The Ethereum blockchain-based metaverse projects Decentraland and The Sandbox have responded to DappRadar’s data about their low daily user activity, saying that a “misinformed” metric was used to calculate the number of each platform’s daily active users (DAU).
As reported previously, DappRadar data showed that the Decentraland metaverse has 30 DAU and a market valuation of nearly $1.2 billion.
Decentraland stated in a tweet on October 8 that “some websites are tracking only specific smart contract transactions but reporting them as daily active users […], which is inaccurate.”
Lately, there has been a lot of misinformation on the number of active users of Decentraland. Some websites are tracking only specific smart contract transactions but reporting them as daily active users DAU, which is inaccurate.
— Decentraland (@decentraland) October 7, 2022
Decentraland tweeted that better data may be accessed at DCL Metrics, a data aggregator designed specifically for Decentraland that calculates DAUs based on the number of users that log in and then move out of a parcel.
This discrepancy is noteworthy since Decentraland’s September statistics indicate 56,700 Monthly Active Users, but just 1,074, or 1.89% of those users, interacted with the platform’s smart contracts.
The CEO of Sandbox, Arthur Madrid, tweeted on October 10 that on-chain transactions do not mean Users and that owners of non-fungible tokens (NFT) “invest in an asset that will grow in value over time-based Utilities.”
Sandbox refuted the data about its platform’s low number of DAUs by declaring on Twitter that it has 201,000 Monthly Active Users.
Though this demonstrates that blockchain data should never be viewed without context, a recent Reddit discussion suggests that user experience and engagement are the most significant concern.
One commenter in the discussion referred to Decentraland as “Desertedland,” and another stated that the popular metaverse game had become a “ghost town.”
Even the most credible metaverse projects are under unprecedented challenges in the current bear market, which has led to a steep decline in token values.
Decentraland is now valued at $0.65, down 88.8% from its all-time high (ATH) of $5.85, and has a market cap of $1.25 billion. The current price of Sandbox is $0.78, down 90.6% from its all-time high of $8.40, with a market cap of $2.36 billion. Over the past 24 hours, MANA and SAND have declined by more than 5%.