Axie Infinity Champions the In-game NFT Hype

Axie Infinity has become the most traded NFT collection in the last quarter! The Pokémon-inspired play-to-earn game overthrew NBA Top Shot and CryptoPunks to amass over $2.5 billion in trading volume in Q3 2021. Of this, $2.08 billion was generated in Q3 alone. Furthermore, the game raked in $800 million in revenue during the same period.

The findings are from DappRadar’s latest BGA Blockchain Game Report. The report details the trends in the fast-evolving NFT industry. 

Axie Infinity and the rise of in-game NFTs

The DappRadar report identified in-game NFTs as one of the biggest means of revenue generation, as has been evident with Axie Infinity. These digital assets generated $2.32 billion in sales in the last quarter. To put things in perspective, in-game NFTs represented over a fifth (22%) of the total NFT trading volume in Q3. And almost all of this (19%) came from Axie Infinity.

“The third quarter of 2021 proved that blockchain games, boosted by the play-to-earn (P2E) movement are here to stay,” the report said. “Axie Infinity has transcended its game status, taking the P2E movement beyond the blockchain.”

In the last couple of months, Axie Infinity shot to fame as one of the biggest play-to-earn games. Early this month, it launched the much-awaited AXS Staking feature. With this, users can now stake their AXS to earn rewards. AXS staking feature’s launch even pushed the game’s user activity up by 92%. Just a week after launch, users staked a total of 16.6 Million AXS or about $2 billion.

Meanwhile, blockchain collectible card game, Splinterlands topped the charts to become one of the most played games in the space. It registered more than 245,000 daily UAW (Unique Active Wallets) in September – a 3,267% increase from the end of Q2.