After nearly four years of building ChainDuel and deploying it at Bitcoin conferences around the world, we finally launched the new version.
Six days later, here's what happened.
The Numbers
- 2,213 unique impressions
- 16.6 minute average play session
- Players from multiple continents
A Surprise: WhatsApp
The biggest surprise was WhatsApp.
On the second day after launch, the number of WhatsApp link previews jumped from around 110 to more than 1,000.
Traffic peaked at 860 visitors in a single day, entirely through organic sharing.
Built for Nostr
Most visitors came from Nostr. The most common clients were Amethyst, Primal, Nostur, Ditto, and other Nostr apps.
The game also saw visitors from countries including Germany, Kenya, Bolivia, Brazil, South Africa, Peru and Thailand, showing how global the Bitcoin community already is.
We Also Learned Where the Friction Is
The first week wasn't about celebrating. Testing and logs showed where people got stuck.
The biggest obstacle was the challenge eligibility system. Several players reached the challenge screen but couldn't continue because they were missing a NIP-05 identity or hadn't yet followed the ChainDuel account on Nostr.
This Is Just the Beginning
The goal of this launch was to answer a simple question:
Will people discover, share and actually play a Lightning-native game online?
After six days, the answer looks encouraging. Now it's time to improve onboarding, reduce friction, and keep building.
Thanks to everyone who played, shared the game, reported bugs, or sent feedback.
See you in the arena
Follow Chain Duel:
Play: game.chainduel.net