Virtual land sales spiked in the first quarter of 2023, up 277% with a week yet to go, as Otherside, MG Land, Createra lead the pack.
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The sales of NFTs linked to metaverse virtual worlds have spiked this year, according to a new DappRadar report.
"The first quarter of 2023 has seen unprecedented growth and innovation in the world of virtual reality… $502 million [was] invested into blockchain gaming and metaverse projects," it claimed.
Virtual land sales led the way, with digital acreage pulling in $311 million, the report noted.
"The virtual world market has been on a bull run since the start of the year," it said, pointing to a 277% increase in digital land trading volume. DappRadar added:
"This marks the best quarter for virtual worlds since the Terra Luna crash in May 2022."
That led to the Wall Street Journal reporting that NFT sales "flatlined" in 2022.
The number of land trades also hit an all-time high, with 146,690 plots sold and resold — an 83% increase over Q4 2022.
That comes as the broader NFT market saw rising sales numbers tarred by new marketplace entrant Blur.
Blur saw widespread wash sales spurred on by a program that offered big enough rewards to frequent traders that whales started selling themselves everything they could. $1.3 billion of the $2 billion in NFT sales racked up in the first two months of 2023 was down to Blur.
Otherside Booms
The top performer, by far, was Otherdeed by Otherside. So far in Q1 2023, it has seen land sales of $222 million, up 237% from the previous quarter. It also accounted for nine of the 10 top land plot NFT sales, ranging in price from $150,000 to $279.000.
The two top newcomers were MG Land, which racked up $59 million in sales, and Createra's whose Genesis Land brought in $14 million.
Some of the best-known games and metaverses fell down the roster.
While The Sandbox and Decentraland are the best-known blockchain metaverses, they placed fourth and eighth, with sales down 36% to $3.5 million and 33% to $1.9 million, respectively.
The once-dominant blockchain-based game Axie Infinity's new Homeland, Lunacia, placed fifth, with $2.5 million in sales. And while that's down from $3 million in Q4 2022, the game, still in alpha, saw its new AXS rewards launched in late February. That required a rebuild of all land development.
