Blockchain games have been at the forefront of crypto activity in the past several months. With this weekly article, DappRadar looks at the hottest gaming dapps. To compile this ranking, we’ve taken into account on-chain activity, NFT trading volumes, token valuations, and news and events surrounding each dapp.
If you’re curious to learn more about each of the games on the list, explore their Single Dapp Pages by clicking on each image. Stay tuned and follow this series of articles to find out new, top-performing games each week.
Top 10 blockchain games of the week
Axie Infinity is undoubtedly a pioneer in blockchain gaming, especially in the rise of play-to-earn as a movement within the sector. Considering its status as a groundbreaking, revolutionary dapp, Axie Infinity recorded the third-best performance in terms of unique wallets connected to its platform among games featured in this list.
However, the game tops this week’s chart because of the impressively high NFT trading volume of more than $132 million. Coupled with a slight appreciation of the game’s native AXS token, Axie solidifies its place as a top performer in the blockchain gaming sector.
Hype for the metaverse has never been stronger, and The Sandbox is among the lucky dapps basking in newfound attention from the crypto community. With more than $68 million in trading volume generated from NFT sales, The Sandbox rightfully takes second place in this week’s ranking. Despite a drop in the valuation of the platform’s native token SAND, the game has managed to attract a humungous trading volume through its land parcels.
Importantly, a contributing factor in this ranking is the fact that there is now official gameplay on The Sandbox. While previously the dapp only allowed users to purchase land NFTs, there is now gameplay involved, and a play-to-earn element incorporated in it. This is a significant development for the platform.
WorldWideWeb3 might seem like a surprising entry to this list, and at such high ranking, however the virtual world just held its first land sale. The event brought a lot of attention and activity to the platform, boosting its overall performance this week.
WebbLand NFTs have generated almost $17 million in trading volume since launch. This is a remarkable result, yet not at all surprising considering the hunger for virtual land the blockchain space has seen in recent weeks.
Mobox: NFT Farmer is one of the best-recognized games on BINANCE Smart Chain. Still, its impressive performance over the last week has landed the dapp a notable fourth place in this week’s ranking. The NFT farming game attracted more than 105.000 unique active wallets this week. The announcement of the MoMoVerse also gave the platform a boost.
An additional reason for the heightened activity on the platform was in part due to an extensive raffle event which saw $1,000,000 worth of NFT Mystery Boxes distributed to players. Additionally, the MBOX native token saw quite the price hike, boosting its valuation by more than 28% in the past seven days.
Chainmonsters is the rising star in terms of blockchain gaming on Flow. The MMORPG is still a very closed system, with only a limited number of players able to try their skills in the alpha version so far. However, this week Chainmonsters officially announced the game’s closed beta version, which will launch on Monday, December 6th.
While the gameplay will still only be available to a limited number of players, this is a major step forward in the overall Chainmonsters roadmap. The team behind the game has been developing and improving the gaming experience throughout the whole alpha phase. Consequently, they are now letting in more people to try the gameplay, while the open beta will take place early 2022.
Additionally, the new beta version introduces a much-improved battle mode where players will be able to explore further character stats like Stamina.
Splinterlands has been battling with Alien Worlds for the top spot in terms of unique active wallets for months now. While SPLINTERLANDS is the most visited dapp in this list, there are other factors at play. This revamped ranking system places the game towards the bottom half of the top ten. Unfortunately, Splinterlands’ native token SPS has seen quite a decline in valuation in the past week, dropping by almost 20%.
Even so, exciting times are underway for Splinterlands. The game is soon going to launch its Chaos Legion public card pack sale. This launch is bound to boost activity on the platform. Additionally, players will again have the option to purchase card packs with SPS, which might have a positive impact on the price of the native token as well.
Another virtual world makes this week’s top ten. NFT Worlds is a platform allowing players to create their own, endless virtual reality, all thanks to its Minecraft integration. NFT Worlds is one of the most innovative virtual environments out there, creating a bridge between traditional and blockchain gaming.
Importantly, in the past week, Crypto Twitter has been buzzing a lot about NFT Worlds, following a very important announcement from the team. On December 1st, the official NFT Worlds Discord woke up to a token distribution proposal. This effectively confirmed that the development team behind the NFT Worlds platform is actively working on a native token bearing the ticker WRLD. Keep in mind, the token is not live yet!
Farsite is an upcoming space exploration game that will eventually launch on Ethereum 2.0, however, right now everything happens on Polygon. The dapp has not registered an impressive user base in the past week. However, FARSITE launched a massive new NFT collection.
Several different classes of NFT crates were put on sale on December 2nd. Buying these crates created lots of hype on social media channels, and the most expensive crates sold out immediately. These crates contain spaceships, blueprints, modules and other important elements. Players can also destroy their spaceship and get Credits in return, which they can then use to acquire a Sector of virtual land on a far-away planet. This NFT sale is literally the beginning of an economy that will be all about space domination, trading, political intrigue and perhaps even warfare.
REVV Racing is a Polygon native racing game that has had the attention of racing car fans for months. Unfortunately, this week the game ranks at the unenviable ninth place because its native token REVV saw its value drop by more than 26%.
Despite the somewhat negative performance, REVV Racing has had quite an exciting the week. Most importantly, the game is introducing a whole new set of play-to-earn mechanics. The game introduced two new tokens: Catalysts (CATA) and Shards (SHRD). In addition players can now also stake their cars for passive income paid in SHRD. Find out more about these new game mechanics here.
Last but not least we have Alien Worlds. The Wax-based behemoth recently introduced a Binance Smart Chain side of the game as well. While Alien Worlds attracted the second-highest number of unique active wallets, other performance stats were not so favorable.
The game’s native token TLM lost more than 20% of its value in the past seven days. Additionally, there has been a bit of radio silence on Alien Worlds’ social media channels. This week there have not been any significant updates or future plans announcements. Still, Alien Worlds is one of the pioneers of blockchain gaming. Its position at the tail end of the list can easily change next week.
Watch for the trends
This week’s top 10 blockchain games list features some well-known names, as well as some surprising entries. However, most importantly, it confirms several trends. Firstly, play-to-earn is here to stay. More crypto enthusiasts are finding the gaming mechanic a suitable way to make passive income.
Secondly, the metaverse is just getting started. Virtual land has never been so expensive, and interest in virtual worlds is continuing to rise. Facebook’s rebranding to Meta and the entrance of several other big mainstream brands into the metaverse had a big effect. Consequently, games like The Sandbox and NFT Worlds are seeing an influx of users.
To explore even more exciting blockchain games, check out the complete DappRadar Games Rankings. DappRadar will continue monitoring the gaming sector. To learn the latest news, follow us on Twitter and join our Discord community. Stay tuned for next week’s top ten!
