still the public chain with the most chain games, with the number reaching 500, but the growth rate has slowed down significantly, and only 16 chain games will be added in the first quarter of 2022. The number of games on the BNB chain has grown the fastest, increasing from 332 to 448 games in the first quarter of 2022. In addition, Polygon and WAX also have a good increase in the number of chain games.

2.2 GameFi Market Value and Project Investment and Financing

The total financing volume of chain games in 2021 is 4 billion US dollars, and in the first quarter of 2022 alone, VCs and investors have invested 2.53 billion in blockchain games and related infrastructure projects. According to the current situation, the investment amount of Chain Games and Metaverse projects will reach 10 billion US dollars in 2022. It can be seen that the chain game field has received the favor and attention of funds.

According to further statistics, from January 2021 to April 2022, among the top 30 sub-categories of blockchain, the number of game projects that received financing was 305, reflecting that venture capital institutions are actively deploying blockchain games. field.

2.3 Centralized exchange listings

According to the data provided by DeGame, among the seven centralized exchanges tracked, a total of 157 projects were listed in the first quarter of 2022, of which 28 were GameFi projects, accounting for 17.8% of the total.

2.4 On-Chain Data Analysis

From January to October 2021, the proportion of active wallets in chain games to the number of active wallets on the chain has achieved rapid growth and a major breakthrough. The growth momentum of the proportion of active wallets in chain games will continue after reaching a peak in October 2021. As of By the first quarter of 2022, more than half of the total number of active wallets on the chain will be active wallets for chain games (about 55%).

2.5 Total number of players, transaction frequency, and transaction volume analysis of blockchain games

It can be seen that starting from 2021, the number of players in the chain game, the number of transactions on the chain, and the transaction volume will begin to surge. The number of chain game players has grown from 80,000 in early April 2021 to 1.33 million in October of that year. As of November 2021, a total of 1,049 game types have been deployed on the entire network. As of April 2022, there are 1,457 game projects among the top 10,000 blockchain projects by market value. On October 1, 2021, the number of game users reached 1.23 million, and the daily transaction volume reached 543 million US dollars, setting a new high for the day’s transaction volume. The total market value of Chain Games also exceeded 100 billion US dollars in just one year.

3. The Current Situation of Segmented GameFi

According to DeGame statistics, as of the first quarter of 2022, the GameFi market performance is as follows:

• Transaction Volume: $6.322B, of which Harmony accounts for 48.58%, Ronin accounts for 26.85%, and BNB accounts for 14.25%
• Total number of players: maintained at 1.2M, no significant increase or loss
• Newly added games: 242 models, the largest number of chain games on the ETH chain, but the overall ETH chain game share in the GameFi market is not ideal
• Player distribution: The top three public chains are: WAX (28.28%), Hive (28.55%). BSC (13.4%)
• Transaction volume distribution: The three public chains with the largest transaction volume are WAX (77.7%), HIVE (11.99%), and BSC (2.01%).

  The following figure shows the public chain distribution of chain game turnover:

The following figure shows the distribution of the chain game volume:

• Wax has a significant advantage in trading volume, mainly contributed by Alien World (47.55%), Farmers World (44.97%)
• The transaction volume on Hive is dominated by the Splinterlands family, accounting for 99.55% of the transaction volume
• The volume on Ronin is entirely contributed by Axie Infinity
• BSC (BNB) has more games at the top of the chain, and the distribution of transaction volume is more even: Bomb Crypto (29.2%), NFT Farmer (10.38%), The Crypto You (8.42%), Second Life (8.22%), X World Games (6.9%)
• Although half of the players on the Polygon chain are concentrated on Crazy Defense Heroes, the transaction volume distribution is relatively even: SunFlower Farmers (27.83%), Crazy Defense Heroes (23.6%), Pegaxy (22.34%), Arc8 by GAMEE (18.48%)
• The Avalanche chain is dominated by the Crabada family, with the number of players accounting for 70.81% and the transaction volume accounting for 98.29%
• The proportion of each game in the ETH chain is even and equally divided. The distribution of transaction volume is: Mirandus (35.9%), Decentraland (5.86%), Farm Land by Pixels (5.47%)

4. The Future Outlook of the Gamefi Market

Although the era of “Chain Game 1.0” has faded, we were pleasantly surprised to find that the number of players and the number of transactions on the chain still maintained an upward trend. With the continuous innovation of blockchain technology, and the unique “open source, composability” development environment brought by blockchain technology to the field of game manufacturing. We have reason to believe that a new era of chain games is about to begin, and more and more game giants will flood into the market to bring 3A-quality games to players, so that chain games will gradually evolve from the traditional “Play to Earn” mode to “” A better solution to Play for Fun + Play to Earn”.

In addition, from the data point of view, the growth and stability of chain game players and the rising trend of chain game transaction volume reflect the enthusiasm and prosperity of the chain game market, from the surge of chain game projects and the enthusiasm of exchanges and capital for chain games. The attention reflects that there is still a lot of room for growth and innovation in chain games in the future.

In this regard, we decided to conduct research on the regionalized game market and the development of chain games in the region, and devote ourselves to exploring the regionalization characteristics of games/chain games and the future development space.