Report: GameFi sector investments reach $1 billion in January

In January, investments in the infrastructure and blockchain games segment of GameFi totaled $1 billion. The figure represented a quarter of the investments for 2021, according to the report from DаppRadar.

“The Play-to-Earn and GameFi trends are changing the way we spend our gaming time by embedding an earning element. The sustained use of the leading gaming decentralised applications (dapps) significantly increases the category’s reach,” said experts at the service.

In the third quarter of 2021, blockchain games became the dominant category of dapps in terms of user activity. At that time the sector accounted for 45% of daily unique active wallets (UAW); now the figure has risen to 52%.

In January, the Polygon network’s GameFi title Crazy Defense Heroes became the second most-used application with 41,000 UAW per day. Bomb Crypto in the ecosystem BSC rose to the lead with 40,000 daily UAW.

In January, DeFi Kingdoms (DFK) transaction volume exceeded $1.8 billion, up 243% from Axie. $775 million of assets, or 60% of the total assets locked in the Harmony protocol, were attributed to the gaming dapp.

DFK accounted for 38% of the total transaction volume in the GameFi segment for the month, while the app averaged about 22,000 UAW per day.

The macro trends observed in the gaming dapps category, namely sustained demand and invested capital, indicate enormous potential for the traditional gaming industry with a $200 billion turnover and 2.4 billion active users worldwide,” say DаppRadar specialists.

Yet the path to mass adoption will not be easy, they added. As an example, the experts cited Ubisoft’s decision to launch the NFT platform Quartz, which met a negative user reaction.

DаppRadar noted that the investment figure for January includes a funding round of $300 million for the NFT marketplace OpenSea. While this is not direct investments in games, the market for digital collectible items is an important component of the blockchain gaming industry, experts said.

Earlier in January, the Hong Kong-based blockchain games developer Animoca Brands attracted nearly $359 million.