Third-quarter buying and selling quantity for the highest 10 metaverse initiatives might have fallen 80% in comparison with the second quarter, however analytics agency DappRadar means that curiosity in digital worlds nonetheless stays.

The metaverse sector has been hit with a good quantity of unfavorable press as of late, significantly round recommended low person exercise throughout sure platforms, resembling Decentraland and Meta — reviews which they’ve refuted.

DappRadar noted in an Oct. 20 report that whereas buying and selling volumes have taken a pointy hit throughout Q3, the common variety of NFT gross sales for these 10 initiatives solely decreased by 11.55% in comparison with Q2.

DappRadar explains that decrease buying and selling volumes may merely mirror lowering asset costs and never essentially lack of curiosity, noting that:

“We take into account this a bullish signal as a result of it exhibits that the hype for these kinds of initiatives hasn’t decreased. As an alternative, the autumn of cryptocurrency costs has affected the initiatives’ total buying and selling quantity as a substitute of an absence of curiosity.”

A caveat to those sentiments, nonetheless, is that eight of the highest 10 metaverse initiatives noticed vital decreases of their nonfungible token (NFT) gross sales counts throughout Q3, with Yuga Labs’ Otherside seeing a 74% lower for the quarter.

The constructive motion was primarily pushed by The Sandbox and former Minecraft-based platform NFT Worlds V2, which noticed NFT sale depend will increase of 190% and 79% apiece.

DappRadar attributed this to the hype surrounding The Sandbox’s Alpha Season 3, which affords a number of latest gaming experiences and collectibles. Whereas NFT Worlds V2 being booted off of Minecraft might have been seen as a “shopping for alternative” as the worth of its NFTs dropped by 90% in Q3.

Digital lands ground costs plummet

In the meantime, DappRadar’s report indicated that the ground costs for NFT land plots had decreased by 75% on common, which can have been one of many the explanation why buying and selling volumes had decreased by a lot.

Whereas the worth of any piece of actual property, digital or in any other case, is topic to swings, “Metaverse actual property is at present very depreciated,” DappRadar acknowledged, including that the declining costs are in accordance with the broader bear market of the crypto sector.

Q&A: NFTs and metaverses will play a key function in gaming — so long as one key factor occurs

DappRadar was compelled to defend its metaverse knowledge final week, which had been interpreted to imply that platforms resembling Decentraland had lower than 40 each day lively customers.

The agency alsnoted that its person knowledge device solely tracks customers’ interplay with a blockchain, normally within the case of transactions, and didn’t depend “non-blockchain-based actions” resembling non-spending customers.

The Sandbox tweeted on Oct. 10 that it had hit 39,000 each day lively customers, and 201,000 month-to-month lively customers over the earlier 30 days.

Decentraland additionally reported having 8,000 each day lively customers and 56,697 month-to-month lively customers as of Oct. 8.