The top 10 Metaverse projects' third-quarter trade volume may have decreased by 80% from the second quarter, but according to analytics, interest in virtual worlds is still high.
Why the drop?
Recently, the Metaverse industry has been subjected to a significant bit of bad attention, notably with claims of poor user engagement on specific platforms, such as Decentraland (1) and Meta (2), which they have denied. While trading volumes fell precipitously in Q3, according to a study from DappRadar (3) published on October 20, the average number of NFT sales for these ten projects only fell by 11.55% from Q2 to Q3.
Lower trading volumes, according to DappRadar, may indicate falling asset prices and not necessarily a lack of interest, adding that:
“We consider this a bullish sign because it shows that the hype for these types of projects hasn’t decreased. Instead, the fall of cryptocurrency prices has affected the projects’ overall trading volume instead of a lack of interest.”
However, there is a caveat to these assertions. In Q3, NFT sales counts for eight of the top ten Metaverse projects significantly decreased, with Otherside by Yuga Labs seeing a 74% decline.
Prices of virtual lands floors are falling.
The floor pricing for NFT land plots had, according to DappRadar's analysis, fallen by an average of 75%, which would have contributed to the sharp decline in trade volumes. While the value of any property, whether actual or virtual, is susceptible to fluctuations, "Metaverse real estate is now severely depreciated," according to DappRadar, who also said that the falling prices are consistent with the wider bear market of the cryptocurrency industry. Last week, DappRadar had to defend its metaverse statistics, which were taken to suggest that websites like Decentraland had fewer than 40 daily active users.
The company said that their user data tool did not include "non-blockchain-based activity," such as users who did not make any purchases, and only tracked users' interactions with a blockchain, often in the form of transactions. On October 10, The Sandbox tweeted that during the past 30 days, it had reached 39,000 daily active users and 201,000 monthly active users. Decentraland also stated that as of October 8, there were 8,000 daily active users and 56,697 monthly active users.
Is there hope?
The Sandbox and the formerly Minecraft-based platform NFT Worlds V2 were the main drivers of the positive movement, with gains in NFT sale counts of 190% and 79%, respectively. This results from the excitement around The Sandbox's Alpha Season 3, which provides a variety of brand-new gameplay opportunities and treasures. While removing NFT Worlds V2 from Minecraft may have been viewed as a "buying opportunity," its NFTs' value fell by 90% in Q3.
