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As per a new Grayscale report, the number of active Metaverse users has surged by tenfolds between January 2020 and June 2021.
Grayscale Reports that Metaverse Users Have Increased Tenfolds
Grayscale, the crypto investing group, has released a positive assessment on the Metaverse, claiming that the "market opportunity" for bringing the Metaverse to the mainstream in the next few years may be worth over $1 trillion.
Grayscale Head of Research David Grider and research analyst Matt Maximo co-authored the November paper "The Metaverse, Web 3.0 Virtual Cloud Economies." The duo looks at the developing industry mostly through the lens of open Metaverse worlds powered by an "interconnected crypto-economy" like Decentraland.
Metaverse platforms integrated with crypto tokens, decentralized finance (DeFi) services such as staking and lending, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), decentralized governance, and decentralized cloud storage, according to the report, have "created a new online experience" that is rapidly attracting new users.
It was discovered that the user base has risen by 10X since the start of 2020, to roughly 50,000 as of June 2021, after analyzing "global all-time active metaverse wallets" data.
Venture Capitalists Willing to Punt on the Sector's Growth
The research points out that there are plenty of venture capitalists betting on the sector's potential. In Q3, $1 billion was raised for blockchain gaming, according to the report. This accounted for 12% of the whole crypto sector's gross fundraising in the quarter, making it the "leading sub-sector" inside the Web 3.0 and NFT category.
A growing average leisure time and money spent on digital hobbies, a cultural change from premium games to free-to-play gaming, and Web 3.0 technologies such as play-to-earn are all factors that the researchers believe will help to the Metaverse's expansion (P2E).
Global revenue from virtual world gaming reached $180 billion in 2020, with "premium spending" accounting for roughly $40 billion, according to forecasts. By 2025, the sector is expected to generate more than $400 billion, largely due to the in-game spending model.
Because of the play-to-earn potential, the paper claims that this movement is "accelerating further with the transition from Web 2.0 closed corporate Metaverses to Web 3.0 open crypto Metaverse networks."