Highlights:

• The Sandbox launches exclusive LAND holder staking, as volumes soar

• Sales of Estates keep Decentraland’s land cap pumping for a fifth week

• Somnium Space refocuses on its land economy, with immediate results

• Grand Theft Auto makers raise $7.6m to launch blockchain games franchise

• NFT Worlds earmarks Q1 2023 for new game Alpha, &…

• Some cool dev updates for Decentraland fans

1. Market Data

7-day data shows aggregate land caps for the 9 metaverse projects on OneLand up 2.62% to 996,060 ETH, or $1.29 billion. In ETH terms, aggregate trading volume increased 25% to 2,155.31 ETH on the back of last week’s 47% correction and as sales numbers boomed in The Sandbox.

Meanwhile, Decentraland’s market cap was up for a fifth consecutive week, as it re-establishes its preeminence in overall land cap and parcel values, if not trading activity, from its main competitor The Sandbox. Meanwhile, Somnium Space enjoyed a solid pick-me-up, as it refocused on land economics ahead of a quaternary sale event in October.

The Sandbox

Trading volume soared 89% in The Sandbox last week, as the project launched new staking pool incentives exclusively for LANDowners. 291.45 ETH passed hands on Thursday and Friday in The Sandbox’s two most heavily traded days for over a month. In what looks a resourceful move, it is nonetheless a bold one, given they will be handing out 3 million $SAND (or $2.58 million on current valuations) in rewards over the next 3 months as part of the plan.

At least on paper though, it offered a big boost to LAND sales, as AlphaSeason3 moved into its second month — sales were up 51% for the week. But unique holders of LAND were down while the top 1% of holders’ increased their LANDs share by 3.7%, raising question marks over whether the effort can broaden their market appeal or simply reinvigorate the existing landowners base.

Somnium Space

Somnium Space also made moves to rejuvenate land sales, announcing its Quaternary Land Offering to run throughout October, with all purchased parcels including the Somnium Space WEB WORLDS feature, enabling owners to plug in premade scenes to their land parcels. And the announcement seems to have done the trick, as all major metrics rounded off the last 7 days demonstrably up on recent weeks.

Though percentage moves often appear as an exaggeration for a smaller holder base like Somnium Space, a 1,986% increase in volume does not lie. Despite a bad week for some CUBE holders, with 1.5 million CUBEs compromised in a $160 million hack on market maker Wintermute, the token ended the week up 4.3% while Somnium Space’s land cap rose a healthy 6.6%.

Decentraland

Yet more Estate sales of late, one for 21 ETH, helped Decentraland maintain its momentum of recovering land cap for a 5th consecutive week, up 7.86% to 245,370 ETH, though trading volume (-1.1%) and average prices (-5.2%) ended the week down. Nonetheless, Decentraland has, in fact, been experiencing its best month since the trough of June, with trading volumes, average prices and land cap all on the rise.

For comprehensive market and metaverse project data, check oneland.world.

2. Market News

White House

• Sep 19

The White House issued the first-ever digital asset regulation framework, covering cryptocurrencies and NFTs. It emphasized the need for regulation, focusing on the risk of stablecoins following the crash of TerraUSD and Three Arrows Capital.

Meta

• Sep 19

Bloomberg reported that Meta CEO Mark Zukerberg’s net worth is down $71 billion since the start of this year, as the effects of his huge bet on the Metaverse begins to surface.

Wintermute

• Sep 20

Leading crypto market maker Wintermute lost approximately $160 million in a hack. Its founder and CEO Evgeny Gaevoy assured lenders they may recall their loans if they wish.

Somnium Space

• Sep 20

Somnium Space announced that about 1.5 Million CUBEs were compromised in the Wintermute hack. A tweet from Hacken Club listed Somnium Space as the top victim by market value of stolen tokens.

Spot

• Sep 20

Seattle-based Spot raised $5.5 million in a seed round to build virtual offices in the Metaverse. Spot’s platform has already built over 8,000 custom virtual workplaces.

NedBank

• Sep 20

Africa’s 5th largest bank NedBank teamed up with Africarare to buy a plot of land in Ubuntuland. The South African bank becomes the first financial institution in Africa to join the Metaverse race.

Random Games

• Sep 21

Grand Theft Auto (GTA) creators Random Games raised $7.6 million in a seed round led by Resolute Ventures, Asymmetric, but also Polygon and others. Random will launch Unioverse, a Web3 games franchise distributing free game-building digital assets.

Hume

• Sep 23

Web3 startup Hume closed an $11.7 million round led by TCG Group to establish a roster of virtual artists dubbed ‘metastars’. AngelBaby was Hume’s first metastar, created specifically for the Metaverse. Some might know her first single, ‘NFT’.

3. Sales & Mints

Voxels

• Sep 19

Voxels listed 8 parcels from Chronos island in OpenSea at 0.4 ETH.

The Sandbox

• Sep 20

Maya Water Park’s featured NFT collection went live in The Sandbox Marketplace. Maya Water Park is a tourist attraction built by 01a1 Studio based on the historic Maya pyramid.

