Popular Virtual Real Estate Prices Plummet
User Numbers Plunge, Big Tech 'Withdraws'
The price of 'digital land' in the metaverse has reportedly plummeted. Last year, as the metaverse gained fame among the public and investors, some platforms offered the ability to buy and sell virtual land, but as the popularity of the metaverse waned, land prices fell first.
According to 'Wemeta,' a website tracking metaverse land prices, on the 29th (local time), the average price per 1㎡ of the representative metaverse platform 'Decentraland' dropped from $45 last year to $5, a decrease to one-ninth of its previous value.
Several metaverse platforms gained popularity with virtual real estate features that allow trading in-game digital land using cryptocurrency. [Image source=The Sandbox]
Decentraland is a metaverse platform established in 2017. Its core feature is that ownership of digital land within a computer graphics-based virtual world can be traded using cryptocurrency. This is known as 'virtual real estate.'
Virtual real estate suddenly emerged two years ago as the metaverse became a new investment destination, but its popularity did not last long.
According to 'DCL Matrix,' a metaverse user tracking site, the number of active users on Decentraland decreased by nearly 25% from November last year to January this year. Consequently, demand for digital land also sharply declined, which appears to have affected land prices.
Decentraland is not the only metaverse platform experiencing a crash in asset prices. Interest in another popular platform, 'The Sandbox,' which also emphasized digital goods trading features like Decentraland, has significantly decreased.
Big tech companies, once major players in the metaverse industry, are also reducing investments for management efficiency reasons. Meta (formerly Facebook), which even changed its name in October 2021 to focus on metaverse strategy, laid off 11,000 employees last November.
According to the U.S. financial media 'The Wall Street Journal (WSJ),' Meta plans to cut an additional 10,000 employees soon. Meta's core metaverse technology development division, 'Reality Labs,' is also included in the layoffs. WSJ pointed out that this indicates Meta's focus is shifting from the metaverse to AI. The major content company 'Disney' also laid off 50 employees from its metaverse division and decided to dissolve the department.
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