In March, Ethereum layer 2 scaling solution Polygon saw a spike in user activity, making the network the second-largest blockchain gaming network in terms of unique active wallets (UAW). According to the Blockchain Gaming Report released by decentralized application (DApp) analysis platform DappRadar, the number of UAWs participating in games on Polygon reached 138,081 in March, a 53% increase from February.
This number puts Polygon well ahead of third and fourth ranked Hive and BNB Chain with 84,000 and 80,000 UAW respectively, while number one Wax is far ahead with 314,000 UAW.
“Polygon, a blockchain formerly known for its DeFi DApps, overtook Hive this month for second place. This is a positive sign for Polygon as it is now gaining recognition as a gaming blockchain,” the report reads road. According to DappRadar, a large part of Polygon’s UAW growth can be attributed to BoomLand’s Hunters On-Chain game, which has seen UAW growth of more than 17,000% in the past 30 days alone. Launched in January, Hunters On-Chain is a Web3 adaptation of BoomLand's mobile game Hunt Royale. It's a free-to-play role-playing game that integrates non-fungible tokens (NFTs) with a Minecraft-like look and feel.
On March 9, the game hit an all-time high with around 55,300 UAWs. It’s unclear what specifically drove the surge in interest in the game last month, though anticipation of an in-game NFT sale on March 31 may have been a contributing factor.
Looking at it more broadly, the report states that all "on-chain gaming activity decreased by 3.33% in March to 741,567 daily unique active wallets (dUAW); 45.6% of DApp industry activity.” Over the past few months, Polygon has seen some bullish momentum, particularly related to NFTs, games, and the Metaverse.
So far, Polygon Labs, the team behind the network, has entered into partnerships with a number of high-profile partners, including Warner Music, Starbucks, Adidas, Reddit, and Adobe, to develop and host NFT projects. The team also successfully launched Polygon’s open-source Ethereum Virtual Machine equivalent zero-knowledge rollup on March 27. It is touted as allowing DApps to scale through transaction batching, unlocking higher performance while lowering the gas costs of transacting on the network.
