Some major shakeups on the charts this week as Alien Worlds reclaims their top spot among play to earn games and the world of NFT collections sees a major hemorrhaging of activity.
Playtests, playtests, and more playtests! Did I mention there were some playtests? You can play and earn with Tearing Spaces, Champions Arena, and Star Atlas. Echoes of Empire and Eternal Dragons also have ongoing playtests, while MetalCore is preparing to launch their latest playtest to showcase their new PvE feature this week!
In other gaming news, Mist announces the Mist blockchain, Splinterlands introduces the first dual-element card, and Chainmonsters is forced to shut down development!
Continue reading for more stories and subscribe to our newsletter for a weekly summary, as well as links to all of our articles from the week!
Read on for a look at the most active web3 games and NFT projects for the week. And be sure to keep an eye on our website and Twitter feed for the latest developments in the web3 gaming space!
Top play-to-earn games by active users
| Game | Active Users 7 days | Change |
| 1. Alien Worlds | 292.43k | +1.92% |
| 2. Farmers World | 94.24k | +15.00% |
| 3. Splinterlands | 80.96k | -6.67% |
| 4. Upland | 68.99k | +8.48% |
| 5. Benji Bananas | 49.22k | -8.05% |
| 6. Axie Infinity | 32.07k | +4.60% |
| 7. SecondLive | 30.81k | +2.23% |
| 8. Era7 | 28.26k | -5.08% |
| 9. Arc8 | 25.5k | -20.57% |
| 10. Meta Apes | 24.71k | +6.10% |
DappRadar must have changed the way they count users as Iskra drops on our charts from nearly 843k users last week to just over 2k this week! Unfortunately, it’s difficult to find out about these changes from DappRadar, so we just have to make some assumptions. Anyway, after flying close to the sun, Iskra is now completely off the top 10 chart, and the top spot is reclaimed by Alien Worlds.
Splinterlands continues to slide as Farmer’s World makes a surprising surge. Planet IX drops off the top 10 chart as well, with a 57% loss of active users from the past week!
Top 10 NFT collections by volume traded
| Collection | Volume traded 7 days | Volume Change |
| 1. Mutant Ape Yacht Club | $22.97M | -37.65% |
| 2. Azuki | $15.29M | -42.64% |
| 3. Bored Ape Yacht Club | $12.9M | -68.58% |
| 4. CryptoPunks | $8.27M | -74.53% |
| 5. DeGods | $6.47M | +29.75% |
| 6. Milady Maker | $4.58M | -14.04% |
| 7. Moonbirds | $4.18M | -35.31% |
| 8. The Captainz | $4.13M | -31.91% |
| 9. BEANZ Official | $3.96M | -48.04% |
| 10. Pudgy Penguins | $3.8M | -0.33% |
NFT sales took a huge beating this week, with significant drops in eight out of the top 10! Even Moonbirds which announced the planned construction of a virtual world took a major hit in activity. And though this decline in financial numbers may seem like bad news, it could also represent a significant decline in wash trading, which has seemed to dominate the NFT markets for some time now. If so, then the current numbers we see may be a better representation of the actual demand for these NFTs. We’ll have to keep an eye on these numbers over the coming weeks!
In other interesting NFT news, Sotheby’s plans to auction off an NFT collection held by Three Arrows Capital to raise funds to help repay creditors.
