WAX-based NFT mining game Alien Worlds continues to impress this week as it surpassed 1 million unique active wallets according to data from DappRadar. Moreover, the number of user wallets doubled in the past 7days even though the development team made efforts to stop malicious activity.
In Alien Worlds players need to select tools, pick a planet, and have their accounts mine for TLM tokens. These simple mechanics are easily done by bots, and therefore the developers implemented anti-botting mechanics. Despite these implementations, the number of user wallets keeps increasing. Alien Worlds is seeing an unprecedented amount of consumer interest.
In the last 30 days, the total number of wallets interacting with the dapps smart contracts has reached 1.34 million. Seriously impressive numbers when you consider that another leading dapp game Upland has amassed just over 95,000 in the same time span. Arguably, the mechanics of the games are vastly different as Alien Worlds is yet to launch its playable Thunderdome mode. For now user activity is limited to purchasing NFTs in order to mine more TLM tokens.
Looking at the token price of TLM explains why the game originally became so popular. Having reached a peak of $6.80 on the 13th of April it then crashed right down to $0.19, settling around $0.68 today. Interestingly we see that according to data from DappRadar the number of transactions also fell off a cliff on the 9th of April dropping from over 14 million to 2.4 million by the 13th of April.
Several catalysts caused the drop in price seen above. Up until TLM was listed on BINANCE the only exchange to trade TLM from was the Wax blockchain based Alcor DEX for 0.17 WAX per TLM or the Chinese exchange MXC that actually didnt have the token but instead offered a form of IOUs to traders.
It would appear the token being listed on Binance came users the easy access they needed to trade out there earned TLM subsequently crashing the price. Importantly, we didn’t observe a drop in the number of active wallets at the same time meaning players were retained and decided to continue playing.
Users, wallets, and bots
In the Alien Worlds universe, players can acquire NFTs to mine TLM, engage in battles, and complete in-game quests. Depending on their strategy, players may purchase and assemble NFTs that best suit their gameplay.
The game itself is appealing enough as it allows the mining of TLM which has a real-world value. Users can then stake their TLM within the game or simply cash out. Vitally, and due to the fact the game certainly had appealing traits to users, we had predicted that some but not all the users were bots and that people were opening multiple wallets in order to mine more TLM.
Arguably, these points are not ultimately important, what’s important is that people wanted to play the game so much and mine TLM they went to great lengths to do so. The development team at Alien Worlds did not idly stand by when this manipulation was occurring and quickly integrated an aggressive reCAPTCHA. This meant that every time a player wanted to sign a transaction they had to go through the reCAPTCHA loop. In Alien Worlds every mining session, TLM collecting, tool selection, planet selection is a transaction.
Looking at the user activity over the last 30-days it clearly had the desired effect. On the 30th of April, the number of active wallets dropped from just over 305,000 to 205,000 as reCAPTCHA started to weed out the bots.
Despite the controversy and the fact that at this moment in time, it may be unfair for Alien Worlds to be pitted against other dapp games without mining mechanics. Arguably at the moment Alien Worlds easier compared to gamified yield farming. Nonetheless, several things are very clear. Alien Worlds has propelled the WAX blockchain to new highs as they reap the rewards of so many new users opening WAX blockchain wallets and there is a clear thirst for play-to-earn mechanics and gamified income in the crypto space.
Useful Links
- Transfer TLM from WAX to BSC
- What is TLM
- What is Alien Worlds
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