Welcome to Metaverse Market Analysis! Every Monday we bring you the latest stats and data on the overall state of the metaverse market, and this week’s article is our monthly metaverse market overview. This column is in partnership with the incredible team from OneLand, a financial platform for virtual lands in the metaverse.
Highlights:
- Ethereum completes its Merge to Proof of Stake, but $ETH down 14.4% for the month.
- The Sandbox finally gets some ROI from Alpha Season 3, but who is buying?
- Are Metaverse land caps on the rise again for the first time since the heights of May? Otherside and Decentraland solidify gains.
Market Analysis
Two words on the tongues of everyone in crypto in September were “The Merge”. The media were awash with reports and conjecture on Ethereum’s switch to Proof of Stake and how it will impact everything from Bitcoin, to energy, the environment, NFTs, blockchain gaming, regulation and, of course, the price of ETH.
ETH’s price failed to rally in the days prior to The Merge on September 15 and, in fact, fell for a week in its aftermath to finally end the month down 14.4% at $1,328, about 20% above what it was when the Merge date was first announced.
The lower ETH price, plus good performances from Decentraland and Otherside helped see OneLand’s aggregate Metaverse Land Cap re-cross the 1 million ETH mark, which it last fell below back in August.
The combined market cap of The Sandbox, Decentraland, Voxels, Somnium Space, WorldwideWebb, NFT Worlds, Otherside, BYOPills, Arcade Land and Treeverse ended the month up 11.5% to just short of 1.018 million ETH, which is the first monthly rise since the market highs of May.
Increased trading activity combined with better pricing action saw the land caps of Decentraland and Otherside receive boosts of 37% and 13.5% respectively, pushing Decentraland’s back above 250k ETH, while Otherside now flirts with 500k ETH for the first time since August.
Trading volume was up for both The Sandbox (+36%) and Decentraland (39%). The Sandbox is finally seeing some ROI after its second month of AlphaSeason3, with sales up 67% in September. Decentraland is on a 6th week of recovering land cap, even with trading activity far below that of The Sandbox.
There were weekly spikes in average price for Decentraland (+45%), Otherside (+26.5%) and Somnium Space (+155%) which has seen a few better sales of late. Besides these three, trading volumes were down across the board.
It comes after a second month of depreciating ETH prices, down 14.4%. The Metaverse Heat Index mirrored ETH, seeing a similar monthly decline (-13.5%) to end the month at $29.31, and below $30 for its first time in 15 months.
Metaverse Projects
The Sandbox
It took an offer of 3 million $SAND in rewards as part of a new LANDholder-exclusive staking program to rejuvenate trading activity in The Sandbox as it ended its second month of a 10-week long AlphaSeason3.
Trading volume in The Sandbox in September was up 36.3% MoM. A rare 20 ETH sale on Sep 3, only the second sale in 4 months above 10 ETH, no doubt helped. However, no other big sales followed, pushing average prices down (-18.6%) for a second month, and relying on a new staking program, low prices and a cheaper $ETH to keep the trades bubbling.
Following the staking program’s launch on Sep 22, trading volumes and unique traders spiked. On the same day, unique holders also began to fall, suggesting more existing holders picking up LAND, and not necessarily due to any broader appeal of AlphaSeason3. Holders of LAND in The Sandbox ended the month down 4.2%. Besides, The Sandbox’s land cap continues to slide, down another 11% in September to 171k ETH – now 32% less than Decentraland’s, which it flipped in July and remained higher than until Sep 4.
As usual, The Sandbox announced a bunch of new partnerships – notable among them, South Korean broadcasting network MBC, DBS Bank, esports group Faze Clan, PC gaming brand Softstar, and CyberKongz. Both Faze Clan and Softstar will offer virtual experiences in The Sandbox.
Decentraland
Decentraland’s land cap ended the month where it began it – with land caps rising, up 37% MoM to 251,551 ETH and a first monthly increase since May. Following a quieter August, some more expensive sales dominated the skyline on Decentraland’s Trade Plots chart in September, while average prices (+45%) have been rising ever since mid-August.
NFT Worlds
The best we might say for NFT Worlds’ VRE September economy is that things seem at least to be leveling out after the collapse that followed Microsoft’s decision in July to ban NFTs from Minecraft.
NFT Worlds’ land cap fell just 2.4% for the month to 33,361 ETH and average prices, while down badly, at least came back amid more signs of life appearing towards the end of the month, with 65 ETH in Worlds sold across one 4-day period.
There is one main goal now though, as the team prepares for their new game – a playable Alpha is earmarked for Q1 2023. On Sep 30, NFT Worlds announced an integration with blockchain gaming API MetaFab. The $WRLD token will have default support in MetaFab and NFT Worlds anticipate use cases for the $WRLD token (+16%) beyond NFT Worlds.
Worldwide Webb
WorldwideWebb doesn’t stop integrating more NFT collections into its metaverse. September alone saw them bring in NFT collections from Fancy Bears, Grillz Gang, SuperNormal, Moonbirds Oddities, Bitlectro Labs, Rekt Wold and Chimpers.
It was not enough to reinvigorate purchases of Apartments however, with WorldwideWebb’s market cap, trading volume and average price all slumping in September.
Two good trading days, one at the start and one at the end of the month, could not disguise that the bear market simply rolls on for WorldwideWebb. Signs in August of a turnaround were short-lived, with trading volume, land cap and average price all down MoM.
WorldwideWebb’s VRE market has been on a downhill slope since March, the average price hitting just 0.496 ETH in September. Prices have not been this low in fact since Jan 2021.
Otherside
Otherside kicked off September with a slew of top sales, buoyed by Yuga Labs’ exciting new trailer video for its signature metaverse. A bumper day of sales on Thursday the 8th, led by the sale of Otherdeed #12 for 279 ETH (then followed up by sales of 250, 229, 140, 110, 93, 75 and 72 ETH), propelled its land market cap northwards 20%.
From that point, Otherside’s land cap flirted with the half-a-million-ETH mark for the rest of the month, rounding out September at 494,613 ETH, up 13.5%.
BYOPills
September was a quieter month than August for land sales in the BYOVERSE, though total land cap still rose 8.1% for the month. There was a slight surge in trading once BYOPills and Legends of Venari kicked off their cross-world event, and another one when BYOPills did the same with Galaxy Fight Club on the 27th.
Nevertheless, besides two sales for 6.0 and 5.35 ETH, no others in the month topped 1.5 ETH, and trading volume was down 23% MoM.
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