Is Illuvium primed for a big launch? - Economy Deep Dive
I will go through some statistics I have been analysing to determine what Illuvium's launch could look like
Illuvium’s official main net launch is on July 25, and with the Private Beta being live for almost 2 months now we can analyse a lot of data and other metrics. This will help us come to a better understanding of the Illuvium economy and what I think will happen throughout August.
Here is what I will be covering in this newsletter:
What current Daily active users tell us about Illuvium
What Illuvidex analytics tell us about the current economy
How I think these metrics will affect the launch
[PAID] Which Illuvials and other Illuvium NFTs I expect to perform well in August
We will cover all of that here and more so please keep reading. I am excited to share this journey with you.
Please don’t forget to subscribe below! It really means a lot and together we can tackle the Illuvium metaverse better than anyone else.
How many Daily Active users does Illuvium actually have?
It’s no secret that the launch of Illuvium’s Test-net Beta saw major growth for active users, but why are we now seeing a decline?
As you can see in the chart below there has been a consistent 4,000 active players since Illuvium’s test-net launch. We have also seen a drop of 1,000-1,500 players ever since Season 2 of Illuvium began. It is difficult to pinpoint why this is, but I can assume not only is finding ores and crafting equipment less exciting than hunting Illuvials but it does appear as though Illuvials have become significantly more rare.
I will say that in light of that, 4,000 players have consistently played for over 2 months now which is no small feat, and it still comes and goes in waves. As we draw closer to Main Net launch and people complete all of the major milestones, the game becomes less exciting and people don’t want to overinvest time when their test-net NFTs will become worthless on July 25. Below we can also take a look at the Weekly active wallets which helps us paint a more clear picture.
I should first mention that these charts don’t show the full picture, I have simply downloaded every single Mint for Illuvials and Gems and then figured out how many unique wallets are active over the time period. This chart shows a clear decline in the short term users, leaving only the dedicated players. Its easy to guess that players purely interested in the airdrop will likely get less value for time in Season 2 and have abandoned the game in search of other opportunities.
Even though the game improvements have been spectacular, some of the rebalancing has left the game feeling less fun than in Season 1. Above you can see a chart of how many Scoriox have been caught each day up until July 15. Although Illuvials aren’t prioritised as much in Season 2, this decline is a factor of 20. It’s easy to understand why the game is slowly losing long-term players as the game has become significantly more difficult and less exciting.
The market is active, but is the Illuvium economy sound?
Although the prices are inflated due to Monopoly money, we can learn a lot about the overall strength of Illuvium’s economic design from these stats
Below you can see the price and volume history of a non-holo Scoriox, keeping consistent with the charts above. As you can see in the data, the volume and price of the Scoriox was highly dependent on the airdrop season at the time and now that the missions don’t reward the trading of assets, the median price has greatly decreased.
But this isn’t the entire picture. The missions reward 2 key aspects of Illuvials, capturing Illuvials and fusing/evolving Illuvials. Below is a chart of Singe, given it is Tier 4 and Stage 2 it is a prime example of an Illuvial you may need to buy so you can fuse them and acquire a Sear. Not only has its volume held up well, but its overall price as well.
This actually bodes well for Illuvium especially as Stage 3 battles just became way more difficult. People need to buy Illuvials to fulfill milestones, combat difficult opponents and build teams in the Ascendant arena. This data shows us that if an Illuvial aligns with the priorities of the game at any given time, then the economy can quickly turn into a well oiled machine with lots of activity and great price discovery.
Will Illuvium’s launch live up to the hype?
Some unknowns are still at play but ultimately things are looking positive for Illuvium
Today we took an overarching look at the Illuvium economy to see if the thesis we have been waiting on for over 3 years holds up in practice. Although the data isn’t perfect until the game is on main-net I think its easy to see that its running properly. People are buying and selling assets where they need to fill milestones or collection bonuses and players are capturing as many Illuvials as possible.
If we combine the two datasets it gets really interesting, lets take 2 individual days for our analysis. June 30 and July 7.
June 30
9,000 weekly active wallets
5,000 daily active wallets
258 Scoriox caught
Median Price: 20E
Scoriox traded in 1 day: 32
July 7
8,500 weekly active wallets
4,500 daily active wallets
10 Scoriox caught
Median Price: 16E
Scoriox traded in 1 day: 1
The comparison here is quite clear, although the active users is comparable on both days, 25x less Scoriox were caught and 30x less Scoriox were traded. Not only this but the median price for the asset only moved 25% showing that they needed the Ethereum badly enough to hold on tightly to their beloved snake and not drop the price too far.
The airdrop messes up a lot of the data as it artificially aligned player incentives but it’s easy to see that if people want to sell an asset then they will and there are often buyers prepared to fill those orders since even with 258 mints, Scoriox is simply hard to encounter. Although the Illuvials are now too rare, it goes to show that players were previously typically showing a 2% find rate for Tier 4 Stage 3 illuvials on any given day, many of which were travelling 50+ times.
I have been digging deep to uncover what Illuvials are the most popular
The balance for the game has been continuously changing but it’s easy to see which Illuvials are sought after by players and collectors alike
