The blockchain gaming industry had an impressive 2021. Play-to-earn, move-to-earn, NFT games, and prices for all sorts of blockchain entertainment were surging.
Newspapers ran glowing stories about blockchain games like Axie Infinity employing 60,000 Filipinos. Of course, it was all just a flash in the pan. Within a few months, the bottom fell out of the market and both active users and market capitalizations cratered.
The topsy-turvy arrangement of game operators paying for players only worked as long as the operators could sell their crypto tokens based on inflated metrics like daily active users.
Unfortunately, they soon found out that there’s no sustainable business in paying populations to play video games. Once insiders finished dumping their bags, the blockchain gaming industry left many of those Filipinos indebted.
Now that much of the dust has settled, a new report by Delphi Digital examines the extent to which so-called Sybil attacks inflated growth metrics for blockchain gaming.
What is a Sybil attack?
A Sybil attack occurs when someone tricks a reputation system by…