• Sep 22

The Sandbox introduced a new, dedicated staking pool with exclusive benefits, for LAND owners only. Benefits include a high APR and 250,000 SAND in rewards perweek for the first 12 weeks, with a cap set at 500 SAND/LAND.

Honey Land

• Sep 22

PlayToEarn game Honey Land launched its LAND mint. Only people with a Guest list were eligible to mint.

Somnium Space

• Sep 22

Somnium Space announced news on its Quaternary Land Offering to kick off Oct 2. All purchased parcels will come with the Somnium Space WEB WORLDs feature.

4. Events & Contests

Events

The Sandbox

• Sep 19

The Sandbox exhibited the work of young students from the ISART Digital School, which prepares students for jobs in video games and 3D-VFX animation.

• Sep 19

The Sandbox teamed up with Smobler Studios and 1-Group to hold its first wedding in the Metaverse.

• Sep 20

Dapper Labs, in collaboration with LuluLand and The Sandbox, unveiled the first-ever International NFT Day featuring over 35 famous NFT projects and numerous influencers. 5 years ago to the day, Dapper Labs CTO Dete Shirley published ERC721, which would go on to become the NFT standard.

Decentraland

• Sep 20

The Fabricant teamed up with RLTY and WoW to hold a 3 days WOW FASHION FEST in Decentraland.

• Sep 22

Free news daily ’20 Minutes’, published in France, Spain and Switzerland, opened its first virtual distribution center in Decentraland, and will distribute its Web3 version ’20 Mint’ three times a week.

CNN <> Somnium Space

• Sep 24

Somnium Space featured in the premiere episode of new CNN tech series, Decoded. The episode focused on the Metaverse and featured Somnium Space alongside host Anna Stewart wearing a Teslasuit for the full immersive experience.

Contests

The Sandbox

• Sep 20

The Sandbox started a new VoxEdit Contest based on the ‘Thunderbirds’. The contest’s mission is to create a vehicle asset such as a car, ship or motor bike inspired by the iconic 1960s TV series.

• Sep 20

The Funguy Family held a Twitter giveaway to celebrate their Funguy Kingdom Social Hub reopening.

Catch up on this week’s Twitter Spaces, project streams and interviews:

DappRadar: AMA with ATARI

Everything Metaverses: Pending Regulation in Web3 (check their upcoming schedule)

Somnium Space: Building Somnium Web WORLDs from scratch.

The Sandbox: AlphaS3 Saturday stream

NFT Wolds: Weekly WRLD

5. Project Updates

Axie Infinity

• Sep 23

Axie Infinity announced an urgent mid-season balancing patch, with changes to several aspects of the game including cards, runes, status effects and charms.

Decentraland

• Sep 19

Decentraland announced that creators can now make all-new Emotes — special dance moves and dramatic poses — and sell them as NFTs in the Decentraland Marketplace.

Polygonal Mind, for one, already dropped a few cool ones, like this:

• Sep 22

Decentraland launched a new feature, Set Your Home! Players can choose new spawn coordinates when entering Decentraland by picking their favorite scene, selecting ‘Set Home’, then use http://play.decentraland.org to load your favorite space.

Worldwide Webb

• Sep 20

Worldwide Webb announced that offers by attribute have been enabled for its lands on OpenSea. People can now make offers across the collection on the specific Apartment size.

NFT Worlds

• Sep 23

During the project’s Weekly WRLD Twitter Space, NFT Worlds co-founder ArkDev earmarked Q1 of 2023 for a playable Alpha of their new game, with a Beta for devs to build on top of it in Q2. ArkDev also said the community will be able to see sneak peaks gameplay and mechanics demos by the end of this year.

6. Partnerships

Decentraland<>Olaplex

• Sep 20

Hair brand Olaplex is bringing its virtual influencer Kai to the Metaverse. The brand plans to hold future events and NFT wearables giveaways in Decentraland.

• Sep 19

Esports and entertainment group Faze Clan is building a virtual space consisting of 12x12 LAND plots in The Sandbox called Faze World. The two will jointly develop virtual experiences, events, games, digital infrastructure and products.

The Sandbox<>Softstar

• Sep 21

Taiwan PC games brand Softstar will build Softstar Metapark in The Sandbox. Players will be treated to a myriad of traditional and futuristic experiences, featuring popular classic martial arts heroes such as those from series ‘The Legend of Sword and Fairy’ and ‘Richman’.

The Sandbox<>FlickPlay

• Sep 22

The Sandbox teamed up with FlickPlay to launch a brand new feature that enables NFT holders to create videos with their NFTs in the real-world, while building social rankings of their NFTs.

Worldwide Webb<>Chimpers NFT

• Sep 22

Worldwide Webb integrated Chimpers NFTs. Chimpers is a NFT collection of 5,555 warriors, gods, demons, mages and space travelers created by pixel artist Timpers.

Don’t forget — to access the most comprehensive, in-depth and up-to-date aggregated VRE market and project data, check out OneLand.

Twitter: @OneLand_World

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