Introduction
I was looking at a chart of Splinterlands user sign ups and spellbooks sold over the last several years and honestly it tells a pretty incredible story about the evolution of the game and the entire blockchain gaming sector.
The chart above really captures the entire 2021 crypto gaming cycle in one image. What stands out immediately is just how explosive the growth was during the second half of 2021. Spellbook sales absolutely went vertical during that period and at the peak Splinterlands was onboarding an enormous amount of players every single day. The peak has been on October 19th 2021 when Splinterlands team sold 18,084 Spellbooks in one day!
My Splinterlands History
I have joined Splinterlands on August 1st 2021 after watching a couple YouTube videos and a couple from the South African channel Crypto Banter by Ran Neuner.
To put it into perspective I think the best chart would be the one right here that shows most of the Splinterlands timeline and my join date:
As you can see I joined right into the Play 2 Earn hype cycle and lived to experience it all.
Back then it honestly felt like Splinterlands was unstoppable. The game was growing incredibly fast:
SPS price was exploding
DEC was going insane and was something like x7 the peg value
Cards were appreciating rapidly
Guilds were expanding
Rentals were printing SPS
And almost everybody in crypto gaming was suddenly talking about play to earn
During that period it felt like every day new players were entering the ecosystem trying to grind rewards, build decks, rent cards, speculate on assets or simply participate in the play to earn economy.
The 2021 Growth Was Probably Not Sustainable
The interesting part about this chart is not actually the spike itself. It is what happened afterward. The decline after late 2021 was extremely steep and sign ups never really returned anywhere close to those levels again.
To me this suggests that a large percentage of the onboarding during the 2021 cycle was heavily tied to crypto market conditions and reward profitability rather than purely gameplay driven growth.
That does not mean the game itself was weak. Far from it. But it does show that the ecosystem became driven by the potential to earn a lot of money during the bull market.
A lot of users were likely joining because SPS price was rising and rewards were valuable, cards were appreciating and crypto gaming was one of the hottest narratives in the market.
Once the crypto bear market arrived and reward profitability declined a huge amount of speculative demand disappeared from the ecosystem. Honestly this happened across almost the entire GameFi sector. The difference is that most blockchain games from that era simply died.
Splinterlands survived and I think that matters quite a bit.
Looking At The Last 12 Months
What I find particularly interesting is what happened during the last twelve months because the chart tells a very different story compared to the chaos of 2021.
The first thing that stands out is that Daily Active Users have actually remained relatively stable for most of the year outside of several unusual spikes. That stability matters.
Even though sign ups are nowhere near the old 2021 levels the game still appears to maintain a fairly consistent active player base month after month.
To me that suggests the ecosystem has transitioned away from speculative onboarding and toward a more stable long term player community.
The orange line above representing spellbook sales still shows periodic spikes, especially during late summer and early fall, but these spikes are dramatically smaller and much more controlled compared to the giant mania phase from 2021.
To me this looks much healthier. Instead of unsustainable hypergrowth followed by collapse the ecosystem now appears to operate within a more normal range of player activity. One thing I also noticed is that Daily Active Users occasionally spike very aggressively while sign ups do not necessarily increase at the same pace.
The Most Important Thing Is That The Game Survived
One thing I noticed immediately is that despite the collapse in sign ups compared to the 2021 peak the chart never actually goes flat. Even during the worst parts of the crypto winter the game continued onboarding players.
Obviously nowhere near 2021 levels, but still consistently. That tells me there is still a real core community underneath all the speculation that existed during the peak bubble period.
And honestly I think the remaining player base today is probably significantly stronger than it was during the speculative frenzy.
Back then the Splinterlands ecosystem had huge amounts of bots, heavy rewards farming, short term speculation and many players focused mostly on extracting rewards.
Today the ecosystem feels much more battle and community focused. The players that stayed are mostly people who actually enjoy ranked battles, brawls, collecting cards and long term progression.
That is a much healthier foundation for a game long term.
Final Thoughts
Looking back at these charts honestly feels a little surreal. The 2021 period was one of the wildest eras not only for Splinterlands but for blockchain gaming overall.
As you can see from the chart above on October 31st 2021 Splinterlands had 509K Daily Active Users, we now know those were mostly bots, so what impresses me most is not the giant spike. It is the fact that the game survived after the bubble collapsed.
Most crypto gaming projects from that era disappeared completely. Splinterlands is still here and is still developing the game. And based on the last twelve months of data the ecosystem now looks far more stable and mature compared to the speculative insanity of the 2021 cycle.
Feel free to leave a comment, upvote, or share if you find this useful!
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Sadly, I think the explosion of spellbook purchases was from bot networks and not individual users. Of course, this period was also when we onboarded the most humans into the game as well, but nowhere near the same scale that we onboarded bot networks to farm DEC/SPS rewards and reward cards.
Agreed, that is why I mentioned in my final thoughts that those Daily Active users were mostly bots... But those bots did buy some cards in addition to spellbooks as well...
Wouldn't that really just indicate that people weren't buying to play back then they were more buying to flip? The fact that active users has remained relatively stable I mean.
I think people were buying to earn DEC and SPS that was appreciating. Playing was like running a Bitcoin mining rig and you needed to buy cards to mine DEC and SPS. Active users are stable in the last 12 months at around 3-5K active users per day, that is what I meant. If you look at the peak active users were at almost 509K or one hundred times more than our peak days today...
Oh, okay. I thought you were going back that far. I got you!