Analytics of gaming smart contracts by examining the Cryptokitties Game. Part 3
Tags: Smart Contracts, Ethereum, Analytics, Cryptokitties, Blockchain

Continue study of Cryptokitties game. To read from the very beginning follow the link and link2.

What needs to be done to increase the number of transactions?

All in all, the number of transactions depends on two reasons — the size of the audience and the intensity of the gaming process. Regarding the first factor we have already talked about above — this is primarily analytics, marketing and business strategy — then the second one is mostly connected with the developer of a smart contract.

Cryptokitties smart contract methods called

Also you need to get to know why the players like this or that game. Such data can be obtained by analyzing the statistics on the methods called. If a bet was made, say, on the crossing of cats, but the audience is interested in the auction part of the DApp, then it may be worthwhile to adjust the logic of the game. Chaingraph.io easily provides you with these data: one may calculate not only the overall retention to the smart contract, but also to the each of the contract methods.

The intensity of Repeated Calls to Cryptokitties methods

The lack of demand for some methods can be associated with problems on user interface, errors when making a transaction, and even the amount of gas needed. Therefore, it is necessary to have constantly updated relevant statistics on all technical aspects of the decentralized application: trace not only external calls but internal ones as well, event logs, gas statistics, etc.

Events that triggered on Cryptokitties Smart Contract

Have there ever been any fraudulent activities?

It is almost impossible to foresee all the vulnerabilities and loopholes of your application, but you can minimize the likelihood of their occurrence and rapidly track the possible failure if happens . The first may be implemented by the Security Check service, which detects possible bugs in the smart contract code. For the second item you need a tool to monitor user activity. All these instruments are at the disposal as soon as you start using Chaingraph.io.

Chaingraph.io: Security Check Tool

Chaingraph.io: Live Section

Some examples of atypical user behavior on the example of CryptoKitties:

A kitty bought for 600 Eth

Buying and selling kitty from one and the same account may testify on a bubble of statistics and kitty price. Without analyzing the situation, a third-party user can observe a picture of active trades of a certain token, but this can only be a game to create the illusion of its “demand”. Such action can lead the local market of the application to undesirable consequences and the developer, at least, should be aware of the current economic situation in order to react adequately to it.

The addresses that were involved into a transaction for 600 Eth

Kitties with three hundred resale

Next is one more illustration of cheating statistics, this time the number of sales. More than a dozen kittytokens are far ahead from the nearest top (the gap is 20–30 times). If to go deeper it becomes evident that all 16 Kitties that have approximately the same number of transfers (about 300) were transmitted through the Auctionity smart contract for the same price. The representative of this crypto-auction commented that those actions were made to demonstrate the capabilities of the service, to boost initial stats and are not real sales. Perhaps this is a good example that statistics alone sometimes is not enough, it should be digested first.

The gap in the statistics on the number of cat sales

What needs to be done so that users buy and sell more active?

The answer to this question is mainly got from two previous ones. With the stable game process, the increase of the audience and the interest to the DApp, apart from gaining more transactions you also get the increase in value for your token. Also, bear in mind that cryptogames are about money. Therefore, the trading volume of your token depends on the economic success of the entire project, that is composed of many aspects. Competent analysis gives an understanding to which parts of the project you should pay attention foremost.

Live Section that allows for tracking activity in the real mode

Instead of a conclusion

What does the user need to do to make money by selling or buying cats?

These are several cases:

Long Play

Buy a rare (exclusive, special) cat, preferably at some in-game event. Wait. Monitor the graphs of user activity (the number of transactions, the number of accounts calling the smart contract). When bursts of activity happen, put up a cat for sale at an inflated price. Gain profit.

Fancy Boom

Monitor the occurrence of the event on the crossing of Fancy cats. Buy the maximum number of cats with the required genes. Quickly crossbreed new fancy cats. All kitties that have the right genes that remained after receiving fancy cats put up for sale a little more expensive than the buying price. A couple of fancy cats sell immediately at an average price in the market. The rest leave on the Long Play. Gain profit

Hard Illusion Risk

Create a number of Ethereum addresses — these will be pseudo players. Trade kitties between them, breedcross, etc, i.e. create an ecosystem with a local economy. Choose one cat or more for promotion — preferably with some special feature (interesting name, description, body part, etc). Create around it an artificial picture of demand: resell it for big money, boost the price, offer for sale on Opensea.io. The bigger and more unexpected the numbers are — the more interesting. It is advisable the Kitty to be covered in the crypto-media. Sell a cat at a high price. Gain profit.

What does the Cryptokitties Team need to do to attract more players?

Airdrop

Get statistics on the most active players of other decentralized games that have not played cats yet. Send them an egg with a cat.

Affiliate Advertising

Analyze the first environment of CryptoKitties users. Detect which other decentralized applications the audience uses. For example, online casino Dice2Win, cryptokitties-similar-like games Blockchain Cuties or collection game MLB Champions. Analyze the smart contracts of competitors and figure out regions with potential audience. In this case, it is even not necessary to determine the region, it is enough to compare the graphs (data shown in UTC +3):

Number of Requests per Hour for January,2019 — May,2019 for CryptoKitties:

for Dapp: MLB Champions:

for Axie Infinity:

for 0xUniverse:

for Dice2Win:

Out of the charts above, 0xUniverse matches the best: the region coincides and a large number of CryptoKitties users play this game.

4. Start cross-promotion (preferably from 9 pm till 2 am (UTC +3)).

5. The idea is to exchange tokens if some special conditions are met. For example, if you have certain kittytokens, then you can get a bonus in another game and vice versa.

Regional events and advertising

By analyzing the activity of the audience, you can hypothesize the time zone of most users. Add information from the application database and get the most active regions. We, in contrast to the developers, are limited in obtaining information about the IP-addresses of players, so we can only assume: the main audience of the game is located in the American region. It is more likely to talk about the United States (especially the eastern coast) and Canada, however, as an option, it may be a country of South America. Now you can attach gaming events to events of importance for this region: Christmas (cat-Santa), Halloween (cat-zombie), Thanksgiving (cat-turkey 0_o), Black Friday (cat-discount 0_0), etc. Do not forget to monitor the figures and the reaction for each activity and thus, single out the most profitable regions.

Hope you found our series of articles useful and interesting.

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