According to game statistics site Activeplayer, the average monthly number of users playing monster-battle nonfungible tokens (NFT) game Axie Infinity has fallen to 701,447, representing levels not seen since January 2021. At its peak, monthly Axie Infinity players hit 2.78 million in January of this year before the advent of the crypto winter. The popular play-to-earn NFT game lost 1.2 million players alone in June. Bear market aside, game mechanics also partly contributed to the decrease in player count. At around the same time last year, players in developing nations reported higher earnings from playing Axie Infinity than some countries' …

The $200 billion gaming industry is rapidly becoming a key point of interaction between Web2 and Web3. In recent times a growing number of gaming companies have integrated digital wallet support and nonfungible token (NFT)-based reward systems and even launched their own metaverses. The growing prominence of GameFi in the Web3 economy makes the likes of Animoca Brands believe that it would become an onboarding point for the Metaverse. During the Future Blockchain Summit, Animoca Brands co-founderYat Siu said that their focus is on the gaming industry as they are closer to a metaverse than any other industry. He noted …

A blockchain gaming ecosystem says play-and-earn represents "the next wave of disruption" in this $250 billion industry. Catheon Gaming says the cutting-edge technology that immutable ledgers provide tackles many of the shortcomings that exist in traditional games. In-game assets are completely owned by players, monetizable, and transferable. Rather than focusing on releasing a single game, this project wants to cultivate a vibrant ecosystem that'll endure beyond the life cycle of any one title. Catheon says it currently boasts a large and growing portfolio of 25 games — and this will be further enriched with the development of its very own …

Yuga Labs has announced a new Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) community council to help the project “grow and thrive.” The team revealed seven council members in an Oct. 5 blog post, noting that they are all OGs who have been around since the early days of the BAYC. Yuga Labs said it assembled a new community council made up of “Apes with a proven track record of proactively and positively contributing to the club since the start.” The members include, @beijingdou, @SeraStargirl, @TheMiamiApe, @OxEthanDG, @OxWave, @negithenagi, @peterjfang. “This council was formed with the intention of representing the club at …

Horizon Blockchain Games, the developer behind the Skyweaver game, has raised $40 million in Series A funding, the company disclosed on Oct. 4. The round was led by Brevan Howard Digital and Morgan Creek Digital, with additional participation from Polygon, Take-Two Interactive, Ubisoft, Xsolla, The Sandbox’s co-founder Sebastien Borget, Sky Mavis and Axie Infinity co-founder Aleks Larsen, among other investors. With the funds, Horizon plans to invest in Web3 products and scale its operations. Specifically, the company wants to grow its developer stack and smart wallet Sequence, expand the content and reach of the nonfungible token (NFT) turn-based card game …

A blockchain project that's building an ecosystem for the future of NFTs, gaming and the Metaverse has unveiled an exciting new partnership. Funganomics has signed a marketing partnership agreement with Polygon Studios — and plan to work together closely in the coming years. It's being described as a perfect fit. While Polygon has over 39,000 projects in its ecosystem, Funganomics boasts a wide array of exciting technologies. Work is currently taking place on a new Layer 2 solution for Funganomics that's set to deliver scalability, sustainability and reduced infrastructure costs. At the beating heart of this crypto project is Fungatopia, …

The metaverse is a futuristic iteration of the internet, featuring a digital economy and an immersive virtual environment alongside other interactive features. This relatively nascent space has gained so much traction in recent years that conservative estimates suggest that by 2024, its total valuation could top $800 billion. Meta (the parent body behind Facebook and Instagram), Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, Nike and others have made Fortune-100-sized metaverse splashes. But with great valuations comes great scrutiny from increasingly tech-savvy financial regulators. Unlike traditional tech products, which often spend years putting growth over revenue, some metaverse projects push questionable monetization schemes on their …

User activity on blockchain gaming decentralized applications (DApps) surged in September, with a host of games posting significant increases in the number of active users. According to data from DappRadar, seven out of the top 10 games in terms of the number of “unique wallet addresses interacting with dapp’s smart contracts” increased over the past 30 days, with all of the top five games being in the green during that time frame. At the time of writing, the DApps registering growth in the period include Web3 gaming platform Gameta, and blockchain-based games Alien Worlds, Solitaire Blitz, Benji Bananas, and Splinterlands, …

Kieran Warwick, co-founder of the blockchain role-playing game Illuvium has lifted the curtain on a gaming concept he says has never been done before — the interoperable blockchain game (IBG). Speaking to Cointelegraph during Token2049 in Singapore, Warwick said Illuvium has three games currently being built which will be underpinned by the same economy, governed by a single token (ILV), and connected by the blockchain — making it an interoperable experience. “We're building something that has never been done before not in the mainstream and not in Web3.” IBG, a term coined by Illuvium, is a series of blockchain games …

The main cast from the cult-classic film Napoleon Dynamite are reuniting for an animated series which will be released through blockchain technology. According to a Sept. 27 report from Hollywood news outlet Deadline, the stars from Napoleon Dynamite have all signed on to voice characters in CyKo KO, an animated rendition of Rob Feldman’s comic book bearing the same name, with a 12-minute pilot to launch on Web3 streaming service Rewarded.TV. Napoleon Dynamite is an indie-comedy from 2004 that developed a cult following across the globe despite being shot in just 22 days and having a limited budget of $400,000. …

Kevin Shao, Executive President of the Asia Blockchain Gaming Alliance (ABGA) says he’s holding out hope for three “triple-A” blockchain gaming titles that could help propel GameFi into the mainstream and rescue it from the bear market. Speaking to Cointelegraph during Asia Crypto Week, the Executive President said one obstacle preventing mainstream adoption is current GameFi titles often have a focus on non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and play-to-earn (P2E) features without caring about “game performance,” and users' enjoyment. In a P2E model, gamers typically buy an NFT in order to play the game and can win gaming tokens which can then …

Animoca Brands co-founder Yat Siu thinks that GameFi has the biggest opportunity for growth in Asia, as gamers there don’t hold the same vitriol towards nonfungible tokens (NFTs) as they do in the West. Sitting down with Cointelegraph during Asia Crypto Week, Siu argued that Asia generally has more of a welcoming culture towards gaming and advancements in tech such as NFTs, digital property and Play-to-Earn (P2E). “I think that Asia has the potential to really lead in blockchain gaming, at least in the short term. And there's a couple of reasons why I think that's the case. Not just …