One global or several tiny NFT communities? Traders version

Seen from afar, the NFT ecosystem can look like a large community of blockchain gaming enthusiasts. Thanks to the exclusive data collected by NonFungible.com, we found the answers to the following questions:

• Among the major blockchain games, which projects have the largest common marketplace user base?
• Are the notions of “blockchain game” or “non-fungible tokens” a sufficient common denominator for these communities to merge?
• If you were marketing manager of one of these projects, which other projects should you partner with?

Our methodology

Our analysis was based on all asset transactions carried out over the period from January 1st to June 20th 2019 for the 13 most active NFT projects listed on NonFungible.com:

• MLB Champions
• My Crypto Heroes
• MegaCryptoPolis
• Etheremon
• CryptoKitties
• Decentraland
• Axie Infinity
• Chainbreakers
• 0xUniverse
• Etherbots
• CryptoPunks
• Chibi Fighters
• NeonDistrict

In total, the analysis has been built on more than 750,000 lines of data, highlighting verifiable trends in the first half of 2019.

We deliberately chose to study a limited period of time (and to exclude 2018 data) because trends are evolving extremely fast in the NFT ecosystem, and 2018 was specifically a year of major launches and changes for most of these projects. The data collected for 2019 reflects a greater stability of the ecosystem.

How to read the results

We identified the exact number of players and the percentage each community who purchased or sold assets in at least one of the 12 other projects during the period.

To present these results, we have two tables based on percentages of the project’s user base and common number of traders, which requires some explanations in order to be perfectly used.

Results per percentage

• Horizontal axis (X) – Analyzed project
• Vertical axis (Y) – % of project user base active in other projects

In the example below, only 1.29% of CryptoKitties traders also bought or sold MLB Champions assets during the period, and 10.16% of Neon District users also traded MLB Champions.

Note: Given the size differences between user bases (CryptoKitties: 13 000 active addresses in the period / Cryptopunks: 176 active addresses), it is normal that the following two percentages are different because of the different community sizes:

• 0.41% of CryptoKitty users traded CryptoPunks
• 30.68% of Cryptopunks’ users traded CryptoKitties

The color code makes it easy to identify areas of adhesion between projects.

Results per number of users

The volume of active addresses per project during these 6 months period is set on the 2nd line and row of the table.

Cf. example below:

The results

The tables below displays all the common user base for the 13 projects listed above. This corresponds to 132 possible combinations.

• The first table displays the results per NUMBER OF TRADERS
• The second one per PERCENTAGE OF THE MARKET USER BASE

Results per number of users

Results per percentage of the project’s user base

Conclusion

Here are our main 7 conclusions following this analysis

1. NFT / Crypto-gaming communities remain extremely separated. Apart from CryptoKitties, almost all projects have less than 10% of common users with other projects.
2. We deduce that the players of these projects are invested because they appreciate the experience and the in-game universe, not because it is a “blockchain game”.
3. CryptoKitties remains one of the pillars of the crypto-gaming ecosystem even almost 2 years after its launch (More than a third of Neon District players are also trading CryptoKitties, while the traders of 0xUniverse do not seem like big fans of kittens)
4. Unsurprisingly, 1 out of 4 Chainbreakers players have bought or sold a LAND on Decentraland in the last 6 months
5. Paradoxically, the CryptoKitties players are hardly interested in Chainbreakers, only 0.35% of CryptoKitties players traded Chainbreakers items.
6. The largest (reciprocal) adherence areas between projects were identified between CryptoKitties and Axie Infinity 
   • 26% of Axie Infinity traders also bought or sold CryptoKitties
   • Almost 3% of CryptoKitties users also bought or sold Axies
7. The community of 0xUniverse is obviously the most isolated community of the NFT ecosystem, with very weak areas of adherence with other projects (maximum 8% of its traders are involved in another project – CryptoKitties)

Which part of the whole community trades several game assets?

The following table details the number and percentage of players according to the number of blockchain games with which they interacted:

• Only 3.43% of the entire community interacted with more than 2 projects over the period
• Only 1.34% of players traded more than 3 blockchain games’ assets.

Thus, almost all NFT traders are active on 1, maximum 2 games in parallel, rarely more.

Number of projects with which the player interacted	Number of players	Percentage of the overall community
1	11852	90,13%
2	847	6,44%
3	275	2,09%
4	76	0,58%
5	43	0,33%
6	29	0,22%
7	18	0,14%
8	8	0,06%
9	0	0,00%
10	2	0,02%

Chart highlighting the distribution of players according to the number of blockchain games they traded within the period.