The metaverse war is declared " facebook vs Decentraland "
Since Mark Zuckerberg announced that parent company Facebook would change its name to Meta, all metaverse projects have seen their capitalization explode. Decentraland was the big winner of this announcement since its price rose from 0.07 to more than 4 dollars in three weeks while at the same time several exchange platforms (Crypto.com, KuCoin, Maïar) want to launch their own metaverse. It's hard to find your way around this market where most of the projects are still under construction! We therefore offer you an overview of the different projects to follow.
Two giants, and some outsiders
Metaverses at Polkadot
The ambition of exchange platforms
Some low-cap to follow
Decentraland And Sandbox: The Winners Of The Metaverse
Already known in the world of cryptocurrencies, Decentraland and, to a lesser extent, The Sandbox, are certainly the big winners of Zuckerberg's announcement. From October 28, the day before the announcement, to the 31st, Decentraland's capitalization was multiplied by five. A feat that allowed him to reach the top 30 cryptocurrencies. Over the same period, The Sandbox propelled itself to the forty-sixth place with an equivalent increase in its capitalization.
Polkadot: An Eco-System To The Measure Of Metaverse
Despite their success, Decentraland and The Sandbox can quickly encounter a limitation. Because they depend on the Ethereum blockchain. However, the expansion of NFT's Opensea platform since last spring had already been a cause of network congestion. It can therefore be interesting to turn to the projects that are being built in the Polkadot universe. Indeed, each parachain of this network is dedicated by definition to a single function.
At the beginning of November, Bit.Country & Metaverse Network won an auction to become a Parachain of Kusama. So they will open their virtual world from next month. In addition, the collaboration with Republic Realm, which also supports Decentraland and The Sandbox, is an important endorsement for this adventure. However, Bit.Country will have to face a strong competitor with Effinity. This project is launching into auctions on Polkadot. Thanks to the latter, Enjin, which is already a major player in the NFT and GameFi market, is taking on the metaverses. And when we know the background of Maxim Blagov and Witek Radomski, the two thinking heads of Enjin, we quickly understand that the battle will be tough technologically.
Facebook Facing the Giants of the Cryptosphere
This new Eldorado of investors could not escape centralized exchange platforms. The latter are also embarking on the race for metaverses. This is part of their desire to monopolize investors. To achieve their ends, they offer more and more comprehensive services. With the aim of preventing users from being too tempted by decentralized finance.
Operational since last week, Cronos, the blockchain of the Crypto.com platform, wants to make the metaverse one of its flagship projects. Of course, she is not alone in wanting to impose herself. And it will have to deal with the Elrond blockchain that opened its official decentralized exchange this week. A launch supported by partnership with Bloktopia while working on a bridge to transit NFTs and tokens between these two systems.
If this were not enough, the KuCoin exchange is also positioning itself in this race by announcing the establishment of an investment fund of one hundred million dollars to develop the metaverse. Already widely established in blockchain technology, essential for this new market, these platforms are one step ahead of the giant Facebook.
What Place For More Confidential Virtual Universes?
Among the more confidential projects, OVR is probably one of the best placed at the moment to be an outsider. With its mix of augmented reality and virtual universe, it multiplies the possibilities for future investors. Because one can be virtually the owner of a piece of the world map. And even rent it for augmented reality events. Well advanced in terms of augmented reality, the project is multiplying updates to make its virtual universe more attractive.
With a small cap, Mars4 offers the same possibility of virtual real plot purchase. But this time with the planet Mars. And they complete that metaverse with a play-to-earn. Finally to stay in the small market cap, it may be interesting to monitor Moniwar on the BSC. Also Velhalla, the first metaverse on Velas. The latter two explore the world of heroic-fantasy. It is unclear how these small projects will handle the complexity of a metaverse. However, they have much greater earning potential due to their small capitalizations.
It was still in the background a month ago. But today, the metaverse market is at the center of the cryptocurrency universe. So much so that Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, said: "Web 3.0 is not just a thin layer. But it's also a vertical, where you actually have this metaverse that lives above." Faced with this new kingdom of heaven, the investment opportunities are vast. They make it possible as much to bet on the safe values of the sector as to make riskier bets. But with great potential.