The CryptoKitties game came to Ethereum in 2017, literally hammering the network to a complete halt. Gamers rushed for the experience in a new type of blockchain game, and the money flowed in after them. The most expensive collectible cat ever sold in a game was valued at $117,000, which says a lot about the prospects for decentralized gaming.
Since then, many blockchain-based games have emerged with varying degrees of difficulty and varying levels of popularity. In the first quarter of 2021, the world of blockchain-based games saw a wave of NFTs selling for sometimes astronomical sums of money, leading to a shift from “Play to Earn” games to “Pay to Earn” collectible games.
Recent statistics from statista.com show a significant increase in the value of the global gaming market over the past decade. The market is projected to grow to $200 billion in 2023. The total capitalization of the NFT market reached more than $22 billion in 2021, up from $338 million beginning in late 2020. Much of this sector is concentrated in the gaming industry, which has enormous potential to provide gamers with unique opportunities to collect gaming items. The best example is the eSports market, which was already valued at more than $495 million in 2020 and is expected to surpass the $646 million mark in 2021. This is largely due to the introduction of new technologies that make games more exciting for gamers and fans.
Blockchain game developers are getting staggering funding. As an example, Battle Pets, a Binance Smart Chain-based game with adorable pets, features pets in NFT. Players can collect them, raise them, or have battles between pets with other players. Another example is Forte, a large decentralized ecosystem that recently raised $185 million (at an estimate of $1 billion) for its blockchain-based gaming platform. Griffin Gaming Partners was the main investor in one of the last unicorn blockchain games on the market. Also of note is Bit-Country, which raised more than $4 million in a day for its community-driven digital meta-universe.
Notably, decentralized betting and gaming transactions have accounted for more than 80% of all traffic on the Ethereum network over the past two years. These numbers speak to the level of interest that players and developers are showing in the decentralized infrastructure for a variety of reasons.Keeping up with the path-breaking Ethereum is Binance Smart Chain, which also offers many exciting crypto-gaming projects such as Battle Pets.