Recently, the metaverse industry has been subjected to a substantial amount of bad press, especially around stories that claimed there was little user engagement on some platforms, like Decentraland and Meta, which those companies have denied.
Decentraland claims that as of October 8, there were 8,000 daily active users and 56,697 monthly active users. Companies like Nike, Adidas, Coca Cola and Samsung have set up their offices and outlets in the ‘virtual destination.’
While trading volumes fell sharply in quarter three, according to a study from DappRadar published on October 20, the average number of NFT sales for these ten projects only fell by 11.55% from Q2 to Q3.
The top 10 metaverse projects’ third-quarter trading volume may have decreased by 80% from the second quarter, but according to analytics company DappRadar, interest in virtual worlds is still high. Lower trading volumes may simply reflect declining asset values and not necessarily indicate a lack of interest, according to DappRadar.
Because it demonstrates that the excitement surrounding these kinds of ventures hasn’t diminished, they view this as a bullish indicator. Rather than a decline of interest in the projects, the decline in overall cryptocurrency prices is primarily responsible for a negative impact on the total trading volume. These opinions should be qualified by the fact that in Q3, the non-fungible token (NFT) sales counts for eight of the top ten metaverse projects significantly decreased, with Otherside by Yuga Labs experiencing a 74% decline for the quarter.
Trading volumes may have declined so much because, according to a report, the floor pricing for NFT land plots had decreased by, on average, 75%.
The value of every piece of real estate, whether it be virtual or physical, is susceptible to fluctuations, but according to DappRadar, “Metaverse real estate is currently very depreciated,” adding that the falling prices are consistent with the wider bear market in the cryptocurrency industry.
The company added that its user data tool did not include “non-blockchain-based activities,” such as users who did not make any purchases and only tracked users’ interactions with a blockchain, typically in the form of transactions.