A year ago, when Facebook wanted to start an image change by renaming it Meta, the idea of the Metaverse caused a lot of excitement. There was talk of dream factories, virtual worlds should be created – tempting prospects in a time of lockdown. But what has been realized so far is meager. The user numbers of Decentraland also show that there is a yawning void in the blockchain metaverse.
Hardly anything going on in Decentraland
“Test the limits of your imagination” – the slogan is true, but probably not what the Decentraland developers meant. How much money investors put into their hands for a virtual piece of land in Decentraland may be beyond imagination. Roughly the $913,000 paid for a virtual lot the size of ten football fields.
When it comes to user numbers, however, the limits of imagination remain untouched. Just 23 users are currently romping around in Decentraland, 516 are said to be loud Dappradar have been in the last 30 days: an average of 17 a day.
Even if only those users are counted who also act with the smart contract – for example trade items – and bitdegree.org comes to at least 280 users a day: the numbers are far below expectations. And below market value too.
Totally overrated?
The market capitalization of the Decentraland cryptocurrency MANA weighs in at 1.2 billion US dollars – only The Sandbox of the Metaverse projects is currently slightly larger. However, the market capitalization was not inflated by the 23 active avatars. Above all, media-effective investments by companies that wanted to build a digital foothold in the virtual 3D world increased the interest of small investors in the cryptocurrency.
Samsung has already opened a branch, JPMorgan a lounge, Barbados an embassy and Times Square has already landed in Decentraland: From the outside it looked as if the blockchain metaverse would become one of the virtual hubs where culture, consumption and merge social.
At least so far, Decentraland has not been able to meet these expectations – and thus neither those of investors. Not to mention those of gamers.
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