Nansen Metaverse Index
The Nansen Metaverse index is one of the six Nansen indices that were created in order to track NFT market activity on the Ethereum Blockchain.
The breakdown of the indexes include: the Nansen NFT-500, the Nansen Blue Chip-10, the Nansen Social-100 index, the Nansen Gaming-50 index, the Nansen Art-20 index, and the Nansen Metaverse-20 index.
The Metaverse index tracks various metaverse related assets including ‘Avatars,’ ‘Assets’, ‘Land & Real-estate,’ and ‘Utility’.
Although there may be additional metaverse related NFT categories (e.g AI infused NFTs etc.), their importance may be just emerging at this time, and the evidence is insufficient to substantiate these categories and the ensuing market sectors. In certain cases, these NFT sectors may also overlap with one of the four more established categories mentioned above.
The top 20 Metaverse NFT collections are tracked by the Metaverse-20 index according to market capitalization. Every 30 days, the index is rebalanced, with the index constituents being reevaluated and adjusted as necessary. More information on the Metaverse Index and how it is calculated can be found here.
Metaverse Index Performance
The graph above shows the performance of the Nansen Metaverse-20 Index since the beginning of the year. This is shown by plotting Index points over time for the top 20 Metaverse related NFT collections. Index points can be thought of as the current value of a $1,000 investment made on January 1st. They are helpful for assessing the relative value of several indices and broadly reflect a combined market capitalization (in ETH). It can be seen that for the majority of the year the Index points remained positive (above 1k) with the exception of a brief period from mid-to -late June where they dropped to a low of 775. On the other hand, the maximum value for the year was recorded on March 28 when it reached 3,151. The current value has dropped by 25% in ETH value and over 59% in USD value from the maximum value recorded so far this year.
The donut chart above shows the breakdown of the market cap per category (denominated in ETH) for the different verticals that make up the Metaverse Index. Unsurprisingly, it can be seen that Land & Real-estate make up a huge percentage of the total market cap, representing over 75% of the overall market cap. The combined market cap for all the categories is also given, and sits at around 687k ETH (~$824m at current ETH prices).
Since Land and Real-estate dominate the Metaverse Index, we zoomed in on these categories.
Virtual Land
The table below shows transactional data for some of the top virtual world collections from the 1st of June. It provides the number of sales, volume, amount of buyers & sellers, as well as an estimate for the fully diluted market capitalization of the collection based on the median price data that was calculated.
Virtual Land collection table
Virtual Land collection Breakdown
The table provides both the average and median price for the specific collection. This was calculated based on all the sales data that occurred since the beginning of June. As mentioned above the median price was chosen to calculate the market cap. When there is a possibility of extreme values (such as in virtual property), the median is generally the better measure to use as it will not be adversely influenced by outlier values. However, regardless of whether the median price or the average price is used, the data will need to be interpreted with more caution the fewer transactions the calculations were based on.
From the table it can be seen that although Otherdeed is a late comer to the space, it has completely dominated in terms of attracting the highest number of buyers and sellers, the number of sales, volume, as well as the overall market capitalization. The collection has been so popular that it captured over 84% (over 41,094 ETH)of all the combined volume generated by the ten projects mentioned above. Its estimated fully diluted market cap was also the highest at around 289,000 ETH( approximately ~US$350mm at current prices).
Looking at the number of buyers and sellers, it can also be seen that Otherdeed was traded by a significantly larger number of unique wallets in comparison to the rest of the virtual lands. It has attracted more unique buyers and unique sellers than the combined unique buyers and sellers for the rest of the 9 projects in the table.This suggests that there is significantly more interest in the project as more people are involved in trading the collection. Of course it is important to also note that the same entity can be behind more than one wallet address.
Otherdeed, Treeverse, Mavia Land, WebbLand and NetvrkLand had a higher number of unique sellers than buyers for the period observed. Sandbox, NFT Worlds, Cryprovoxels, Somnium Space Land and Fluf World on the other hand, had more unique buyers than sellers.
Sandbox Land came in second with a valuation of 207,263 ETH followed by NFT Worlds at distant third (38,500 ETH). Interestingly, NFT world had the highest median price out of all the collections since the start of June, however its max supply is only 10,000 tokens which is a tenth of Otherdeed’s max supply. Otherdeed NFTs also had the highest average price in comparison to other collections in the table.
In order to get a market cap estimate for Somnium Space, data from both Somnium Space Land and Somnium Space World would have to be combined. The total fully diluted market capitalization for the project came in at 8926 ETH. The majority of the value (over 94%) comes from Somnium Space Land sales. There were only two transactions for the Somnium Space World collection throughout the period covered.
Additionally, it is important to note that although the median price gives us a better estimate in valuing the collection, the mode price would also be useful in estimating where the majority of liquidity for the specific collection is found.
