There has been an explosion of metaverse worlds through 2021 and 2022.
If you are one of the thousands of early adopters exploring virtual universes, you may recognize names like Sandbox and Decentraland. But there are new metaverse worlds rivaling the market leaders.
If you are new to the metaverse, we recommend checking out these five metaverse worlds in 2022.
Decentraland made headlines throughout last year as one of the breakout iterations of the much-anticipated metaverse. Decentraland experienced unprecedented growth for 2021, sending the market value of its land and its native token soaring.
Decentraland saw their native token spike in value from under.40 USD over the summer to over $6.00 in November and welcomed institutional powers from various industries into their metaverse via multi-million virtual real-estate acquisitions, including Samsung, JP Morgan, Adidas, and Miller Lite.
Decentraland has maintained a jam-packed schedule to entice new users to their metaverse.
Sunday marked the end of the Metaverse Fashion Week within Decentraland. The multi-day event featured some of the top brands in and outside of web3. The event positioned Decentraland next to prestigious fashion capitals of the world, such as New York, Rome, Milan, Paris, and London, and welcomed many traditional brands into web3, such as Vogue, Dolce & Gabbana, and Phillipe Plein.
The event was as star studded as physical fashion weeks. Grimes put on a captivating live performance for the closing ceremony, and fashion mogul Tommy Hilfiger co-hosted a fireside chat alongside godmother of the metaverse, Cathay Hackl.
Decentraland announced on March 31st that the building function would now be open to everyone. Decentraland allows users to create their scenes using intelligent objects from the catalog to customize spaces. Despite the surge of interest and consequential rise in price, the In-World Builder was out of the grasp of most people. The expansion of the In-World Builder to all players will encourage retail activity in the space.
Metaverse platform Sandbox was consistently in the headlines throughout the past year after seeing its token valuation soar and securing $38 million in funding.
Snoop Dogg even shot a music video in their metaverse!
Sandbox is not showing any signs of slowing down, as the team is seeking an additional $400 million in funding only two weeks after co-founder Sebastian Borget announced they’d be ‘aggressively’ recruiting and making acquisitions
Sandbox is one of the largest Ethereum-based Metaverses, rivaled primarily by Decentraland, and they’re making sure they stay at the top.
Sandbox first came to public attention back in 2011 with its mobile game ‘The Sandbox,’ and again in 2016 with the sequel, ‘The Sandbox Evolution,’ the games garnered over 40 million across iOS and Android marketplaces. The proliferation of Blockchain technologies prompted the developer, Pixowl, to pivot the game to the new tech to disrupt existing creator games, such as Minecraft, by providing actual ownership of the gaming experience via NFTs.
Since its release, Sandbox has seen rapid adoption, from the value of its native token rocketing to celebrities flocking to participate in the ecosystem. Back in October, the Sand Token was trading for around 80 cents. Upon the late November release of the game, the price shot up to nearly $9.00.
Sandbox has also received major cultural attention. Snoop Dogg recently released a song about his Sandbox property and shot the whole music video in the Sandbox Metaverse. Warner Music Group is currently working to create the first music-centric world in the Sandbox Metaverse; Warner represents an impressive collection of notable artists who could follow Snoop’s precedent more quickly in the Warner Music Group-created world within the Sandbox Metaverse.
Sandbox partner, OliveX recently released their first iteration of exercise to earn, Dustland, a proof-of-workout protocol that compensates users with tokens for completing runs. While the app is still in public testing, the recent popularity of Stepn on Solana makes it reasonably easy to make a bull case for the future of OliveX on Sandbox.
Open Metaverse (OM) is a metaverse world developed by the internet-famous Punk 6529.
Since the account was created, Punk 6529 has amassed an impressive following on Twitter of nearly half a million in less than a year.
6529 has provided immense value to the Crypto Twitter community through long, thought-out threads ranging from tokenomics and overall investing to social commentary and meme usage.
He positioned himself as an admired and respected community member and an overall good actor.
OM is an Open Metaverse dedicated to the expansion of decentralized and open-source software.
The team has committed to a providing the infrastructure to build a metaverse that:
The first district (museum district) went live last week and welcomed visitors from all over the globe.
The 6529 Museum is dedicated to educating the population about the importance of decentralized and open-source software. 6259 boasts one of the largest and most valuable NFT collections in the world.
Future districts in OM will be built by various independent teams interested in working within the OM ecosystem.
They’re still in alpha testing and are looking for creators and teams to help build out the metaverse and provide novel use-cases.
Check out their collaboration form if you want to get in on the ground floor of what will likely be one of the most critical digital spaces to date.
Enjin is a Singapore-based blockchain designed to serve as the infrastructure for future decentralized games. Unlike others, such as Sandbox or Decentraland, which build off of the Ethereum blockchain, Enjin has developed an entire blockchain platform just for gaming.
Enjin has attracted talented teams looking to develop Ethereum’s transaction costs by creating their own gaming/metaverse specific blockchain. By working as the underlying infrastructure for other metaverses, Enjin can gain exposure to multiple gaming categories, from MMORPGs to strategy and simple puzzle games.
Enjin currently hosts four separate metaverses, which are available to public participation, and over 30 games. MyMeta, one of their more popular partnerships, is presently minting its first NFT release.
MyMeta features four different on-chain games, including two extensions of popular games, Minecraft and Grand Theft auto. Integrating on-chain items into existing games appeals to the legacy gaming community to expand their existing online world and make the transition to on-chain gaming more seamless.
Illuvium is an on-chain MMORPG currently still in development but has maintained a steady place in the public spotlight for over a year since they first announced their project at the beginning of 2021.
While most projects are forced to push out products at break-neck speed just to maintain public interest in this rapidly moving industry, Illuvium has taken its time and amassed a large and highly skilled team to create an actual AAA on-chain game.
Users are currently only able to access a private beta. Still, a mobile game is expected sometime this year as developers continue to work on the massive on-chain world of Illuvium. The team recently released an updated staking contract and UI to reward early supporters and continue to tease intrigued gamers with art and gameplay teasers.
It is a decentralized metaverse where anyone can create their own unique ‘space,’ or parcel of the metaverse, and customize it using 3D modeling tools.
The project, backed by several prominent web3 entities, including Filecoin, FlamingoDAO, IFPS, ConsenSys, and Polygon, has experienced rapid growth recently as online artists flaunted their immersive creations to their audiences.
Monaverse allows anyone to mint their own space for free, except for gas costs. It only charges a 2.5% commission for sales, encouraging artists to create without being burdened by high prices. Pieces created within the Monaverse have sold for over 10eth each on Opensea.
Their partnership with async art, which allows artists to save each component as an individual NFT, will likely attract more talent and attention.
Did you enjoy reading this article? Learn more about the metaverse and NFT projects brewing at Cominted Labs.
