Trading volume is down with the rest of the cryptocurrency market, but worlds in the metaverse are retaining users.
DappRadar – a Dapp discovery and analytics platform – has released a report covering the current state of the Metaverse, its usage, and its adoption levels.
Although metaverse-related trading has slowed massively this year, other metrics keep interested in the space.
Is the metaverse still active?
The “metaverse”, according to DappRadar, has two meanings. One refers to the “classic metaverse” that is based on Web 2 technologies, fusing current gaming and social experiences with online augmented reality. The other clearly refers to the “blockchain metaverse”, which enables digital commerce in a decentralized way – in particular through NFTs (for example, virtual real estate.)
The firm noted that trading volume in virtual metaverse worlds dropped by 91% in the third quarter, to just $90 million. For the top 10 projects in the metaverse, volume fell by nearly 80%.
A smaller decline of 37.54% was seen in land sales, a sign that interest in the area is not fading as quickly. However, the minimum price of virtual land has fallen by 75%.
“In September, only 0.7% of Decentraland’s more than 97,000 properties were listed and sold, despite there being 1.48 buyers for every seller of land,” he continued.
DappRadar said that virtual world projects had a “calmer quarter” after the Otherside NFT mint in May. However, both Sandbox and Decentraland have continued to be some of the most popular projects throughout the year. The former has maintained an average of 750 wallets interacting with its contracts per day ever since and has more than quadrupled its Active Unique Wallets (UAW) count in the Sandbox market.
For its part, Decentraland’s daily active users have hovered around 792 since May, largely thanks to Pride Month in June and Art Week in August.
“Despite the economic uncertainty currently facing markets, interest in metaverse platforms continues to build at increasing rates,” said DappRadar.
Tokens crash, fundamentals thrive
In Q3, metaverse-based tokens lost roughly 60% of their value. This is in line with the rest of the cryptocurrency market, where market leaders such as Bitcoin have also lost 70% from their all-time highs.
However, other statistics are more encouraging: more than 1.12 million ENS domains were registered last quarter, 72% more than in the second quarter.
