The Ethereum blockchain-based Metaverse projects Decentraland and Sandbox have responded to reports of declining daily user activity on the platforms by claiming that a “misinformation” metric is being used to measure the daily active users (DAUs) on both platforms.
The controversy appears to have arisen from data obtained from DappRadar, with observers suggesting that the Decentraland metaverse is seeing 30 DAUs despite a market cap of over $1.2 billion.
However, Decentraland reported in a tweet on October 8 that “some sites only track certain smart contract transactions but report them as daily active users […] which is inaccurate.”
Sandbox CEO Arthur Madrid tweeted on October 10 that “on-chain transactions do not mean users” and that holders of non-volatile tokens (NFTs) are “investing in an asset that will increase in value over time.”
In a tweet, Decentraland said “better data” can be found in DCL Metrics, a data aggregator designed specifically for Decentraland that measures DAU by the number of “people who check in and then exit the package.”
This difference is important as Decentraland’s September data shows 56,700 monthly active users, but only 1,074, or 1.89% of those users, actually interact with Decentraland’s smart contracts.
Similarly, Sandbox has denied data that the platform has low DAUs, noting on Twitter that it has 201,000 monthly active users.
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But while this shows that blockchain data should never be taken out of context, user experience and engagement appear to be the biggest cause for concern, according to a recent Reddit index.
One of the posters referred to Decentraland as “Desert Land” and another said the popular metaverse had become a “ghost town”.
The controversy comes at a time when even the most legitimate projects in the metaverse are facing unprecedented pressure in the current bear market, causing the price of the token to plummet.
