The crypto gaming narrative is still haunted by Play-to-Earn. Most founders picture their audience as players grinding for rewards. But what if the data tells a different story?
To test this, we analyzed nearly 300,000 wallets from the Axie Infinity and Ronin ecosystem using the Addressable wallet intelligence platform. The goal: cut past the headlines and find out who the modern Web3 gamer really is.
Our on-chain study went beyond token balances. We looked at wallet age, activity patterns, device usage, and interests tied to both on- and off-chain behavior.
What we found flips the script:
This isn’t just a gaming community anymore. It’s a sophisticated economy of investor-players who view games as part of their broader on-chain portfolio.
Jiho’s Take on the Audience:
“A lot of the people that were onboarded into Axie and Ronin were people that had only been trading on Binance before. Web3 gamers are traders, they’re speculators… Teams that don’t understand that are going to have a hard time.”
Imagine a whale with $2 million in their wallet lands on your game’s homepage. You caught their attention.
If you assume they’re “just a gamer,” you’ll retarget them with skins, quests, or gameplay ads. They’ll ignore it.
But if you know from wallet intelligence that they’re a trader, you can reach them with a completely different message:
That’s the difference between a lost user and a new top-tier stakeholder in your economy.
The most expensive mistake in Web3 gaming isn’t building a bad game.
It’s building a great game and marketing it to the wrong persona.
Gaming is the most expensive segment to acquire users in Web3.
When CPWs run this high, you cannot afford to aim at the wrong persona.
That’s why wallet intelligence isn’t a “nice-to-have” but it’s the foundation of any sustainable UA strategy.
Axie Infinity’s on-chain community proves what most projects are still missing:
Your players aren’t just gamers. They’re trader-gamers.
The next generation of Web3 games will win by:
Jiho’s Take on the Future:
“What’s missing with Ronin DeFi is actually a gamification layer on top of it. Gamers love rituals, they love routines. They respond really well to incentives for certain actions.”
Wallet intelligence is how you do it.
Without it, you’re not just wasting ad spend but you’re missing the real users who define your economy.
The Axie Infinity analysis is just one example of how wallet intelligence can uncover the truth about audiences in Web3.
Industry leaders like Jiho from Sky Mavis see the value in data-driven experimentation to move crypto beyond echo chambers. Our role is to provide the clarity that validates conviction, and challenges assumptions.
And while this case focused on Axie’s community, the same approach drives results across our client base.
For instance:
