- Blockchain card game Gods Unchained has registered a record number of transactions on the Ethereum ERC-721 standard.
- Despite eclipsing CryptoKitties transactions in a matter of days, Gods Unchained is not clogging up the blockchain.
- The Gods Unchained marketplace will soon go live and provide a useful test-case for the future of Ethereum gaming.
Crypto asset market research firm CoinMetrics has confirmed a huge spike in blockchain card trading over the last three days. The bulk of the transactions have come from the Hearthstone-inspired game Gods Unchained.
According to CoinMetrics, transactions in the Ethereum ERC-721 standard spiked 4x to record a staggering 3.7 million exchanges on Nov. 17.
What Is Gods Unchained & ERC-721?
Gods Unchained is a decentralized digital card game that allows players to own cards and verify that ownership via a blockchain.
All players receive a free set of untradable cards while rarer cards can be bought or earned through in-game play. Those cards can then be sold or traded on an Ethereum marketplace.
Unlike traditional games, blockchain integration means you take complete ownership of your digital assets. In the old model you could potentially lose thousands of hours of in-game hustle if, for example, a publisher goes bust.
Ethereums’s ERC-721 standard facilitates this. More commonly known as non-fungible tokens, NFTs differ from the more familiar ERC-20 standard which spawned the 2017 altcoin euphoria. NFTs in contrast are completely unique and specifically tied to an Ethereum owner’s wallet.
Ethereum Holding Strong in the Wake of the Transfers
Those who’ve been in the crypto space for a few years will remember another digital collectible phenomenon. In 2017, CryptoKitties stormed the Ethereum network while simultaneously revealing some major scalability issues.
Now thanks to efficient batching, Gods Unchained developer Immutable is proving that scalability is not the issue it once was.
For context, CryptoKitties has had about 4.7 million transfers over the course of its lifetime, which includes original purchases and secondary sales. @GodsUnchained has officially created over 6m tokenized in-game assets, which is more than any other Ethereum game to date.
Immutable has almost completed activating over 6 million Genesis season cards, accounting for the ERC-721 spike mentioned earlier. Those numbers are insane for a three-day turnaround.
The good news for Ethereum is, as CoinMetrics points out, that transactions remain “unclogged”, largely unaffecting transaction blocks since mid-October.
Marketplace Go Live
At 98% card activation, the Gods Unchained marketplace is almost ready to go-live. The following days should provide an interesting test-case for the effects of trading on the Ethereum network.
In terms of the game’s rarest cards, Immutable plans to create a maximum of four titans every year known as the mythics. Two were already found in sold packs (with a one in a million odds) while one was auctionable.
The auctionable card, known as the Hyperion, sold for a staggering $62,000 last year:
Gods Unchained recently saw a huge uptake in players after its largest competitor Blizzard controversially banned a Hong Kong Hearthstone grandmaster.
It’s unclear yet what kind of censorship Immutable will have over its own player base, however, providing its players with proper digital ownership is a great first step in disrupting the industry.
