Polygon becomes second largest gaming blockchain after user activity surges in March

Surging user activity on Ethereum layer-2 (L2) Polygon in March saw the network become the second-largest blockchain gaming network in terms of unique active wallets (UAWs).

According to an April 6 Blockchain Games report published by decentralized application (DApp) analytics platform DappRadar, the number of UAWs engaging with games on Polygon hit 138,081 in March, marking an increase of 53% compared to February.

That figure places Polygon well ahead of third and fourth-ranked Hive and the BNB Chain at 84,000 and 80,000 UAWs a piece, while first placed WAX is well ahead of everyone at 314,000 UAWs.

“Polygon, a blockchain previously known for DeFi DApps, overtook Hive this month and secured the second spot. This is a positive sign for Polygon, as it is now gaining recognition as a gaming blockchain,” the report reads.

A significant amount of the UAW increase on Polygon was down to the Hunters On-Chain game by BoomLand, which has seen a UAW increase of more than 17,000% over the past 30 days alone, according to DappRadar data. 

Launched in January, Hunters On-Chain is a Web3 adaptation of BoomLand’s mobile game Hunt Royale. It is a free-to-play RPG with NFT integrations and has a similar look and style to Minecraft.

On March 9 in particular, the game saw an all-time high UAW count of around 55,300.

It is unclear what specifically drove the surge in interest for the game last month, although anticipation for an in-game NFT sale on March 31 may have been a contributing factor.

Looking more broadly, the report noted that all “on-chain gaming activity decreased by 3.33% in March to 741,567 daily Unique Active Wallets (dUAW); still, games make up 45.6% of the DApp industry activity in Q1 2023.”

Related: Aragon and Polygon Labs collaborate to boost DAO accessibility

There has been some bullish momentum developing around Polygon over the past few months, particularly relating to NFTs, gaming and the Metaverse. 

So far Polygon Labs, the team behind the network, has notched a long list of big-name partnerships such as 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 to allow DApps to scale through transaction batching, unlocking higher performance while also reducing gas fees to conduct transactions on the network.