The demand for digital land in Meta (formerly Facebook)’s Metaverse are booming, with last week bringing USD 100m in non-fungible token (NFT) land sales, according to a recent report by dapp information provider DappRadar. The four leading virtual worlds, The Sandbox, Decentraland, CryptoVoxels, and Somnium Space, are reporting robust land sales.
Launched by the social media giant, the Metaverse comprises a set of interconnected, experiential, 3D virtual worlds which allows users to engage in an online economy that extends to both digital and physical.
Last week, the four digital realms attracted aggregate traffic of more than 6,000 traders. The Sandbox led the way with the highest land trading volume of close to USD 86.6m, followed by Decentraland which generated more than USD 15.5m in land plot NFTs, as indicated by data from the report.
CryptoVoxels and Somnium Space spurred about USD 2.7m and USD 1.1m in digital land sales, respectively.
Five of the ten most expensive land plot NFT sales from last week were of metaverse land plot NFTs in different virtual worlds, DappRadar said.
“The top grosser was the Fashion Street Estate in Decentraland, which switched owners for 618.000 MANA, or [USD] 2.42 million,” the company said.
This has led DappRadar to the conclusion that, without doubt, “metaverse land is the next big hit in the NFT space,” stating:
“Outputting record sales numbers and constantly increasing NFT prices, virtual worlds are the new top commodity in the crypto space. The wave of attention towards virtual worlds like The Sandbox and Decentraland started with Facebook’s rebranding to Meta.”
Meanwhile, digital asset investment firm Grayscale argued in a recent report that Metaverse could become “a trillion-dollar revenue opportunity across advertising, social commerce, digital events, hardware, and developer/creator monetization,” but it did not specify the time frame within which this growth could take place.
Michael Gord, COO at the virtual real estate company Metaverse Group, told The New York Times that skeptics should take account of the trends catalyzed by the ongoing pandemic, and that it was “inevitable that the metaverse will be the No. 1 social network in the world.”
“Imagine if you came to New York when it was farmland, and you had the option to get a block of SoHo,” Gord said. “If someone wants to buy a block of real estate in SoHo today, it’s priceless, it’s not on the market. That same experience is going to happen in the metaverse.”
Source: Cryptonews
