Is the Metaverse Still Alive? Sandbox Says Yes
In a tweet this afternoon, notable virtual world project The Sandbox shared its recent growth metrics, which are significantly higher than data that has been shared recently in the crypto and NFT space.
📢 Our ALPHA Season 3 growing metrics 👇
— The Sandbox (@TheSandboxGame) October 10, 2022
🔹Daily Users: 39K
🔹Monthly users: 201K
🔹Total Wallets: 4.1M
🔹LAND Owners: 22,267
🔹$SAND staking: 128M SAND
🔹Website 30d Users: 1.6M
🔹Number of chat messages: 4.1M
🔹KYC users: 113K
🔹Hours played: 1.6M#SandboxAlphaS3
Among other key metrics, The Sandbox is noting 39,000 daily active users ("DAUs") for their metaverse, 1.6 million website users on the month and 1.6 million hours played.
These metrics from The Sandbox are likely in response to some data from DappRadar which was circulated over the weekend, stating that virtual world Decentraland had just 38 DAUs and The Sandbox had just 522. These DAU metrics were then compared to the projects' market caps (~$1.3 billion each), essentially mocking the imbalance.
This led Decentraland to fight back as well, sharing their own data on Friday:
Let's have a look at some of September's data:
— Decentraland (@decentraland) October 7, 2022
56,697 MAU
1,074 Users interacting with smart contracts
1,732 minted Emotes
6,315 sold Wearables
300 Creators received royalties
161 created Community Events
148 DAO Proposals
The exchange from both metaverse projects has put some scrutiny on DappRadar, leading the DappRadar CEO to respond to the Decentraland post explaining that their data stems from users who make "on-chain transactions." The DappRadar CEO went on to acknowledge Decentraland's note and soften their stance.
"Having said that, we understand on-chain is not telling the complete story for every dapp, that's something we are actively working on," CEO Skirmantas Januškas said. "The future is a combination of on- and off-chain data."
Clearly data can be used to create narratives in many ways, and as always, it's best to DYOR (do your own research).