Real estate, gaming continues to thrive in metaverse: Chainalysis
The cryptocurrency industry is overall falling but the metaverse continues to thrive, reveals a new research Chainalysis. From September 2019 to March 2022, the prices of virtual real-estate spiked 879 per cent. On the other hand, the real estate price surged 39 per cent.
According to Chainalysis, the growth of virtual real estate prices has outpaced that of physical real estate 532 per cent. The research firm explains some of the present-day utilities and prospective benefits of owning virtual real estate. This includes embedded videos, images, NFTs, and interactive objects; in-game single-player and multiplayer activities; play-and-earn integrations; screen-sharing and town hall functionalities; access to private events and NFT-gated communities.
The report notes that access to private events and exclusive communities has been a big driver of NFT demand to date, and it looks to be translating into sales of virtual real estate. “Bored Ape Yacht Club, for example, has always bundled its NFTs with entertainment, socialization and digital community. and they’ve since parlayed that appeal into a $310 million metaverse land sale,” the report said.
Further, the price of the land in metaverse also depends on the blockchain it is hosted in. “Solana’s average gas fee of $0.00025 is a very small fraction of Ethereum’s average gas fee of $5 to $50. Thus, metaverse-land holders and developers might see better and more affordable deals on Solana. However, Ethereum-based Metaverse projects are also integrating with its Layer-2 scalability platform Polygon. This Ethereum sidechain delivers competitive pricing and speed performance to Solana,” the report adds.
Meanwhile, the NFT market is flatlining as the global crypto market continues to crash. According to the CryptoSlam NFT tracker, the NFT sales since April have dropped 150 per cent. The average price of an NFT has dropped from $589 in April to $192 in June, a drop of 67 per cent in the value. The number of transactions happening in the NFT space is also witnessing a significant drop from 62 lakh transactions to 27 lakh transactions. The Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT collection is now trading below $100,000 for the first time since August 2021. The floor price has been down 100 per cent since May when BAYC NFTs were selling at $200,000 each.
