In GameFi, we should know how many people are actually playing the game. While most platforms use UAW (Unique Wallet Address) as the main indicator for GameFi projects, in fact, this indicator does not tell us how active, popular or sustainable a blockchain game is.

In regular games, we define a player as someone who boots up a console or logs in and starts a game. While there are different types of players -- newbies, regulars, casuals, hardcore fans -- it's straightforward to define a player. There is only one way through the game to interact with the game.

Defining GameFi users is another challenge. In fact, we don't have a very intuitive way to define and differentiate these users who interact with game contracts.

Compared with gamers, GameFi users may only earn money by playing games, just like DeFi users.

First, there are two main types of GameFi participants. One, there are real gamers, and they play for the enjoyment. Second, investors see games as a way to make money. Also, some bots may not participate in the game, but they can achieve certain goals by interacting with contracts.

Some investors can play the game themselves, but others outsource the manual work to some "scholarship players" from the GameFi Association. Some people who own the assets of the project never try the game themselves. For example, those who bought land in the sandbox bought AXS tokens because they thought the land would appreciate in value, or for similar reasons. In fact, one of the most expensive GameFi tokens is for an unreleased title. Illuvium.

Obviously, wallet address ≠ 1 player.

So, how do blockchain analysts define GameFi users? This article will use Era7 and Walken as examples to explain most of these indicators.

Understanding the Basic Metrics of a GameFi Project

Metrics for GameFi can be simple or complex.

The simplest metrics tell us the number of interactions, interactors, token holders and game users. Although they can't tell us the specific portrait of the game player, they are the most basic entry information.

Number of unique wallet addresses interacting with the contract

First, analysts can use Footprint to filter all but basic transactions, such as approvals and transfers, to obtain data on users interacting with contracts.

Analysts can quantify this metric with several metrics, such as total users and active users.

According to different wallets responsible for different businesses, user behaviors are classified into habits, and the number of different wallet interactive users is subdivided.

Refer to Walken, because you need to buy shoes first to play the game, and the payment operation for buying shoes: transfer SOL from the exchange to Walken’s wallet → buy shoes with SOL → start the game. This is called a deposit, and a deposit is a transfer of money from an official wallet. Therefore, the project party will regard the address that interacts with the official account as a user.

NFT holds users

Since every game player must first purchase NFT to enter the game. Therefore, when we analyze the actual users of a game, the holder of the NFT is the necessary analysis data.

Tokenholders&tokenprice

Just like NFTs, analysts can see fluctuations in the price of tokens in the game.

summary

When most people go to a site like Coinmarketcap or DappRadar, they look at the metrics on it and they get the job done. However, more experienced GameFi analysts understand that these indicators are superficial and it is difficult to describe the whole situation that is going on.

Are these users injecting value into the protocol, or are they constantly trying to extract value? How many users are active, how many are inactive, and how many are bots? Is this project attractive enough for players to buy NFTs? If not, what other information needs to be captured?

By examining game play metrics, we can begin to answer these questions.

Gameplay with advanced indicators

interactive

Analysts can see the daily transaction volume of each wallet through FootprintAnalytics. Additionally, they can see the type of contract interaction. include:

1. Token Minting

2. Transfer

3. Cash withdrawal

4. Deposit

In-game activities

Not all game actions have the same value. For example, it would be better for a player who is just an experimental project to be a player who is actively investing in game assets to create a more enjoyable gaming experience. Alternatively, a purely commercial investor, such as a gaming association, would have a constant contractionary effect on the price as they would, like Bitcoin miners, keep selling tokens and assets to support their business.

With the analysis below, analysts can evaluate user activities in games such as:

ll Participation value (injection value and extraction value)

llDaily inflow of game smart contracts/trading funds

ll Funds withdrawn from game smart contracts/transactions per day

llNFT User Hierarchy

NFTs play a central role in GameFi. Since token prices are simpler and clearer than NFTs, people tend to overanalyze token prices as a metric for games. In order to understand the price of NFTs in the ecosystem, one must understand the different categories, rarities, and attributes of NFTs themselves and between NFTs.

The most basic data indicator is the number of users holding NFT. But we can get more detailed. for example:

llThe number of NFTs held by NFTs per capita

llNumber of holders of each NFT level

ll NFT holders who interact with game contracts and NFT upgrade funnels. (Some games require constant upgrades to play.)

llUser loyalty and retention rate

A huge advantage of the blockchain is that it allows anyone to view protocol activity that was previously impossible. In regular games, outsiders cannot see player retention rates or average activity per user. However, all of these things are available to GameFi's analysts.

llChurned users

llCurrent users who own NFT

llNFT holders increase retention rate

llNew user growth rate and old user churn rate

llNumber of robots

While FootprintAnalytics has several filters to measure NFT wash trades, creating an explicit way to test bots within the GameFi protocol is still a work in progress. However, analysts can filter out wallet addresses that only present interactions with little or no value injection.

Summarize

As GameFi expands, every successful field will be accompanied by a large number of low-quality projects, and every active player will have a certain number of bots and invalid addresses linked to the protocol.

This requires GameFi analysts to define different types of users based on the items they track. This means differentiating between different types of users with basic and advanced metrics to assess a title's health, quality and growth potential.