Metaverse Market Analysis: August 15-21, 2022

Welcome to our new Metaverse Market Analysis column! Every Monday we’ll be bringing you the latest stats and data on the overall state of the metaverse market. This new column is in partnership with the incredible team from OneLand, a financial platform for virtual lands in the metaverse.

Highlights:

• Another week of falls in land caps across the Metaverse, as Decentraland takes another hit
• Somnium Space founder launches Web3 & censor-free social media platform
• Decentraland Art Week to kick off Aug 24
• The Sandbox hopes for a better turnaround on the eve of its Alpha Season 3

Market Data & Analysis

OneLand 7-day data shows aggregate land cap of the 7 metaverse projects down for a record 12th consecutive week (-2.88%), with trading volumes back up (16.94%) for a second consecutive week (+16.94%) and holders overall steady (-0.11%).

The increase in aggregate trading volume results mainly from Otherside’s top sale of 183 ETH, though The Sandbox’s volume was also up for the week, while the 5 other projects were down. Meanwhile, land caps for all projects with the exception of Somnium Space were in negative territory, notably Decentraland whose suffering finds little solace in what is fast becoming for it not just a crypto, but metaverse, winter, its temporary uptick of last week being quickly checked.

The Sandbox

Numbers of sales in The Sandbox were up week-on-week (+44%) but this lent to the selling side – with a further slide in average price (-4.6%) and top sale of just 3.5 ETH, its land cap continued its downhill run for a 4th consecutive week, this time by 5.8%. Holders remained steady for the week (+0.01%) compared to the dips of previous weeks.

Appearances can be deceiving. The Sandbox marches ahead with its marketing push on celebrities entering the space and contests to win $SAND, nevertheless it will be more interesting to see if this coming week’s launch of Alpha Season 3 does anything to turn the tide of LAND sales, more precisely in prices of LAND. Big weekly dips in the price of $SAND (-20%) and $ETH (-18.5%) hardly invigorated prices to the upside this past week – a 4.57% dip in the ETH average price representing, in fact, a 9.16% decline in USD.

Decentraland

It was not a good week for Decentraland. Things seemed to be gradually leveling out on the charts for Decentraland over recent weeks, but this past week saw the metaverse’s overall land cap suffer a big hit, down 7.4%.

6.38 ETH for a top sale might look good side by side with The Sandbox, but firstly, this was an Estate, and secondly, it was its lowest price of a weekly top sale this year. A 1.22% increase in average price in a week when both native token $MANA and $ETH fell 20.5% and 18.5% respectively comes as a poor result on the economic front.

We will have to wait and see if this weekly result is merely the last tumble before a turnaround that sparks buyers into action, or if indeed there is more bad news to come. Decentralanders will be wishing the virtual world’s third edition of Art Week has at least some positive impact.

Voxels

Voxels’ recent pause on any new islands or parcel mints continues to quieten trading activity to a low hum. The mostly weekly drip-feed of new plots (this week saw another 5 parcels from Chronos Island released to the market) maintains the economy, yet has seen its land market cap fall week-on-week, for 5 weeks. While the average price of a parcel was up by 0.11 ETH (or 19%) on last week, trading volume (-29%) and sales (-40%) continued their slide ever since its brighter performance in the first week of August. Meanwhile, unique holders of land continued to rise, up from 2391 to 2400.

Somnium Space

On the branding front, it might have been a big week for founder Artur Sychov as he launched a new blockchain-based social media platform called Authencity, and its HQ in Somnium Space from where a party was held to celebrate the event. But it caused no reaction at all in terms of parcels sold in his metaverse, and indeed even provoked some derision from at least one follower on Twitter who believed his efforts should be dedicated elsewhere.

In total, a paltry 3 land parcels changed hands for the week, a big dip from last week’s total of 13, while a 3.5 sale was enough for a slight recovery in average price (+42%), though, in truth, this data comes as largely irrelevant. Overall, it was an extremely quiet week for Somnium Space on the VRE front, with holders down again for the week. The price of its token $CUBE also fell another 11.5% for the week, though fared better than other metaverse tokens $SAND and $MANA.

Worldwide Webb

Worldwide Webb experienced somewhat of a comedown from the last two weeks of announcements and new integrations to the metaverse, with all weekly metrics in the red. Trading volume fell almost 60%, putting downward pressure on the average price (-38%) and land market cap, down -1.78% for the week. Unique holders of Apartments were also down week-on-week from 4528 to 4512, reversing the previous week’s turnaround, perhaps as some new landowners flipped their Apartments based on ETH moving into its own negative territory for the first time since July.

NFT Worlds

Discussion at OneLand is guessing the team at NFT Worlds may be on holiday, following a second quiet week for the project and no news at all, let alone a deadline set, for their updated project. The average price is now down to 0.76 ETH or a little over USD 1200. At the same time, its lands cap slid another 5%, while sales (-21.7%) and trading volumes (-26.3%) dry up, with remaining World holders (down only marginally for the week) apparently, at least for the meantime, choosing to hold out for better days.

Otherside

A return to at least one premium sale on the books was enough to see some weekly turnaround in trading volume (+21.6%) and average price (+17%), and on the back of a falling ETH price. The bear market has near-annihilated the previous flurry of premium sales of Otherdeeds, with 183 ETH representing approximately 10 times that of both the week’s second-top sale (18 ETH) and last week’s top sale (19 ETH). In fact, the last transaction above 100 ETH occurred almost 6 weeks ago on July 13.

Trading volume and sales numbers were both up for the week, by 21.6% and 5.7% respectively, while Otherside’s market cap keeps falling, diving another 3.51% to 459,257 ETH, which is 34% lower than its peak of 696,464 ETH at the end of May. Meanwhile, the numbers of holders of Otherdeeds keep falling too, down from 35,096 to 35,004 for the week and 1.12% for the month.

Top Sales by metaverse (7D)

Metaverse Tokens (7D)

For comprehensive market and metaverse project data, check oneland.world.

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*All investment/financial opinions expressed by NFT Plazas are from the personal research and experience of our site moderators and are intended as educational material only. Individuals are required to fully research any product prior to making any kind of investment.

Financial platform for virtual lands in the metaverse.