Emerging Tokens - 22nd February 2022

JP Morgan opened a virtual bank branch and Goldman Sachs sees a $8 trillion opportunity in the metaverse. The current metaverse is far from a fully functioning immersive economy, yet big corporations rush to build presence in the metaverse. Today we look at metaverse projects that are ready to onboard legacy brands and key layers in the metaverse.

Decentraland (MANA)

Decentraland is a blockchain-powered virtual-reality pioneer built on Ethereum. Decentraland has the biggest market cap in the metaverse space and as one of the first-movers, the company is well positioned to keep growing their dominance in this space. Decentraland is divided into parcels of LAND which are NFTs, and the ownership of LAND gives users full control of what they build. There are 90,601 land parcels in total and the LAND NFTs can be purchased with Decentraland’s native token MANA. The current floor price of those parcels is 4.6 ETH. 

The concept of ‘metaverse’ continues to garner attention from everyday users. While its soon-to-be competitors are under development, Decentraland has onboarded many projects both traditional companies and crypto-native projects. It is in Decentraland JP Morgan is opening its virtual branch. Decentraland helped Samsung enter the metaverse with Samsung opening a virtual store in Decentraland a month ago. Miller Lite opened a virtual bar in Decentraland ahead of Super Bowl 2022. Who is next Nike? McDonalds? Starbucks? Decentraland has also hosted a number of events including the NYE party, a music festival featuring Deadmau5 and Australian Open closing party featuring Steve Aoki. Decentraland will host a virtual fashion week in March. Hugo Boss is revealed to participate. Who will be next? Ralph Lauren? Apart from these, Decentraland has gained significant user adoption in the Play-to-Earn space via strategic investment into a metaverse poker project Decentral Games. 

MANA has been declining with the general market in the past two weeks and logged a 9.7% price decrease in the past 7days. BTC and ETH dropped more than MANA during the same period. The current RSI and RVI stand at 42 and 34 respectively. Investors betting on the metaverse should monitor MANA and what Decentraland is up to because Decentraland is one of the few places where it is developed enough to onboard brands and host events.

The Sandbox (SAND)

The Sandbox is a runner up in the metaverse space with a market capitalization of $3.4 billion. Like in Decentraland, users of The Sandbox can create assets, games and experiences and monetize their creations. Many artists and brands have acquired permanent land slots to grow influence in the metaverse. Snoop Dogg has a mansion built in The Sandbox and a plot adjacent to it was sold for $450k! Warner Music Group has secured a slot to create musical venues, French video game company will introduce its game franchises to the metaverse and Gucci entered The Sandbox. It is a competition between The Sandbox and Decentraland in terms of signing partnerships.

The Sandbox had been injected $93 million last November led by Softbank and the company now supports Polygon and gasless transactions through Biconomy’s technology. There are a total of 3 billion SAND tokens and a third of its total supply is circulating at a price of $3.06. Compared to MANA, SAND has been hit harder by the market downturn with a 23% price decline in the past 7 days. The RSI is at 35 and the RVI is yet to show a positive trading signal. 

Somnium Space

Founded in 2017, Somnium Space is focusing on building an immersive metaverse. Somnium Space’s VR world is available for all major VR headsets including Oculus, Hive and Windows. In Somnium Space, users can buy lands, real-estate and build customized avatars. The company secured investment from Gemini and onboarded the Winklevoss brothers as advisors. FTX Exchange built a metaverse HQ in Somnium Space. To strengthen users’ immersive VR experience, Somnium Space made strategic investments into VRgeeniers, a VR headset maker, and Teslasuit, a full body haptic suit maker, to introduce sensorics technology into their metaverse. Somnium Space also runs a creators fund to support creators and startups looking to make a big impact in the metaverse and the fund has been joined by Polygon, GSR, and Winklevoss Capital, Gemini Frontier Fund and more.
Somnium Space’s native token CUBE showed a very similar price movement to SAND in the past month. CUBE decreased by 25% in the past 7 days. CUBE’s market capitalization stands at $59 million and of its 100 million total supply, only 12.5 million are circulating. Somnium Space is good for users who wish to develop real-estate themselves using their builder tools and creating custom avatars using Unity SDK. The biggest selling point of this project is its flexibility, but it is not currently super easy for the users who are not familiar with virtual land gaming. Explore popular parcels on your web browser here.

Immutable X (IMX)

Immutable X is a layer 2 Ethereum solution for NFTs using Starkware’s ZK rollup. Founded by James and Robbie Ferguson (both Forbes 30 under 30), Immutable X is powering leading blockchain gaming projects including Gods Unchained, RTFKT, Guild of Guardians and Illuvium. Immutable X supports up to 9000 transactions per second and users pay zero gas. This has been made possible by having Ethereum key sign transactions batched into a compressed validity proof. Immutable X also aims to be carbon neutral as the team claim they will buy carbon credits to offset the carbon footprint of each and every NFT minted or traded on Immutable X.

Immutable X has recently grabbed the headlines as it has been revealed that the rumored partner for Gamestop’s new NFT marketplace was Immutable X. American video game publisher Kongregate has announced a partnership with Immutable X to develop blockchain games. IMX has a total supply of 2 billion tokens and currently 12% of them are circulating. The price of IMX reached $4 right after the announcement of the Gamestop partnership. However, IMX kept decreasing during the crypto bear. The RSI and RVI are both low at 30 and 34 respectively. 

Boson Protocol (BOSON)

Boson Protocol addresses the gap between physical commerce and metaverse commerce. The protocol can be understood as an interface between those two. Boson Protocol allows any item shoppable on metaverse to be redeemed in the physical world. Rather than tokenizing the product itself, Boson uses NFT vouchers that represent a promise that a digital value purchased online / metaverse will be exchanged for a physical good or service. This exchange is secured by double-sided deposits in a way that this mechanism incentivizes buyers and sellers to act with honesty. Boson Protocol recently joined the metaverse fashion week held in Decentraland as a strategic partner. Boson protocol will help Hugo Boss sell physical items in the metaverse.

Boson’s governance token BOSON has a total supply of 200 million, and currently 35% are circulating. 43.4% of the total supply is allocated for community rewards. Fuelled by the metaverse boom following Facebook (now Meta Platforms), the price of BOSON more than doubled in between late October and mid-November when it reached $4.13. Since then, the market started to correct and is now trading at $0.76 and BOSON’s IDO price back in April 2021 was $0.75. It could be a good moment for investors looking to invest in e-commerce in the metaverse. 

Written by Jessica Kang for Novum Insights.

The Emerging Tokens Alert and the Novum Blog are based on entirely estimated historical returns which provide no guarantee, promise or calculation of potential future returns or losses. In addition, all of the assets displayed and shown on the website are highly volatile and risky.