Polygon becomes the second largest gaming blockchain after user activity increased in March

Increasing 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 reached 138,081 in March, marking a 53% increase compared to February.

That figure puts Polygon well ahead of third- and fourth-ranked Hive and the BNB chain at 84,000 and 80,000 UAWs a piece, while first-place WAX ​​is well ahead of the pack with 314,000 UAWs.

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

A significant portion of the UAW increase on Polygon was due to the Hunters On-Chain game by BoomLand, which has seen a UAW increase of more than 17,000% in the last 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 feel to Minecraft.

On March 9, in particular, the game saw a record number of UAWs of around 55,300.

It’s unclear what specifically drove the surge in interest in the game last month, though anticipation of 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 declined 3.33% in March to 741,567 daily unique active wallets (dUAW); gaming still accounts for 45.6% of DApp industry activity in Q1 2023.”

Related: Aragon and Polygon Labs collaborate to increase DAO availability

There has been some bullish momentum around Polygon in recent months, particularly related to NFTs, games and the Metaverse.

So far, Polygon Labs, the team behind the network, has made a long list of partnerships with big names like 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 digest on March 27. It is touted to allow DApps to scale through transaction batching, unlocking higher performance while reducing gas fees for performing transactions on the network.