Crypto Metaverse Activity Jumps, Converting to Price Gains

Spurred by rising user numbers leading up to Halloween, metaverse platform The Sandbox’s native cryptocurrency saw an 11% price jump Sunday as digital assets attempted a weekend rally.

The number of unique active wallets interacting with The Sandbox smart contracts jumped significantly over a 7-day period, up 28% to 4,600 on the week, data from DappRadar shows.

That number stood at 805 over a 24-hour period, representing a 20% increase on the day. It’s worth noting that these figures do not directly translate to daily active users inside the platform ― that number is not readily available.

In any case, Halloween-themed additions appear to have spiked interest, Zerocap analyst Nathan Lenga told Blockworks via Telegram. The Sandbox is currently advertising “spooky” experiential NFTs as part of its Alpha Seasons promotions, triggering the number of visitors to rise to its highest level in more than a month.

Alpha Seasons allow players a sneak peek behind the scenes, where they’re able to test new features, participate in social events and generally explore The Sandbox metaverse. 

SAND was changing hands for $0.88 as of 5:30 am ET, up more than 15% over the past week to find itself in the 10 best performing tokens in the top 50 by market capitalization, per CoinGecko data.

Of course, most cryptos in the top 50 by market capitalization have seen positive growth over a 7-day period, buoyed by rising equities and a fluctuating US dollar. But price action of various metaverse-related cryptocurrencies have been strongly correlated over the past week, Lenga said.

Rival metaverse Decentraland’s MANA token jumped 10% to $0.73 on Saturday before retracing to $0.67 by press time. MANA is up almost 8% on the week. Both SAND and MANA are still down 85% and 80% year to date, respectively.

Data from DCL Metrics shows daily unique Decentraland visitors rose 62% from almost 5,700 on Oct. 22 to a peak of 9,200 on Oct. 27, before falling back to around 7,600 late Friday. Decentraland hadn’t seen that many unique visitors in more than a month.

Meanwhile, enjincoin — which lets users manage and store virtual assets for games — also saw strong growth, rising 9% in value over a 7-day period as of Monday morning.

Both The Sandbox and Decentraland fought to set the record straight about user activity stats in recent weeks, which are markedly lower than more established, non-crypto metaverse platforms such as Roblox and long-serving Second Life.

Still, industry participants remain optimistic about the growth trajectory of blockchain-powered metaverse offerings.

“Eyes have been shifting back onto metaverse projects subsequent to Yuga Labs’ announcement that the Otherside metaverse beta will go live in early 2023,” Lenga said.

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