Metaverse Hype Remains Stirred Despite 80 Percent Dip in Trading Volume

The top ten metaverse projects have witnessed an 80 percent downfall in the third quarter of this year. Despite the volatility, however, the interest in metaverse project has shown no signs of dwindling, a report by analytics firm DappRadar claimed recently. Metaverse trading volume dropped 91.61 percent to $90 million (roughly Rs. 740 crore) in the third quarter of 2023. It is however noteworthy that despite the drop in trading volume, the sales around metaverse only saw a 11 percent decline on an average from Q2.

“In September, only 0.7 percent of Decentraland's more than 97,000 properties were listed and sold, despite 1.48 buyers for every land seller. The Sandbox Alpha Season 3 hosted over 90 experiences, with 4 million people registered with a wallet, and over 2,00,000 monthly active users. This helped the platform increase its sales count by 190 percent from the previous quarter,” the DappRadar report said.

At this point, metaverses like Decentraland, CryptoVoxels, and Somnium Space are moving toward becoming social platforms. Simultaneously, The Sandbox, Treeverse, and Ember Sword metaverses are emerging as hotspots for play-to-earn games with virtual real estate features.

The reason why metaverse trading volumes have taken a hit could just be reflective of the slipping asset prices that have pulled down the total crypto valuation lower than the trillion-dollar mark.

“In Q3, the sales count of the top 10 metaverse projects decreased on average by 11.55 percent. 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,” the report noted.

Owing to the hype around this virtual universe industry, Meta has initiated partnerships and projects to finetune its metaverse-related ideas.

Chipmaker Qualcomm has also struck a partnership with Spanish telecom giant Telefonica to work jointly on promising metaverse projects that explores the potential of fully functional virtual universes.

The metaverse market is expected to reportedly reach $800 billion (roughly Rs. 59,58,700 crore) by 2024.