August NFT Data Summary: Are Web3 Games Full of Bots?

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The NFT community was in a debating mood last month. To grant royalties or not to grant them? Commercial license rights or creative commons?

But when it comes to the numbers, the bear market continues. Monthly NFT market volumes are down again, according to The Block’s data dashboard.

Meanwhile, in gaming, an anti-bot company has claimed that Web3 gaming is full of them – and some of the numbers put even Elon Musk’s wildest Twitter estimates to shame. If accurate, the numbers could be a blow to blockchain gaming, which has seen a resurgence in investment interest this year.

Over $100 million worth of NFTs were stolen last year

Over $100 million worth of NFTs were stolen between July 2021 and July 2022, including a total of 167 Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs worth over $43.6 million. That’s according to a new report from blockchain analytics firm Elliptic released this month. After Bored Apes, the most focused collections were Mutant Ape Yacht Club and Azuki.

The report also looked at money laundering using NFTs and found that, despite fears, it is not that common. Over $8 million in illicit funds have been laundered through NFT platforms since 2017, representing 0.02% of business activity from known sources.

The OpenSea debate over the 99% drop in trading

An article from August 29 in Fortune described OpenSea transactions as “down 99%”, noting that the previous Sunday the market had only seen $9.34 million in NFT transactions, down from a record high of $2.7 billion on May 1 .

However, OpenSea chief financial officer Brian Roberts hit back at the claims on Twitter, accusing Fortune of “cherry picking” a single day in May that was six times the average between March and June. The spike was probably caused by the April 30 Other deed sale.

The spike used by the article is likely attributable to the sale of Otherdeed on April 30. But that said, trading volume for NFT markets is nonetheless down, albeit less than the seismic decline from May to June. OpenSea’s monthly volume increased from $528.64 million in July to $485.32 million in August.

In the top ten markets, volume increased from $675.43 million to $592.34 million.

The rise of marketplaces without royalties?

Decentralized NFT marketplace Sudoswap sparked controversy in mid-August with its automated market maker (AMM) that lets people buy and sell automatically without having to wait for interested buyers or sellers. The gripe people have though is that it bypasses the royalties that go to the creators.

But according to this Dune Sudoswap DashboardSince Sudoswap launched its AMM in July, it has seen a huge increase in volume.

Several royalty-free marketplaces have also popped up over the past few months, including Solanart and Yawww. X2Y2 also recently announced that buyers will be able to choose the amount of royalties they want to give to projects.

The result is an ongoing debate about the enforcement and enforcement of royalties in the NFT space.

GameFi token market caps have shrunk

The market capitalization of the top 50 GameFi tokens fell by more than 60% from January to August 2022, according to The search for blocks. This is similar to the drop in market capitalization of the top 50 DeFi tokens.

As of August 2022, it has also registered a total of 1,575 GameFi projects – 40% of them are based on BNB Chain. Just over a quarter are based on Ethereum and 15% on Polygon. But even they fare much better than game-specific blockchains. Companies like Immutable X, Gala Games, WAX, Enjin and Wemix only have between 1% and 6% market share.

But gamers can only play about a third of all GameFi projects at the moment. According to The Block Research, “this is in line with the expectation of a long game development cycle of 3-5 years since most GameFi projects only receive funding between 2021 and 2022.”

Alien Worlds is the most played game

Alien Worlds is currently the most popular blockchain-based game by active addresses. Axie Infinity, Solitaire Blitz, Splinterlands and Upland round out the top five.

…But are they bots?

Anti-bot protection software company Jigger released an interesting stat last week. He claims that 40% of “players” in Web3 games are bots. The search looked at more than 60 Web3 games and found evidence of about 200,000 bots across them all.

Half of PC and console gamers are interested in the metaverse

2022 from Google PC and Console Information Report revealed that 47% of PC and console gamers are interested in interacting with the metaverse in the future. Respondents were also more interested in virtual reality and augmented reality than NFT-based games.