By Michael Scott
Despite DappRadar’s data indicating rising blockchain gaming activity, it comes as more developers disclose how they are repulsing bots.
A report from DappRadar shows that In October, crypto-backed games experienced continued growth, attaining a million daily unique active wallets (DUAWs) on several dates.
A chart from the crypto data company shows that in September, blockchain games jointly accrued more than a million daily unique active wallets in four days. During the month, the overall daily average seemed to rise slowly.
Blockchain Developers Warn of Increased Automated Bots
In comparison to the previous month, it is a fair rise. However, the report by DappRadar comes as some of the major games in crypto are attempting to repulse an automated bots’ surge. Cases of several users linking their crypto wallets to blockchain games daily have occurred before.
For instance, in late 2021 and early last year, games such as Alien Worlds, Axie Infinity, and Splinterlands had their numbers surpassing the one million DAU mark. Further, DappRadar data shows that user counts rose to the same heights in April this year.
However, bot accounts have affected games such as Alien Worlds over a significant period. As such, it remains uncertain how most users are real humans. Bots might be deployed in blockchain games to automate and increase their token rewards without the need to ‘grind’ or play the game for a long time.
It has been an old issue with blockchain games with real-world financial enticements. In 2021, Axie Infinity was forced to contend with ‘bot farms.’
Bots Accounts Surge Above 1.5 Million
In October, Alien World’s official Twitter account report revealed that at least 1.6M accounts utilizing its games were bot accounts, which might have resulted in the month’s inflated totals. Despite a request for comment, Alien Worlds failed to provide one.
DappRadar’s report shows that various games recorded the highest number of DUAWs in October. These games included SecondLive, Splinterlands, Battle Left Center, Alien Worlds, and Sweat Economy.
Several Alien World’s nearly 133000 DUAWs might be bot accounts. However, an email from Oleg Fomenko, Sweat Economy cofounder, revealed the impossibility of the ‘move-to-earn’ title having several bots or users tricking the game. Oleg’s game occupied the second-highest position with nearly 73000 DUAWs.
Concerning the game’s SWEAT token, Oleg told a media outlet that since they have spent nine years focusing on the movement confirmation, there is high certainty concerning a minimal number of bots earning SWEAT.
He also said that it cannot be zero due to someone always attempting to test some new shaking trends or imitating the ‘Ministry of Silly Walk’s sketches by Monty Python.
Oleg also mentioned that they can never scale, and their models are pretty good at noticing whether the running or walking data is real. Continuous monitoring for this kind of activity happens regularly, and things such as dogs, automated walking, dishwashers, fans, dogs, cradles, and metronomes have been witnessed.
Recently, an activity spike was witnessed in the farming game Pixels and the causal pixelated MMORPG. However, on October 30, the game shifted to Ronin, Axie Infinity’s Ethereum sidechain, and experienced an estimated 6000 unique active wallets linking to the game.
Between November 6 and 10, Pixels witnessed approximately 50000 UAWs linking to its platform. However, DappRadar’s data indicates a decline in the peak. Late Wednesday, Jeffrey ‘Jiho’ Zirlin, Axie Infinity’s cofounder, said that Pixels had exceeded 100000 regular active users.
Zirlin revealed to a media outlet that a problem occurred with the game’s on-chain tracker, and because of that, the numbers of actual players might be underrepresented. Despite a request for comment, DappRadar failed to provide one.
Pixels Witness Increased Bot Accounts
Reports by Pixels players and Luke Barwikowski indicate that the inflation of Pixels’ numbers is associated with creating automated or botting accounts. On Sunday, Luke said the Pixels team has ‘silently captured’ numerous bot accounts.
On Monday, he added that the team is creating and unveiling countermeasures to avert the bot accounts’ spread.
In a long Alien Worlds blog post in 2022, Naavik, a gaming consulting and research company, contended that unique wallet figures usually are ‘susceptible to bots’ and that any unique active wallet numbers must ‘not be fully believed.’ Instead, Karan Gaikward, Naavik’s analyst, asserted that transaction volume is the most suitable metric to evaluate true user activity.
The release of DappRadar’s report accompanied a lengthy social media discussion concerning the figures’ reliability and whether they accurately depict the demand for blockchain games.
Despite DappRadar establishing that gaming accounted for 33% of decentralized app (Dapp) activity in October, it is almost impossible to show how much of the activity was true, individual human users, and the number of bots on the blockchain.