DappRadar, the world’s largest platform for decentralized blockchain apps, has produced a report indicating that, despite the crypto bear market, interest in metaverse projects remained high in the third quarter of 2022. Even while virtual land sales dropped by 37.54% from the previous quarter, the report shows that interest in metaverse projects remains high. However, Q3 virtual world trading volume fell by 91.61% to $90 million.
Curiously, even though sales for the top 10 metaverse projects (excluding Axie and Upland) fell by an average of 11.55% in Q3, the report calls this a “bullish sign.” DappRadar claims this demonstrates how enthusiasm for such endeavours hasn’t waned. The report did find that the average USD trade volume for the top 10 metaverse projects this quarter fell by 80%, but that did not include Axie or Upland.
The total amount of money transacted in the metaverse dropped by 91.61% from the $893 million recorded in the preceding quarter. Also, land purchases dropped by 37.54% from the previous quarter to 52,224. This suggests that the buzz surrounding these kinds of projects has not completely died down but is instead entering a period of consolidation. Metaverse tokens such as APE and SAND have also been hit hard by the crypto winter.
Investments keep flowing into the Metaverse
Despite the market downturn, funding for metaverses and Web3 games is still substantial. Despite receiving the smallest share, Q3 nevertheless saw $1.2 billion invested in the metaverse, out of a total of $7 billion inflows so far in 2022. The largest percentage of the funds (38.5%) went toward blockchain-based video games and metaverse projects. Meanwhile, 33.5% of the funds were allocated to infrastructure, 22.9% to investment firms, and the remaining 5.5% to media and NFTs.
The Sandbox and Decentraland remain resilient
Among the most popular metaverse environments, The Sandbox and Decentraland have not lost their momentum. Reaching 200,000 active monthly users is a huge success for the Sandbox Alpha Season 3 gaming platform. The platform also says that there are 39,000 individuals who log in to the virtual world every day, with 1.6 million people accessing The Sandbox website in the last month alone.
Similarly, Decentraland performed admirably in the metaverse. The number of users visiting Decentraland’s virtual parcels each day increased by 6% to 56,000 in September thanks to a string of events. Since around 800 individual wallets engage with Decentraland’s contracts on a daily basis, including meta-transactions, the blockchain activity observed by UAW also provides a bright picture for the virtual world.
ENS domains soar
September saw a record-breaking 437,365 new ‘.eth’ domains registered on the ENS, beating out the previous high of 378,805 set in July. Registrations as a whole climbed to almost 2.6 million, and the resulting $5.5 million in revenue is up 72% year over year. That proves that this market segment could be on its way up as the metaverse gains traction.