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🥁 What Happened to the Metaverse?

Late 2021 to 2022 was a wild year for the Metaverse. Coming off the DeFi high, everyone and their financial advisor flocked to invest in Metaverse projects

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The BEN Team
April 15, 2023

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What happened to the Metaverse?

Late 2021 to 2022 was a wild year for the Metaverse. Coming off the DeFi high, everyone and their financial advisor flocked to invest in Metaverse projects after Zuckerberg rebranded Facebook to Meta like a stampede of bulls charging towards a red cape, except the cape was a coin flip that could make you a millionaire or send you to 0.

Metaverse projects were doubling in value every week, and brands were announcing ambitious plans for their own metaverses.

People were buying up for NFTs for tens of millions of dollars only to resell them for a few hundred dollars.

But this week we’re not going to talk about what caused this blockchain-powered Metaverse hype train with no brakes to spin out of control to the point where people were emptying their bank accounts into whatever NFT that was pumping that day. Instead, we’re just here to ask:

Is the Metaverse over?

Let's check out the bullish and bearish stats of the two most popular decentralized "Metaverse" projects out there, Decentraland and The Sandbox.

🐂 Bullish Stats

Decentraland

According to Decentraland, they had an eventful 2022, with the platform growing in a variety of ways and the Decentraland community contributing to its success by creating awesome experiences. Some of them even launched super cool projects with the help of DAO grants.

  • 2.7M NFTs Minted (+440% YOY)

  • 1M Unique Active Users (+12.9% YOY)

  • 161k Desktop Client Downloads

  • 143.9k Wearables Sold (+510% YOY)

  • 47.4k Scenes deployed with Decentraland’s SDK (+696% YOY)

  • 2.8k Events Created (+169% YOY)

  • 1.1k DAO Proposals (+95% YoY)

  • 100 Grants approved for a grand total of $6.2M

  • ~921k in MANA fees went to the DAO ($1.6M USD) to support Decentraland and fund grants

The Sandbox

The year 2022 was a significant milestone for The Sandbox's open gaming metaverse. The company came closer to achieving its vision of an open, decentralized metaverse that empowers creators through true digital ownership. They celebrated a year of milestones, including partnerships with celebrities and brands that defined the metaverse as a place of pop culture.

  • 375K installs of VoxEdit, The Sandbox's 3D modeling and animating software

  • 1M unique players across two gaming seasons

  • 4.5M registered users

  • 35+ collections of interoperable Avatars

  • 114,835 plots in the hands of the community

  • 56k monthly active users on average throughout the year

  • 62 minutes average session length

  • 193k monthly active users throughout the year

  • 10k experiences published in the Gallery

🐻Bearish Stats

Decentraland

  • 38 "active users" over a 24 hour period, according to DappRadar

  • 26,000 attendees to Decentraland's virtual fashion week, down from 108,000 last year.

  • $50,000 in weekly trading volume, down from $1 million weekly trading volume last year.

  • 20 to 30 people buying and selling Decentraland property on a weekly basis, according to The Block.

The Sandbox

  • 23% increase in the current supply of SAND tokens, as 348 million SAND tokens was unlocked on Feb 14 to seed and strategic investors.

  • 20% drop in the price of SAND after these unlocks. Since the supply is three billion, several other unlocks will eventually follow.

  • 522 “active users” in the same timeframe that Decentraland had 38, according to DappRadar.

In conclusion

Decentraland and The Sandbox are having some trouble, but it's not just them. Other blockchain-powered games and platforms, like Axie Infinity, are in the same boat. They're having a hard time getting people interested and keeping them around.

So, let's be real, the future of metaverse platforms may be up in the air, but we can't ignore how epic the potential is! I'm personally a huge fan of what the Metaverse could bring to the table.

With the tech getting better and new uses popping up, it's not crazy to think that the Metaverse could be one of the most mind-blowing tech innovations of our time.

Why? Stay tuned for next time 👀

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