DappRadar’s report on the state of blockchain gaming indicates that Axie Infinity may be the leading game, but several others have more unique active wallets than Axie in the third quarter this year.

Play-to-earn (P2E) gaming, and to a lesser extent, NFTs, are driving growth in the blockchain gaming market, DappRadar said.

According to DappRadar, 1.54 million UAWs were registered in Q3 2021. They point out that this is a quarter-over-quarter increase of 25% and a year-over-year rally of 509%.

The rise of blockchain gaming

Almost half of the 1.54 million wallets, or 754,000, are for blockchain games. This, they claim, is due to the increased popularity of peer-to-peer (P2P) gaming.

The UAWs’ seven-day trailing average shows a rise in games around July, peaking at little around 1,100. DeFi, on the other hand, rose peaked at just over 1,100 UAWs in May and has since dropped sharply, averaging between 500 and 700 since then.

While this is impressive for the gaming industry, DappRadar explains that UAW refers to unique addresses engaging with a certain smart contract.

This measure should not be understood in the same way as daily active users because someone may have multiple wallets.

Axie Infinity’s dominance in question

Axie Infinity is a Pokémon-like game that runs on the Ethereum blockchain. It’s no surprise that its monthly users surpassed 1.8 million in August, given stories of some users earning thousands of dollars per month just playing it.

However, DappRadar disclosed that seven other blockchain games were more popular than Axie in terms of UAW interactions over the last month.

The most popular game was Alien Worlds on WAX, followed by Splinterlands on Hive and Arc8 on Polygon in third place.

Despite a 53% growth in active wallets quarter-over-quarter, WAX’s dominance (as a gaming blockchain) fell by 31% compared to figures in the second quarter. This is because of the fact that other blockchains, namely BSC and Hive, had enormous growth in the third quarter.