Crypto investment giant Grayscale has released a bullish report on Metaverses. The report estimates that the market opportunity to bring the Metaverse to the mainstream could be worth more than $1 trillion in the coming years.
Tenfold increase in users
Grayscale’s November report with the title “The Metaverse, Web 3.0 Virtual Cloud Economies” is written by David Grider, chief of research at Grayscale and research analyst Matt Maximo. The duo explore the fast-growing sector mainly from the perspective of open Metaverse worlds, supported by a ‘connected crypto-economy’ such as Decentraland.
The report highlights that Metaverse platforms integrated with crypto tokens, decentralized financial services such as staking and lending, NFTs, decentralized governance and decentralized cloud storage have “created a new online experience” that is rapidly attracting new users.
When analyzing the data from “global active Metaverse wallets” since the beginning of 2020, the user base was found to have grown by 10x since then to approximately 50,000 as of June 2021.
“Compared to other Web 3.0 and Web 2.0 segments,
the users of the virtual world of Metaverse still in its infancy. However, if current growth rates remain at their current course, this emerging segment has the potential to become mainstream in the coming years.”
The report emphasizes that there is no shortage of venture capitalists taking a gamble on the sector’s potential. According to the report, third-quarter fundraising was $1 billion for blockchain gaming. That represented 12% of the total fundraising for the entire crypto sector in the quarter. This ranked it as the “top subsector” within the Web 3.0 and NFT category.
The researchers note a series of key dynamics that could significantly contribute to the growth of the Metaverse sector. These include, for example, increasing average free time and money spent on digital hobbies, a cultural shift from premium games to free-to-play gaming, and Web 3.0 innovations such as play-to-earn.
Global revenues from virtual world gaming were $180 billion in 2020. “Premium spending” was worth about $40 billion, with estimates that the industry could bring in more than $400 billion by 2025. This is primarily driven by the in-game spending model.
The report states that this shift is “further accelerating with the transition from Web 2.0 closed business Metaverses to Web 3.0 open crypto Metaverse networks” because of the play-to-earn potential they represent.
“Web 3.0 Metaverse virtual worlds have benefited from rapid innovation and productivity gains.”
The report states the following:
“Virtual crypto worlds have created a multi-million dollar primary and secondary market for asset creators and owners by eliminating capital controls and opening their digital borders to free-market capitalism.”
Prices of the native tokens for open Metaverse platforms such as Decentraland (MANA) and The Sandbox (SAND) have been gaining momentum lately. They are up 49% and 102% respectively and are currently at $5.03 and $7.60.