Metaverse by Market Cap and Volume

Even though the term “metaverse” has been around since the early 1990s, it doesn’t have a strict definition and is used in many different contexts. Typically, the term is used to describe a 3D virtual environment that puts a strong emphasis on the social dimension, allowing users to interact with each other, build communities and maintain social connections. The metaverse concept reached the mainstream consciousness in late 2021, when social media Facebook publicly announced a pivot to the metaverse and changed its name to Meta.

The metaverse in itself doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with cryptocurrencies and blockchain, but there’s a lot of projects in this space that are trying to enhance the metaverse through crypto and related technologies. For example, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) can be used to represent items and accessories, virtual real-estate, membership in exclusive clubs, and so forth. Blockchain-based tokens can serve as a virtual world’s currency, and enable new economic models that can help a metaverse platform grow and gain new use cases. Some projects are also using tokens to power the governance process in their virtual worlds.

At this stage, metaverse tokens are highly speculative, as the direction the metaverse sector will take in the future is uncertain. For example, we don’t know if the different metaverse platforms will start consolidating into one big virtual world, or if the sector will continue being highly fragmented. The demand for virtual items, real estate and other metaverse “products” could also be heavily impacted by trends in both the cryptocurrency and traditional markets.