Polygon has become the second-largest gaming blockchain network after experiencing a surge in user activity on its Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution in March thanks to the Hunters On-Chain game by BoomLand drove the growth in UAWs, increasing by more than 17,000% over the past 30 days.
In March of this year, Polygon experienced a surge in user activity on its Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution, resulting in the network becoming the second-largest blockchain gaming network in terms of unique active wallets (UAWs). The number of UAWs engaging with games on Polygon reached an impressive 138,081, marking a substantial increase of 53% from the previous month.
Polygon overtook Hive to become the second-largest gaming blockchain network, behind Wax which holds the top position with 314,000 UAWs as a result of the remarkable surge. This is a significant development for Polygon, as it is gaining recognition as a blockchain network that supports gaming, in addition to its previously known support for DeFi DApps. The “Blockchain Games Report” by DappRadar notes that this is a positive sign for Polygon.
Interestingly, the Hunters On-Chain game by BoomLand played a vital role in driving the growth in unique active wallets. The game has seen a UAW increase of more than 17,000% over the past 30 days alone, contributing significantly to the overall increase in user activity on Polygon.
Hunters On-Chain, which is a Web3 adaptation of BoomLand’s mobile game Hunt Royale, is a free-to-play role-playing game with non-fungible token (NFT) integrations and a similar look and style to Minecraft. The game saw an all-time high UAW count of around 55,300 on March 9, and anticipation for an in-game NFT sale on March 31 may have contributed to the surge in interest in the game.
Looking more broadly, the report noted that on-chain gaming activity decreased by 3.33% in March to 741,567 daily Unique Active Wallets (dUAW). However, games still make up 45.6% of the DApp industry activity in Q1 2023. Overall, there has been a growing bullish momentum around Polygon, particularly regarding NFTs, gaming, and the metaverse. Polygon Labs, the team behind the network, has secured significant partnerships with big-name brands such as Warner Music, Starbucks, Adidas, Reddit, and Adobe, to develop and host NFT projects.
Additionally, the team launched Polygon’s open-source Ethereum Virtual Machine equivalent zero-knowledge rollup on March 27, which is expected to enable DApps to scale through transaction batching, unlocking higher performance while reducing gas fees to conduct transactions on the network.