Meanwhile, metaverse real estate sales topped $500 million in 2021 across four major platforms. Real estate sales in Sandbox, Decentraland, Cryptovoxels, and Somnium (a.k.a. the “Big Four”) boomed last year, racking up $501 million according to MetaMetric Solutions, and investors and analytics firms estimate sales could double this year. In January, sales topped $85 million, and if sales continue at this pace, they could reach $1 billion this year. Meanwhile, BrandEssence Market Research found that the metaverse real estate market is “expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 31% a year from 2022 to 2028.” Facebook’s Meta announcement in October has certainly made the metaverse land grab hotter than ever (metaverse mortgages are a thing now), and land value in the metaverse is being determined by what owners do with their property, whether it be building an attraction or museum. Locations are also becoming more lucrative in these platforms—parcels near Snoop Dogg’s virtual world in Sandbox and parcels near the Atari development have some of the highest price tags. Still, while brands are racing to figure out their metaverse strategy and releasing NFT collections left and right, the concept is still very much “a terminological land grab,” as WIRED’s Editor-in-Chief Gideon Lichfield puts it, and only time will tell how young consumers (and people in general) actually interact with virtual worlds. (CNBC, Wired)
