Top 5 metaverses in 2023
By 2023, the number of metaverses users had already exceeded 400 million. Experts predict that by 2028, the metaverse market will be valued at $800 billion; by 2030, the number of users will exceed 2.6 billion. This article will tell you about the top five largest metaverses in the cryptocurrency market.
1. Axie Infinity
A popular blockchain game that has won the hearts of hundreds of thousands of DeFi users. Axie Infinity is believed to have spawned the Play-to-Earn category of games and started the trend of GameFi projects, which already number in the hundreds.
Axie Infinity is a metaverse based on the popular Pokemon and Tamagotchi games, in which players raise virtual pets and battle them against other players to be rewarded with native SLP project tokens. Each pet is represented as an NFT token that can be bought and sold in the marketplace as a digital asset.
The alpha version of the game was launched in 2019 by Vietnamese studio Sky Mavis. The project raised $150 million in a Series B investment round led by the renowned A16z fund. At the peak of the crypto market in 2021, the Axie Infinity metaverse had over 700,000 users and a capitalization of over $2 billion, making it the leading project in its field. Currently, the project has a capitalisation of $905 million.
2 The Sandbox
A blockchain-based metaverse inspired by popular games such as Minecraft and Roblox. Players in The Sandbox buy, own and sell virtual plots of land represented as NFT tokens (LAND). Players place their digital objects (ASSETS) or those created by other users on their plots in the built-in VoxEdit editor. Each NFT (ERC-1155) made in the game can then be sold by the player on the marketplace as a crypto asset.
The game was first released on iOS in 2012 by Pixpowl, but it wasn't until 2018 that the team removed it from the Ethereum blockchain. In November 2021, The Sandbox raised $93 million in a Series B round from prominent investment firms SoftBank Group, Liberty City Ventures, Galaxy, Samsung Next, and Polygon Studios. At the same time, the number of downloads of The Sandbox game through the app shops passed the 40 million mark.
The project has its token SAND, used for all transactions in the Sandbox metaverse. The token ranks 59th among all cryptocurrencies in the CoinMarketCap ranking, with a capitalization of $855 million.
3. Decentraland
It is one of the first projects that became a part of the metaverse sphere and is deservedly considered a pioneer of the industry. Decentraland is a virtual world based on the Ethereum network where players can explore digital spaces, organize events in the metaverse, and even create scenes. Decentraland is a full-fledged virtual world.
Even though Decentraland is one of the pioneers in metaverses, the project is slightly behind Axie Infinity and The Sandbox in capitalisation.
The platform raised $24 million in a public ICO in 2017, and the beta version of the metaverse was released in 2019. Notable funds such as Fundamental Labs, Fabric Ventures, Hashed, Kenetic Capital, Kosmos Capital, Boost VC, Animoca Brands and Digital Currency Group have invested in Decentraland at various stages.
Decentraland has 2 types of digital assets:
- ERC-20 MANA tokens,
- ERC-721 LAND (NFT) tokens.
To get LAND, users need to burn MANA tokens. MANA has a capitalization of $834 million, and the token is ranked 64th on the CMC service list.
4. Otherside
A metaverse developed by Yuga Labs, the studio that produced one of the world's most famous and currently expensive NFT collections, Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC). The most costly of the NFTs, The Bored Ape #8817, was sold at a Sotheby's auction for $3.4 million.
The Otherside metaverse combines the capabilities of MMORPG-based games and metaverses such as Decentraland on the blockchain. The first event in the Otherside virtual world, First Trip, was launched in the summer of 2022. To get a pass to the metaverse, players need to obtain at least one Otherdeed virtual land and the NFT character Koda, the number of which is minimal.
In March 2022, Yuga Labs released the native ERC-20 token APE, the leading digital asset in the Otherside metaverse. The APE token is ranked 79th on the CMC ranking with a capitalization of $599 million. BAYC NFT holders can tokenize their NFTs and receive APE tokens as rewards.
With a valuation of $4bn, the project has raised $450m for startup Otherside from significant funds such as A16z, Animoca Brands, FTX, MoonPay, better known as LionTree, Sound Ventures and Thrive Capital.
5. Illivium
Illivium is a full MMORPG adventure game released on the Ethereum and Immutable X blockchains. Illivium players can explore entire virtual worlds and collect magical creatures known as Illuvials. The game was developed over two years in 2020 by a team of 40 people — that's how seriously the developers took it.
In April 2021, the project team launched its native token, ILV, which is used as the primary means of payment in the Illivium ecosystem to reward players for their achievements and to pay incentives to liquidity providers of the IlluviDEX DEX exchange built into the platform. The ILV token has a capitalization of $433 million at the time of writing, ranking 102nd according to CoinMarketCap.
Illivium raised $15 million in two rounds of early-stage funding from Cogitent Ventures, Principle Ventures, Sandbar Investments and Bitcoin.com. The project also raised over $51 million in a public token sale in 2021.
