August Blockchain Game Report: Coexistence of User Growth and Cryptocurrency Market Volatility
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August Blockchain Game Report: Coexistence of User Growth and Cryptocurrency Market Volatility
In August, both user growth and transaction volume in the Web3 gaming sector increased.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsBy Stella L
August presented significant challenges for the cryptocurrency market, with both Bitcoin and Ethereum experiencing substantial declines. Bitcoin dropped by 9.3%, while Ethereum saw an even steeper decline of 21.4%, reflecting market volatility driven by broader economic factors. Despite the downturn in token valuations, activity within the Web3 gaming sector demonstrated resilience. Daily active users (DAUs) increased by 6.88%, and transaction volume rose by 8.94%, largely propelled by platforms such as Ronin and opBNB. However, the blockchain gaming industry was not entirely insulated from the wider market downturn, as game token market capitalization declined by 13.2%.
Despite turbulent market conditions, continued innovation in Web3 remains a focal point, especially with major players like Sony making strides in the blockchain space.
Macro Market Review
In August, both Bitcoin and Ethereum experienced notable declines. Bitcoin began the month at $65,290 and closed at $59,246, marking a 9.3% drop. Ethereum’s decline was more pronounced, falling from $3,220 to $2,531—a steep 21.4% decrease.
Source: Bitcoin and Ethereum price trends
The Bank of Japan unexpectedly announced an interest rate hike at the end of July, triggering ripple effects across markets. Returns on strategies such as short-term volatility and foreign exchange carry trades declined significantly, leading to a sharp fall in crypto asset values during the first week of August. Both Bitcoin and Ethereum hit their monthly lows on August 7.
Sustained selling pressure persisted throughout the month, exacerbated by various government actions and lingering issues related to Mt. Gox, although the impact of these factors gradually diminished.
Meanwhile, Ethereum is undergoing significant transformation, creating uncertainty among some investors. The blockchain aims to scale by shifting more transactions to Layer 2 networks. This year has seen a substantial increase in activity on Ethereum's Layer 2 networks, with major players like Sony launching projects such as Soneium within this ecosystem. However, the migration of activity to Layer 2 has led to a reduction in Ethereum’s fee revenue, which could negatively impact Ether’s value.
Toward month-end, market attention increasingly turned to the relationship between blockchain technology and digital privacy following the arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov in France. Although Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell clearly "hinted" at potential rate cuts late in the month, overall market sentiment remained negative throughout August.
Blockchain Gaming Market Overview
In August, the market capitalization of blockchain gaming tokens fell from $1.82 billion to $1.53 billion, a 13.2% decline. For comparison, Bitcoin’s market cap dropped by 8.6%. Like other segments of the crypto market, the blockchain gaming industry endured a difficult month.
Source: Blockchain gaming token market cap and Bitcoin market cap
Despite the market downturn, daily active users (DAUs, measured by unique wallets/addresses) in Web3 gaming reached 4.15 million in August, up 6.88% from July. This growth was primarily driven by heightened activity on Ronin and opBNB.
Source: Daily active users in blockchain gaming
Average daily transaction count in blockchain gaming reached 8.86 million, a slight 0.46% decrease from July. A notable trend was the surge in transaction volume on chains like Aptos, driven mainly by Telegram-based games such as Tapos. Due to their game mechanics—where each click generates a transaction—daily transaction counts on Aptos exceeded 50 million at peak times. Currently, we have not included this data in our analysis, as we intend to observe this trend over a longer time horizon.
Source: Daily transaction count in blockchain gaming
Daily transaction volume in blockchain gaming reached 17.04 million, an 8.94% increase from July, with outliers from the previous month excluded from this figure.
Source: Daily transaction value in blockchain gaming
Overall, despite month-on-month increases in daily active users, transaction count, and transaction value in August, the decline in blockchain gaming token market cap underscores the broader challenges facing the crypto market, with both token prices and valuations trending downward.
Against this backdrop of market volatility, Soneium emerged as a major talking point. On August 23, Sony Blockchain Solutions Labs—a joint initiative by Sony Group and Startale Labs—announced the launch of Soneium, a new Ethereum-based Layer 2 network. Built using Optimism’s OP Stack technology, Soneium aims to bridge Web3 innovation with consumer applications across gaming, entertainment, and finance.
Soneium
In the week following the announcement, Soneium moved quickly, launching its "Minato" testnet, initiating the "Soneium Spark" developer program, and partnering with Transak to offer global fiat on-ramps. With industry giants like Sony continuing to enter the blockchain space, optimism is growing about the potential to onboard more users into the Web3 ecosystem.
