Binance has already entered the blockchain gaming market. Is the spring of blockchain gaming far away?

Around the New Year, Binance launched multiple GameFi projects in succession, seemingly intending to make 2024 the year of blockchain gaming. Looking back at the past year, OKX made a lot of money by laying out inscriptions early on. Will the same drama happen again this year?

On February 29, Binance launched the Web3 gaming platform Portal. Looking back, Binance has launched multiple blockchain gaming projects in the past three months, such as Pixels, Ronin, Sleepless AI, Xai, Fusionist, and Heroes of Mavia's project coin contracts. It is obvious that Binance's attention is focused on the long-dormant GameFi track.

Since the rapid fall of Axie Infinity, the king of blockchain games, in November 2021, the blockchain game sector has not regained its former prosperity. Now two years have passed, and Binance also intends to help blockchain games ascend to the iron throne of the cryptocurrency circle again. It's just that GameFi has added more narratives and the games are more novel. Which new force has the most potential to become the new king under the logic of speculating on the new and not the old? The shuttle bus of the blockchain game sector is being refueled. Is now the best time to buy a ticket?

The overall situation of blockchain gaming

2023 is the year when the crypto market turns from bearish to bullish. Affected by the warming trend of Bitcoin, many track sectors have ushered in a small spring. However, some tracks are still in a dormant period ready to go, including blockchain games. However, recent online data from multiple chains show that the overall blockchain game track has a trend of rising and improving.

According to My Meta Data, a blockchain gaming platform, the number of active users in the blockchain gaming sector has been rising since May 2023, from about 700,000 to 2.2 million, an increase of 214%. The number of games has increased from 2,300 to 2,800, an increase of about 21.73%.

Similarly, we can see a similar trend on another on-chain data platform, Footprint Analytics, but it is worth noting that the number of active users of blockchain games has exceeded the previous high in November 2021. This indirectly shows that users currently have a very high degree of recognition of blockchain games, and if the blockchain game track can explode again in the future, it will inevitably attract more users to influx, and eventually form a virtuous circle.

The most effective indicator of the recovery of the blockchain game industry is its overall market value (MC). As can be seen from the above figure, GameFi MC is almost synchronized with BTC MC, and even surpassed it at its peak. Currently, the price of BTC has reached $64,000, just one step away from its historical high. With the entry of traditional institutional investors, it is only a matter of time before the price of BTC continues to rise in the future. If the phenomenon in the above figure can continue, the market share of the GameFi industry will also rise synchronously.

In terms of financing, it can be seen from RootData data that the number and amount of financing in the gaming track have rebounded in the second half of 2023. And the total amount of financing ranks second only to the DeFi track.

Comparison of New Blockchain Game Projects

On February 29, Binance launched the Web3 gaming platform Portal, which once again drew the attention of the crypto market to blockchain gaming projects. Previously, Binance launched multiple blockchain gaming projects in the past three months. What important information do these blockchain gaming projects that were launched in a short period of time have? Who is the leader among these projects?

Let’s first take a brief look at these new blockchain game projects. Portal is a Web3 game platform, Ronin is an Ethereum sidechain built by Sky Mavis, the developer of Axie Infinity, Pixels is a social casual web3 game supported by Ronin Network, Sleepless AI is an AI-based virtual companion game, Xai is the first L3 project in the Arbitrum ecosystem, Fusionist is a 3A-level Web3 blockchain turn-based strategy game, and Heroes of Mavia is an MMO (massively multiplayer online) strategy mobile game developed by Skrice Studios.

From the above introduction, it can be seen that four of the newly launched blockchain game projects are game works, and the others are game platforms and infrastructure.

Golden Finance sorted out the key data of these seven blockchain game projects. By comparing them, we can see:

In terms of project financing amounts, it can be clearly seen that the financing amounts are Pixels, Fusionist and Heroes of Mavia, among which Heroes of Mavia has the largest total financing amount of 8 million US dollars, but the spot has not yet been listed on Binance. Other projects have not disclosed financing information, or only the financing information of their development teams, such as Sky Mavis.

In terms of market value, Ronin currently has the highest market value, but it is a long-established project compared to other projects and has experienced several waves of price surges. The market values ​​of several new blockchain game projects are close, with little difference.

In addition, from the data of circulation volume and FDV, it can be seen that the circulation volume of blockchain game projects is below 30%, and most of them are around 15%. At the same time, including Ronin, the fully diluted valuation (FDV) of each project is more than 3 times its market value (MC), and the largest is nearly 8 times. In other words, new blockchain game projects generally have considerable unlocking pressure, and even if the coin price rises in the future, there will be a risk of falling due to selling.

As for the coin price, as of the time of writing, the highest price is Fusionist, the lowest is Pixels, and the newly launched Portal coin performs poorly, with a price of only 2.52.

Binance’s timely decision: Seeking stability and profitability

Since mid-December last year, most of the new projects on Binance have been blockchain games, and the platform seems to be interested in directing the liquidity of the crypto market to the GameFi track. Some time ago, the media circulated news about Binance Web3 wallet and entry inscription track, but judging from the platform's current actions, blockchain games are obviously more attractive.

So for one of the world's top exchanges, what are the reasons that prompted it to "get involved" in blockchain gaming?

First of all, from the overall situation of the blockchain game track mentioned above, we can see that the number of active users and blockchain game projects in this sector has obviously passed the ice age and has a stabilizing trend. In addition, GameFi's MC and financing amount are generally rising.

Judging from the overall environment of blockchain gaming, it is obviously a very appropriate time for Binance to promote blockchain gaming projects.

Secondly, according to My Meta Data statistics, BNB Chain’s number of blockchain game projects and transaction volume accounted for 29.81% and 27.62% respectively, leading other major public chains and ranking first. From the proportion, it can be seen that BNB Chain has occupied nearly 30% of the GameFi sector.

In addition, from the investment and financing background information of the above seven new blockchain game projects, it can be found that Binance Labs has invested in three of them, namely Fusionist, Sleepless AI, and Heroes of Mavia.

As a blockchain game project incubated by its own capital, it is not surprising that it is launched on its own trading platform.

Finally, considering the capital gains, Binance is somewhat helpless in betting on the blockchain gaming track at this time.

Previously, many Binance-related blockchain game projects have been listed on its own exchange, but since the blockchain game ebb in November 2021, most of them have plummeted and failed to recover, such as BinaryX, Voxies, MOBOX, League of Kingdoms, etc. Therefore, while Binance urgently needs new blockchain game projects to prove itself, it also needs to use this to recover some funds.

When talking about funding issues, we cannot fail to mention the $4.3 billion fine that Binance paid as a result of a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice in November last year. Although this did not cause any serious impact on Binance, it is still not a small amount.

If Binance, which has already bet heavily on the blockchain game track, builds a new sector like OKX, it will need to pay various resources and there will be considerable risks. You can refer to the previous trend of the inscription sector. Therefore, for now, promoting the blockchain game project is the safest choice in every aspect.

Conclusion

Blockchain games are seen as one of the hottest narratives in the crypto industry in 2024, and their prospects show unlimited potential. However, in terms of the quality of blockchain games that have been launched so far, there are very few projects that are both playable and profitable. Binance has launched blockchain games one after another, which shows that it has some confidence in these projects that have been launched.

Furthermore, the blockchain game track has undergone more than two years of innovation since its peak, and the quality of games has also improved. Coupled with the sector rotation effect of the investment market, it is hard to guarantee that the next outlet this year will not happen to blockchain games. However, it should be noted that the coat of publicity and hype is difficult to withstand the long-term test of the market, and blockchain games may not be immune to the cold of late spring.