The graph below shows the overall median price that was paid per day for a virtual land since the start of June. It covers all the collections that are found in the table above.
From the graph, it can be seen that the volatility for the median price paid per day was low for the entire period. The price fluctuated between 2 to 3 ETH for the most part, dipping slightly below 2 ETH for only a couple of days. To get better insights into the transactions however, looking at figure 4 and figure 5 (below) would be useful.
The cells highlighted in green on the table above show the maximum values recorded for each virtual world covered. Figure 5, on the other hand, shows how the distribution of sales among each collection is scattered. It can be seen from both graphs how Otherdeed has dominated the market recently. As mentioned before, it has the highest count, mean, max and also the highest standard deviation among the collections. The maximum price paid for one of its virtual lands amounted to 269 ETH. This is significantly higher than the second most expensive land sold during the period covered, which goes to NFT Worlds at 41 ETH. On figure 5, this sale can be seen as the point which is furthest to the right, and it helps to show in a graphical representation how much of an extreme value this is in comparison to the rest of the sales that happened during the same time period.
The standard deviation for Otherdeed is also the highest, followed by Sandbox Land. They both also have the highest fully diluted market cap among the collections. This could suggest that as virtual land projects gain in popularity and increase in valuation, the price distribution for the NFTs within the collection increases. In other words, it could mean that people are willing to pay more for the rarest NFTs in a collection relative to its mean, as the valuation of the whole collection increases. If this is the case it justifies buying only the rarest tokens in a collection in the early stages, as their price appreciation will increase significantly more in comparison to the rest.
However, It could also be a case that as the project increases in popularity, certain land parcels (or neighborhoods) get developed increasing their price significantly in comparison to the rest of the lands which are empty and unproductive. Gathering more rarity data, and checking if these effects are also seen in much longer time periods and in more collections would be useful to examine the case.
The two graphs below (figure 6 and figure 7) show the number of sales per day and the volume in ETH for the ten projects mentioned in the table above. Together they highlight how virtual land assets as a whole performed during the period from June 1st to July 15th. The number of daily sales ranged between 200 to 400 for the majority of days (with the exception of a few spikes), while volume fluctuated between 500 to 1500 ETH per day with the exception of 5 days within the period covered.
By comparing the graphs it can be seen that there is a significant spike on the 27th of June on both graphs. On that day both the number of sales and the volume increased significantly. This was the same day that Yuga Labs announced that the “First Trip” for holders was going to be conducted on the 16th of July, as seen on the image below.
Furthermore, by looking at the maximum price per day chart (below), it can be seen that the maximum price for the whole period was recorded on June the 26th. That is exactly one day before the announcement mentioned above was made. By looking at it more closely, the sale belonged to the Otherdeed collection and the price paid was 269.69 ETH (the same transaction encountered earlier). This could suggest that someone bought the asset with the anticipation that the announcement would drive sales and increase prices significantly.
As a late comer, Otherdeed has been performing extremely well in comparison to the other virtual worlds recently and have managed to attract a strong community. Based on its performance so far, the project is significantly outperforming other projects in the space and can continue to do so as long as they keep developing and focusing on engagement as they have been doing so. Interestingly, the number of Otherdeed buyers for the period observed was 4,382 (refer to table 2). This is very close to the number of individuals (+4,300) that actually tested their “First Trip” to the Otherside on July 16th. So it must be noted that the strong sales seen during this period for the collection have definitely been influenced by this event.
Metaverse News
Otherside holders have tested a trip to the Otherside with 4300+ users.
The Sandbox partners with KEB Hana Bank to to provide banking services in the metaverse
Publishing assets is now open to everyone on Sandbox
Users can now use Coinbase Wallet to login, explore and own a piece of the metaverse.
Samsung Unveils Experiential Virtual Playground ‘Space Tycoon’ on Roblox
Decentraland to Host the Santander X Global Challenge Awards
The Sandbox launches Polygon LAND Bridge
African Museum Of The Metaverse Opens In Voxels
Shanghai Plans to Cultivate $52B Metaverse Industry by 2025
Meet the modder making $20,000 a month bringing the biggest games to vr
Starting in August, you will no longer be required to use a Facebook account to use the Meta Quest virtual reality headset. A new Meta account will appear, announced Mark Zuckerberg, thus ending months of tension since the end of Oculus VR.
Balenciaga, Prada, and Thom Browne will soon dress your Meta avatar
The retailers setting up shop in the metaverse
CJ ENM (South Korean entertainment company), The Sandbox team up to build metaverse in LAND
Indian Schools to Adopt XR STEM Learning
Language learning app Duolingo is encouraging game developers to create their own language learning content in blockchain-powered virtual world Decentraland and online gaming platform Roblox.
ByteDance’s metaverse investments continue with acquisition of Chinese virtual social platform PoliQ
