Web3 gaming had a rough April as virtual land plummeted and on-chain gaming activity fell 10%. Although, given the recent obsession with memecoins, perhaps this isn’t surprising.

Blockchain games have been doing relatively well so far, at least compared to 2022. However, according to DappRadar’s latest Web3 Games report, things could be a little better.

Web3 Gaming Resilience

Blockchain analytics firm DappRadar tracked a 10% decrease in on-chain gaming activity in April, with an average of 672,000 daily unique active wallets (UAW). However, games maintained their dominance, accounting for 38% of on-chain activity.

Virtual world transactions fell off the bottom line in April, with volume falling 74% from March to $41.4 million and 16,149 land sales.

Metaverse Land Reduction

DappRadar attributes these drops in part to recent attention on meme coins and changes in liquidity. If true, it would prove that the community around digital assets is relatively small and insular.

According to their analysis, traders are selling their virtual land to join the meme craze, which has allowed many traders to make huge returns. The increase in on-chain activity has pushed up trading volumes, further reducing the liquidity of low-value NFTs and virtual land.

Granted, for context, April’s virtual world transaction volume ($41 million) was roughly the same as January’s. However, the number of sales did drop compared to January — from 25,200 to 16,100. February and April saw significant spikes. In the long run, April was a reversion to the mean.

On the other hand, gaming blockchains saw modest growth from the previous month. Polygon, BNB Chain, Hive, and EOS all saw single-digit growth in daily unique active wallets (dUAW). WAX topped the list with a 3.2% growth compared to March.

Despite the general decline of the metaverse, The Sandbox thrived in April 2023, with transaction volume increasing by 18.83% to over $1 million. This success was driven by the Mega City 3 Land Sale, which offered over 250 land parcels and special asset NFTs for purchase at a premium.

Virtual land sales have long been the target of ridicule from observers and analysts, and their value has generally fallen as interest in the metaverse has waned.

In February 2022, during the hype of the Metaverse, someone paid $450,000 to be Snoop Dogg’s neighbor in The Sandbox. It’s hard to imagine digital real estate reaching similar prices today.