Splinterlands and Alien Worlds attract over 1M users in the last 7 days
Two of the top play-to-earn blockchain games surpassed half a million active wallets respectively this week. Hive blockchain-based card game Splinterlands has been reaching for the stars ever since introducing its SPS token, while mining game Alien Worlds and its TLM token have been a hot topic for most of 2021. Both offer players the opportunity to play and earn, while the increasing number of active users further reiterates a surge in interest in gamified investment opportunities.
What’s interesting is that the collectible card game Splinterlands has been around for years. Originally running on Steem, it transitioned to Hive after Tron founder Justin Sun got involved in Steem. Splinterlands has increased the number of active wallets interacting with its platform by 12% week over week, taking that total to almost 584,000.
The game already had DEC token rewards for players that win games, while players earn SPS from daily airdrops by holding Splinterlands NFTs. In addition, there are occasional competitive tournaments where both the entry fee and prize money are paid in SPS. The SPS token is also available to purchase from exchanges. The impact of SPS is clear, as old players got free airdrops, new players rushed in, and speculators bought the token on exchanges as the price started to rise. In a similar way to how SLP kickstarted Axie and the AXS governance token boosted it to new heights.
Alien Worlds on the other hand launched at the start of 2021 on Wax and started picking up traction around April. The two games are quite different. Splinterlands has a complete, playable card game ecosystem, with accompanying tokenomics powered by SPS and DEC tokens. While Alien Worlds is just getting started by allowing players to mine TLM by simply pressing a few buttons. These players can also purchase equipment and mining tools as NFTs to help them mine more TLM. Something that proved massively popular, aided by easy onboarding through social logins to the Wax blockchain. Alien Worlds quickly steamed to the top of the DappRadar charts leaving previous top games in their dust.
Moreover, the Alien Worlds roadmap looks very promising and a recent reskin and further updates to the site let players know that the development team is still active and attempting to deliver on their plan to build a complete gaming ecosystem powered by TLM.
One thing to note in both instances is the high number of transactions for both games. Splinterlands with over 22 million and Alien Worlds with over 91 million. The reason you will see such high figures is that in-game actions in blockchain games require a wallet signature or a transaction. This doesn’t necessarily mean money is changing hands, just that an in-game action was performed by a player.
Lessons learned
While Splinterlands arguably put in years of development to get where they are, simply adding a tradable, governance token to the equation. As Alien Worlds did from the start, has taken Splinterlands to the next level. Moreover, it shows the natural evolution of blockchain games to their current state. Play-to-earn is the buzzword and players expect to earn from their playing time now. Older games such as Splinterlands already have an ecosystem, the players, and the acumen to drive their game forward. It appears they just needed the impetus of healthy competition to wake them up.
The above does not constitute investment advice. The information given here is purely for informational purposes only. Please exercise due diligence and do your research. The writer holds positions in ETH, BTC, NIOX, AGIX, MATIC, MANA, SAFEMOON, SDAO, CAKE, HEX, LINK, GRT, CRO, OMI, GO, SHIBA INU, AND OCEAN.