Blockchain Gaming Public Chains
In August, 1,492 games were active across various blockchain networks, a 5.45% decrease from July. BNB Chain, Polygon, and Ethereum led the market with shares of 20.2%, 17.4%, and 17.0%, respectively.
Source: Distribution of active game projects across public chains
Ronin, opBNB, Nebula (a SKALE subnet), and NEAR stood out in terms of DAUs, averaging 1.34 million, 691,000, 349,000, and 321,000 users per month, respectively. By the end of August, these chains held DAU market shares of 28.0%, 23.8%, 8.8%, and 6.6%.
Source: Daily active game users across public chains
Ronin’s DAU share steadily declined throughout August, dropping from 38.1% on August 1 to 28.0% on August 31. Nevertheless, Ronin’s average DAU in August was still nearly double that of opBNB, the next closest chain. This decline was largely attributed to the performance of the game Lumiterra, whose DAUs fell from 600,000 at the start of the month to 150,000 by month-end.
Additionally, on August 6, the Ronin cross-chain bridge was temporarily paused due to a white-hat hack that exposed a critical misconfiguration in a bridge upgrade proposal. Approximately $12 million worth of cryptocurrency was transferred. Although the issue was swiftly resolved and all funds recovered, the incident had a noticeable impact on Ronin’s ecosystem activity.
In contrast, opBNB’s DAU share rose from 17.5% to 23.8% in August. By August 31, its market share had nearly doubled compared to 13.1% on July 1. SERAPH: In The Darkness, a game launched on opBNB in mid-July, gained significant traction, with DAUs increasing from 187,000 on August 1 to 515,000 by month-end.
Nebula also saw its market share grow from 7.6% to 8.8%. As a SKALE subnet operating under a “zero gas fee” model, Nebula’s growth was driven by games such as Yomi Block Puzzle, moteDEX, and Haven’s Compass.
Blockchain Gaming Landscape
In August, the blockchain gaming ecosystem consisted of 3,401 games, of which 1,254 were active. Among these active games, 290 attracted over 1,000 monthly active on-chain users (MAUs), representing 8.5% of total games and 23.1% of active games.
Source: Number of monthly active blockchain games
As noted earlier, the launch of the Telegram game Tapos on Aptos in August marked a significant development. This move indicates that, beyond the TON network, an increasing number of blockchain platforms are actively seeking to attract traffic and users through Telegram-integrated games.
Moreover, one of the most popular games on Telegram, Hamster Kombat, announced plans to launch its HMSTR token on TON on September 26, including an airdrop for players. While Hamster Kombat claims to have attracted 300 million players, it appears only the token will be integrated on-chain. Its core gameplay mechanics and user activities are expected to remain off-chain, suggesting limited direct impact on blockchain metrics.
Blockchain Gaming Funding and Investment
In August, the blockchain gaming sector raised a total of $61.5 million across 17 funding rounds—an increase of 61% compared to June. Four of these funding events did not disclose specific amounts.
Blockchain gaming investment events in August 2024 (Source: crypto-fundraising.info)
Notably, GAMEE appears twice in the above funding chart—not due to a statistical error. GAMEE, the mobile gaming platform behind WatBird and a subsidiary of Animoca Brands, successfully completed two separate funding rounds in August. On August 16, GAMEE announced investment from TON Ventures, followed by another round led by Pantera Capital on August 21. With over 4 million users connecting their TON wallets to WatBird, GAMEE is focusing on attracting further engagement from gaming and Web3 communities, GameFi investors, and Telegram users through community-driven activities on its Telegram Mini App.
GAMEE
Animoca Brands played a leading or participating role in 6 of the 17 funding events in August, demonstrating its continued commitment to advancing the Web3 gaming industry despite macroeconomic headwinds.
Interest from industry giants in the Web3 gaming space continues to grow. For example, double jump.tokyo announced it raised over $10 million in its Series D round, led by SBI Investment and joined by Sony Group. The funds will accelerate the development of blockchain gaming and infrastructure, including Oasys—the blockchain platform developed by double jump.tokyo.
Additionally, projects SatsRush and UniWorlds secured funding aimed at building games based on the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Data for this report comes from Footprint Analytics’ Games Research page, a real-time dashboard offering comprehensive and reliable Web3 gaming statistics. If you find any chains or games missing and would like them included in the dataset, please contact us.
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