Table of Contents Abstract Introduction Background The Sandbox The Data A: Transaction Graph B: Bow-tie Model C: The Sandbox Support D: The Sandbox Scandals E: Whales Methodology Results Related Work Conclusion Resource Contributions Acknowledgements and References Abstract Abstract Abstract Introduction Introduction Introduction Background The Sandbox Background Background The Sandbox The Sandbox The Sandbox The Data A: Transaction Graph B: Bow-tie Model C: The Sandbox Support D: The Sandbox Scandals E: Whales The Data The Data A: Transaction Graph B: Bow-tie Model C: The Sandbox Support D: The Sandbox Scandals E: Whales A: Transaction Graph B: Bow-tie Model C: The Sandbox Support D: The Sandbox Scandals E: Whales Methodology Methodology Methodology Results Results Results Related Work Related Work Related Work Conclusion Resource Contributions Acknowledgements and References Conclusion Conclusion Resource Contributions Acknowledgements and References Resource Contributions Resource Contributions Acknowledgements and References Acknowledgements and References Conclusion Conclusion VII. CONCLUSION In the end, we saw that most support from outside parties received by The Sandbox did not significantly impact its longterm activity. The only exceptions found were Warner Music Group and deadmau5, with deadmau5’s supposed impact likely attributable to the general rise of GameFi that coincides with their support. This means that these attempts to attract users via popular traditional brands did not result in any shift in public perception that legitimized The Sandbox enough to attract a new wave of consistent activity. DApps hoping to achieve this will have to look to other strategies. This approach may support this end, but it needs to be part of a larger plan. The scandals looked at also had largely insignificant effects on the long-term activity of The Sandbox other than the Ronin hack, which shook the entire GameFi space. However, this could be because the other three scandals occurred after The Sandbox’s prime when its activity was already very low. This indicates that the users still involved in The Sandbox at the time of these scandals were more invested and less likely to be shaken by these scandal levels. Thus, these users form The Sandbox’s true core user base that will survive these perturbations. Our analysis showed that whales are involved in most transactions in The Sandbox environment and largely drive the overall activity. We also saw that many whales dropped The Sandbox and stopped being whales. However, we found that these whales were similarly involved to the surviving whales regarding The Sandbox’s activity. This driving force that whales have is significant since it means that they are largely responsible for the activity on The Sandbox, so it could be beneficial to target whales directly when trying to drive up activity in GameFi dApps. Ultimately, GameFi markets, like DeFi, are very unstable and difficult to control. Trying to stabilize those markets positively through third-party support and events is a poor strategy. Viable strategies should instead target whales directly as they are a small subset of the user base with substantial sway over the market and, thus, have much more potential to produce significant results. On the other hand, once a GameFi market has stabilized to a lower state, it is significantly more resilient to both positive and negative events. It remains stable, meaning a small but reliable user base has formed. In combination, this means that whales need to be targeted during unstable periods, but an invested user base needs to be built up over time for the future as those users will stick with the game past its prime. Building a dedicated user base is something that traditional web-based games have excelled at, so GameFi has a great legacy from which to build. Following this approach, GameFi dApps can achieve early high success followed by a lower but stable success in the long term Resource Contributions Resource Contributions Our research artifacts (code, documentation, and graphs) are shared under the Apache 2.0 license. We maintain an opensource GitHub repository for all our artifacts: https://github. com/decentralized-social-media/gameFi Acknowledgements Acknowledgements This work was partially supported by the Algorand Centres of Excellence program managed by the Algorand Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent the views of the Algorand Foundation. References References [1] D. 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