History has just been rewritten. In the last 24 hours one game developer earned more than $500,000 from Ethereum game. But let’s start from scratch.

I am familiar with this data because I run a website called DappRadar. It tracks most of Ethereum games and ranks them based on the 24-hour performance. Check it out to find new apps! But let’s keep going.

What is an Ethereum game ?

We call these games as Ethereum games because their code runs in Ethereum blockchain. Most often not all the code, but the one that is responsible for the main logic of the game.

What is in it for me ?

Almost all Ethereum games have one thing in common — they are all open source. It means that everyone can read the code of the game and make sure it does not have any shady intentions.

Imagine a private MMORPG game server where admins and owners have strict permissions and they have no way to sell superb weapons for real money. That is the power of blockchain. No corruption. You can code these permissions and everyone can read them to make sure you are not cheating.

And CryptoCountries is one of these transparent Ethereum games.

What is CryptoCountries ?

CryptoCountries is an Ethereum game where you can purchase a land on virtual map. Once you purchase a land for a certain price, that price increases and anyone can buy it from you too. If that happens, you receive that amount to your wallet. Basically, if someone buys a land from you, you earn Ether.

How does the developer earn ?

I have read the code of the game and from each transaction developer gets a fee. The fee is 2–5% of transaction value. The bigger the value is, the lower the fee percent is. For example, buying a land for 10 ETH would have a 2% fee while purchasing one for 0.05 ETH would cost a 5% fee.

But… $500,000 in 24 hours?

Yep. Simple as that. CryptoCountries went viral this morning and in less than 24 hours its users made transactions for 31,546 ETH. That is roughly $28,600,000 (according to this moment’s Ether course of $906).

We already know that the lowest fee for a transaction is 2% and we stick to this number. $28,600,000 * 0.02 = $572,000. This is the lowest amount the developer could have earned if all the transactions were over 5 Ether. It could have been 1 million dollars, it is hard to calculate the exact amount. But we clearly know that it was over half a million in… one day.