The Metaverse is Still Popular Despite Bear Market: DappRadar

DappRadar – a Dapp discovery and analysis platform – has released a report covering the current state of the Metaverse, its use, and levels of adoption.

While metaverse-related trade has slowed massively this year, other metrics continued interest in the space. 

Is the Metaverse Still Active?

The “metaverse,” according to DappRadar, has two meanings. One refers to the “classical metaverse” that relies on Web 2 technologies, which fuse current gaming and social experiences with online, augmented reality. The other distinctly refers to the “blockchain metaverse,” which allows for digital commerce in a decentralized manner –, particularly through NFTs (ex. virtual real estate.)

In its report shared with CryptoPotato, the firm noted that trading volume in virtual metaverse worlds fell by 91% in Q3, down to just $90 million. For the top ten metaverse projects, volume fell by about 80%.

A lesser decline of 37.54% was seen in land sales – a sign that interest in that area isn’t fading as quickly.  However, the floor price of virtual lands has fallen by 75%

“In September, only 0.7% of Decentraland’s more than 97,000 properties were listed and sold, despite 1.48 buyers for every land seller,” it continued. 

Dappradar said virtual world projects had a “calmer quarter” after the Otherside NFT mint in May. However, Both the Sandbox and Decentraland have remained some of the most popular projects throughout the year. The former has maintained an average of 750 wallets interacting with its contracts per day since that time and has more than quadrupled its unique active wallet (UAW) count in the Sandbox marketplace. 

Meanwhile, Decentraland’s daily active users have remained around 792 since May, largely thanks to Pride month in June, and Art week in August. 

“Despite the economic uncertainty that the markets currently face, the interest in metaverse platforms keeps consolidating at growing 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 crypto market, where market leaders like Bitcoin are also down 70% from their all-time highs. 

Yet other stats are more bullish: over 1.12 million ENS domains were registered last quarter, 72% higher than in Q2.