What’s the Metaverse Worth? About $28M Per User
Major Metaverse projects seem to be almost entirely devoid of users. While most successful games measure users in the millions, these are under 1000.
If you’re anything like me, by this point you’re sick of hearing about the Metaverse, and confused by what the word even means. That’s understandable, there is no real consensus on what it means–at this point it’s just a marketing buzzword. One thing about the Metaverse is universal: it’s empty.
Right now there are two crypto sweetheart metaverse projects, Decentraland (MANA) and The Sandbox (SAND). The Sandbox had a massive 637 active users over the last 24 hours. That may not seem like a lot, and that’s because it’s not. In fact, typical online games get shut down way before their daily active users drop that low. For comparison, Fortnite, the massive hit by Epic Games, sees roughly 30 million unique daily active users.
Decentraland makes The Sandbox look like a blockbuster hit, clocking in at 46 daily active users. That makes the value of each daily active user about $28M, with Decentraland’s MANA token being worth $1.3B. The Creative Director at Decentraland claims they have 8,000 users on an average day, which makes sense when you include the caveat that they’re passive users.
What does a passive user mean? Well, the active user stats come from DappRadar, which reports on data published to the blockchain. Contracts are published to the blockchain when a transaction happens, which does not occur every time a user logs into the Metaverse. They have to do something.
Right now, it’s clear that the Metaverse doesn’t solve any problem, and doesn’t delight more than 700 users at any given time. But it does promise to solve every problem. Eventually.
Needless to say, the valuations feel irrational.