Sunflower Farmers NFT game breaks Polygon with gas fees reaching $1

The play-to-earn game – Sunflower Famers, has resulted in a 16-fold increase in Polygon’s gas fees. In fact, Polygon users have complained about the congestion issues on various social media channels. Moreover, Sunflower Farmers has become the network’s biggest gas burner in the last 24 hours. Already, they are consuming 42 per cent of all transaction fees on Polygon.

Sunflower Farmers NFT is creating network congestion

Basically, Sunflower Farmers was launched at the end of December 2021. Until now, this play-to-earn game has attracted over 175,000 active wallets. As a result, it’s among the most popular game titles.

However, the game is creating trouble for the blockchain network. For instance, Double Protocol, an NFT rental protocol announced yesterday that it would delay the release of its Alpha Pass due to the Polygon’s network congestion.

Why the agriculture-themed game is causing so many issues?

Firstly, the Sunflower Farmers’ smart contract awards the players with SFF ( Sunflower Farm) tokens. Therefore, players can earn tokens by consistently performing in-game tasks such as planting and harvesting crops. Additionally, these tokens can be used to purchase NFTs and other collectables.

Moving along, the game incentivizes players to compete fiercely and obtain as many tokens as possible. Given that, the game’s tokenomics determine that early players receive a larger share of rewards. To drive scarcity, the token supply rapidly diminishes over time.

What’s more, players seeking a larger share of the game tokens have to pay high gas fees. Simply put, the gas fees approve transactions to new blocks on Polygon. Currently, SFF token value outweighs the cost of gas.

According to PolygonScan, gas fees on Polygon have risen from around 30 Gwei (or roughly $0.03) to around 500 Gwei, valued at $0.44, since yesterday. During the congestion period, the fees also frequently exceeded 1000 Gwei (approximately $1). Furthermore, users are becoming increasingly concerned about how a single dApp can cause such a gas fee increase.

In a Twitter post, security analyst Thomas Kerbl noted that the incentivized farming game may have attracted a “ton of bots trying to extract value.” As per DappRadar, Sunflower Farmers processed approximately 1.1 million transactions from over 330,000 users in the previous day.

Lastly, the Polygon team has not yet stated how it intends to address congestion caused by dApps like Sunflower Farmers. Polygon’s scaling arsenal includes zero-knowledge Layer 2 solutions like Hermez and Mir, in addition to their flagship sidechain. Such solutions could assist the project in meeting future scalability challenges.