Metaverse: Trading Volume is Down, But the Interest is Unstoppable

    While Interpol is shaking the Web 3.0 headlines with the announcement of its very own Metaverse office and training center, the overall Metaverse’s trading volume dropped 91.61% to $90 million in Q3, according to the latest report by DappRadar. 

    Metaverse-based tokens lost on average 60% of their value. The Q3 trading volume for the top 10 metaverse projects have plunged almost 80% since the second quarter (the top active platforms this year still include Sandbox and Decentraland, and Otherdeed for Otherside with its one of the largest mint events in NFT history).

    However, the report’s takeaways also state that the demand for Web 3.0 services and metaverse experiences hasn’t faded, and the average number of NFT sales for the above-mentioned 10 projects only decreased by 11.55%.

    “We consider this a bullish sign because it shows that the hype for these types of projects hasn’t decreased. Instead, the fall of cryptocurrency prices has affected the projects’ overall trading volume instead of a lack of interest.”

    DappRadar’s report also indicated that the floor prices for NFT land plots had decreased by 75%, which may have been one of the reasons why trading volumes had gone down.

    Opinions: Yat Siu and Joe Lubin

    Meanwhile, the overall development of Metaverse keeps attracting investors and public attention with big players coming in.

    Yat Siu, head of Animoca Brands, one of the key leaders in the Web 3.0 space, recently spoke at the TechCrunch Disrupt stage where he shared his thoughts about Meta’s take on the metaverse.

    “They said they’re going to spend $10 billion a year to make the metaverse work. Well, here’s the thing — we think $10 billion is not enough for Facebook to succeed. Billions of dollars are transacted in the open metaverse space — actually much more when you consider fungible tokens. Most of the value goes to the end user, so why would I transact on something like Meta — regardless of its visuals — when I have to give half of it to the platform? Whereas if I use Sandbox, I get 95% of it. It just doesn’t make any sense for me to do that, economically speaking. And because billions of dollars of value are already generated in an open way, why would I surrender that value? So Facebook would have to spend a lot more to incentivize people to go into its platform.”

    Joe Lubin, co-founder of Ethereum and CEO of ConsenSys, is confident that despite the rollercoaster-like advancement, the virtual realm experiences will one day be a crucial part of our everyday lives. But he’s equally confident that day is years away. 

    “I find [using the metaverse today] is a bit like logging onto the internet in 1994,” Lubin told Decrypt in an exclusive video interview earlier this month. “Where you dialed into the internet and I grabbed a coffee and breakfast and then came back and my email was downloaded.”

    “The experience of being in web3 isn’t as compelling as it’s going to be pretty soon,” Lubin said. “Then the crowds will be there.”