Blockchain Games Raise $2.5B As Dapps Lose $1.2B to Hacks in Q1 ’22

Key Insights:

• The report suggests over $12 billion worth of NFT trades were conducted in Q1 2022.
• Overall DeFi protocols have lost more than $1.2 billion in the same period.
• Gaming projects have noted $2.5 billion invested by Venture Capitalists as GameFi TVL crosses $28 billion.

Crypto is more than just Bitcoin and altcoins now. The space has developed into a world of its own, figuratively and literally, with the arrival of the Metaverse.

NFTs have become a need for investors, and in the midst of all this, gaming projects have also noticed a lot of attention this time around. How much, though, is the question?

DeFi Hits It Out of the Park

According to the DappRadar Q1 industry report, the DeFi space is growing with the broadening adoption of the NFT and Metaverse market and an increased interest in blockchain games.

And the potential that Decentralized Finance (DeFi) presents exceeds the worries of external factors.

Dapps all registered over 2.38 million daily unique active wallets throughout the first quarter, and the DeFi TVL kept its pace maintained throughout the fluctuations.

The biggest gainers this time around were none other than NFTs, which generated over $12 billion in trades thanks to the adoption of NFTs outside of Ethereum.

Furthermore, Q1 2022 was a pretty successful quarter for blockchain gaming projects. These Dapps managed to raise over $2.5 billion from Venture Capitalists as well as capture investors’ attention.

But with every boon comes a bane, and DeFi’s biggest bane is the hacks. DeFi, as the name suggests, is decentralized finance, i.e., it is dependent on no one keeping it safe from direct access attacks or exploits.

But those looking for a loophole manage to find a way to exploit a protocol, which is how DeFi protocols lost over $1.2 billion in the first three months of 2022.

About 50% of this loss is attributed to the Axie Infinity’s Ronin Hack, where exploiters managed to execute the biggest crypto attack, stealing over $615 million. The other major exploit was the Wormhole, wherein $326 million were stolen.

But It Still Did Not Stop the DeFi Growth

Today the total value locked (TVL) across all Decentralized Finance protocols and chains comes up to $214 billion, and while this is huge, it is nothing in comparison to the crypto space’s market cap of $1.9 trillion.

The rapidly emerging GameFi space, which, as mentioned above, noticed a lot of interest from users and investors alike, is currently valued above $28 billion and growing thanks to the rise of Metaverse and platforms such as The Sandbox and Decentraland.

Therefore, going forward, these spaces will be noticing much more investment flowing in as DeFi is considered to be the future of finance.