2023 has not been a particularly brilliant year for the metaverse, but something has moved, especially in the crypto field.
After a decidedly difficult first part, the second half of the year may have seen the beginning of a change in trend.
The Decentraland metaverse crypto beats the competition
The most important crypto metaverse remains Decentraland.
His cryptocurrency MANA, which is an ERC-20 token, has recovered 30% from the closing price of 2022.
To be honest, in January its price had risen from $0.3 to $0.8, but the problems started from the end of February.
Even in September it had dropped below $0.3, meaning it was in loss compared to the end of 2022. This means that the bottom of the bear market was not recorded last year, but only a few months ago, dropping for a brief moment even below $0.27.
Fortunately, however, the recovery of the crypto markets at the end of October first brought the price back to $0.35, and then above $0.45. In December, it then rose to over $0.5, which is a higher level than the end of 2022, but significantly lower than the end of January 2023.
The problem is that as a multiverse, it is still not very popular, so it struggles to take off. The price difficulties reflect these platform difficulties, which nevertheless remains a leader in the industry.
The performance of The Sandbox
A very similar speech can also be made for The Sandbox, which in fact had more or less the same problems, although perhaps it suffered even a little more.
Its SAND token is still only slightly above end-2022 levels because it has dropped significantly during 2023.
In 2022 it closed at $0.38, while in February 2023 it had risen to $0.9.
The problems started in March, when a descent began that only ended in mid-October below $0.3. In this case too, the bottom of the bear market was not reached in 2022 but in 2023.
The rise that started at the end of October was similar to that of MANA, with a return first to $0.44 in November, and then above $0.5 in December. It is noted how the price trend of the two tokens follows a very similar parabola, also because they both capitalize more or less one billion dollars.
The difference lies in the fact that in this 2023, the Decentraland project seemed a little more active than The Sandbox, although in the end the results in terms of market capitalization were still very similar.
Among the crypto metaverses, these two are still clearly the main ones, although others are trying to emerge. The other large-scale projects in this sector are not crypto.
The other crypto projects engaged in the development of a metaverse
One of the emerging crypto metaverse projects is Hytopia.
His TOPIA token was launched just a few months ago, and so far it has recorded a +250% increase. However, it is a token that has too little history behind it to be judged, as the entire gain was made only during the recent small bull run in November and December.
Another crypto metaverse project is Over, with its OVR token.
Unfortunately, OVR’s 2023 hasn’t been particularly good, as it started the year at $0.32 and now it’s at $0.33.
The surprising thing about OVR is the mini-bubble in June. In fact, in January it had risen to $0.38, only to then drop below $0.3 in May.
In late May, a mini-bubble inflated causing the price of OVR to reach $0.74 in less than two weeks, and in the following two weeks it burst, bringing the price down to $0.33, and then even below $0.2 in October.
In this case, the bottom of the bear market was reached in 2023. At that point, there was a rebound, still ongoing, which brought the price back to the levels of late 2022.
The Nemesis with its NEMS token must also be mentioned.
NEMS was also launched on the market only in 2023, and so far its trend has been mostly downward. However, there is too little historical data to analyze its performance.
Note that The Nemesis is a crypto metaverse project born in 2020, so not particularly recent, whose token price trajectory does not appear to be particularly significant.
The future of the metaverse
However, it is necessary to specify that the metaverse sector is still in its infancy, especially the crypto one. For example, the reference project, Decentraland, has only been active since 2019, even though its token was already being traded on the markets in 2017.
In other words, the entire sector is still at a very early stage, to the point that current performances may not be indicative of future development.
In addition, it should be added that the NFT market, closely linked to crypto metaverses, experienced a sharp decline in 2023, after the boom of 2021, so there is the possibility of a rebound in the coming years that could bring crypto metaverses back to the levels of previous years.
