It’s been a while since our little trip to Genesis City to learn about Decentraland and the blockchain metaverse. By boosting the volume of investments from both individuals and industry titans in the media, technology, fashion, and many other fields, the boom in the concepts of metaverse, NFT, and blockchain that we observed between the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022 has brought this world much closer to the general public.
However, as we near the end of the year, a lot has happened. For example, in mid-September, the Ethereum Merge, or the switch to the proof-of-stake method for a more sustainable market, was implemented. However, during the past several weeks, all the major cryptocurrencies have gradually lost value and momentum, generally reverting to levels last seen between 2020 and 2021. The same is true for Decentraland: in what state is the platform now, over a year after MANA exploded?
Slowly, MANA and Decentraland have reverted to their pre-boom states as a result of NFT’s diminished attraction to the general public and the media. A Market Cap of around 5.3 billion dollars was recorded in the start of 2022, with an all-time high of almost 9 billion dollars being reached at the end of November 2021, when the price of a single MANA increased to 5.48 dollars. Decentraland’s co-founder Ari Meilich stated in December of last year that there were around 18,000 active users daily and 300,000 monthly, indicating that the platform had a highly promising future.
The virtual world that is currently being offered to us is very different; data gathered by Arcane Research indicates that as early as May 2022 there were only 500 weekly active users, indicating a general downward trend for the leading video games in the market like The Sandbox, Illuvium, and Axie Infinity. These figures are supported by DappRadar’s real-time analysis of the top Ethereum games: in the case of Decentraland specifically, in the last 30 days it has decreased from 499 users to 499, a monthly decline of 12.3%, while on a weekly basis there are just over 100 unique users and about 300 transactions.To give you a reference point, other metaverses that are regarded as being among the “original metaverses,” such VRChat and Second Life, still report averages of over 5,000 individuals connecting on a regular basis, with daily peaks of over 30,000 users.
The data from NFT Stats further supports the declining interest in Decentraland: the average land price dropped to $4,380 from around $13,000 at the beginning of 2022, the market cap of MANA dropped to roughly $ 1.3 billion, and the value of a MANA has stabilized at pre-boom levels, at roughly $0.70. Simply put, present performance is not promising, and investors’ declining interest in investments with little or no intrinsic value has an influence on Decentraland’s lack of usefulness. These data are hardly shocking given the current state of the cryptocurrency market, but the fact that they have returned to their previous levels does not necessarily mean that the metaverses have definitively collapsed.
No lack of investment opportunities exists.
Large investors, however, don’t appear to be concerned about Decentraland’s depreciation; instead, they appear to be taking advantage of this time to purchase Parcel, which are NFT and land units in the game world that are 16×16 meters, as well as to begin collaborations and collaborative ventures.
