$1.2 billion metaverse horrified as report shows it only has 38 active users

This year’s most bandied around word? It’s gotta be metaverse. 

Dystopian enough a concept to put poor old George Orwell to shame, metaverses are basically 3D, augmented reality universes that people are investing a s**t tonne of money into.

We’re talking, like, billions of pounds. So, with that in mind, it’s easy to see why the people behind one metaverse project (with a valuation of $1.2 billion, no less) were concerned to hear it reportedly only had 38 active users. 

@decentraland/Twitter

Meet Decentraland. A metaverse project that allows users to buy and sell virtual real estate.

Decentraland might have valuations sitting at billions of pounds, but despite this, a recent data report showed the Ethereum-based world only had ‘38 active users over a 24-hour period’.

Reporting on the news, Futurism pointed to data aggregator DappRadar’s figures, which were first picked up on by CoinDesk. 

Futurism noted that 38 is a ‘confoundingly low number’ given Decentraland’s $1.2 billion market cap.

However, speaking to CoinDesk, Decentraland's creative director Sam Hamilton insisted not everyone logging onto Decentraland to interact with others are being counted. 

For all the nerds at the back, what Hamilton’s pointing out is that ‘active users’ are defined as unique blockchain wallet addresses that interact with Decentraland's system.

"DappRadar doesn't track our users, only people interacting with our contracts," insisted Hamilton, who said that on average, the platform averages around 8,000 users a day.

But Futurism points out that even if Decentraland is hitting 8,000 users a day, that’s still pretty ‘dismal’ considering the metaverse project is meant to be the future of online communities. 

Futurism’s Victor Tangermann added: “In short, it's a perfect example of the kind of massive disparity between market value and actual users that has been plaguing the Web3 world for years, and could also be indicative of a serious slowdown in appetite for virtual real estate and other blockchain-related assets, including cryptocurrencies and NFTs.”

UNILAD has approached Decentraland for comment. 

@decentraland/Twitter

On Tuesday (11 October), DappRadar said it’s recalculating its Decentraland data and that it’s working closely with Decentraland to more accurately track the metaverse’s daily ‘active’ users in the future. 

DappRadar said: “It’s important to note that data on the blockchain is unchangeable, and therefore it doesn’t lie.

“However, this data doesn’t always mean the same for each dapp. Furthermore, blockchain data doesn’t always paint the entire picture.”

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