- Axie Infinity Developer Acknowledges Sharp Usage Drop — From 1.3M Daily Players In April To Under 600K In June
- Neal Stephenson, Who Inspired Blockchain & Conceived The Metaverse, Co-Founds Company Bringing Both Together
- Watch: How To Install & Run Second Life On Your Steam Deck
- This Is What Strong User Growth On A Metaverse Platform Looks Like
- The Sandbox & Decentraland Have Huge User Loss — Blockchain Metaverse Platforms Fall Below 1000 Weekly Active Users!
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Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Wendz Tempest has an extraordinary home decor blog called Cozey in SL. This picture is from her most recent post “It’s About that Time.” She’s just come back from the Farmer’s Market with a detour at The Arcade. It was the foods from the Farmer’s Market that drew my eye. All of the items can be found at the Farmer’s Market:
- [IK] Grandma Kitchen Storage Set – Eggs
- [IK] Grandma Kitchen Storage Set – Vegetables
- [IK] Grandma Kitchen Storage Set – Tableclothes
- BROKEN ARROWS – Milk Bottle Holder
- {YD}Silverware Holder – Pure
- Hearth – Farmers Market Bag (Local)
- [Merak] – Strawberry Basket
- [Merak] – Bananas Basket
- ACORN Orchard Box -Apricots
- ACORN Double Crate -Picked Daily
- ACORN Orchard Box -Peaches
- ACORN Orchard Box -Plums
- KraftWork Rustic Farm Vegetables Wall Rack
- MADRAS Sheep Vase White
For more great design, click here:
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Axie Infinity developer Sky Mavis tweeted some important information last night, responding to my post citing Arcane Research, which originally claimed that the "play to earn" game had slipped beneath 1000 weekly active users. On the contrary, COO Aleksander Leonard Larsen said that the accurate number is currently 588,000 DAU / 1.5 million MAU.
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Notably, this is still a major drop in usage for Axie Infinity, based on the Google Chart that Larsen shared to bolster this claim: According that data, Axie Infinity's Daily Active Users have shrunk from 1,331,453 on April 11 down to 588,087 on June 6.
"We are in a major transition period in our game, narrative, and economy, as well as it being a macro bear market," Axie Infinity product lead Philip La replied in that Twitter thread, acknowledging the drop (screencapped above). "The user drop is a function of all of these, each of which have their own complex nuances."
I've updated my original post to reflect these numbers. While Axie Infinity's status is much less dire than originally stated, this loss of usage is still extremely large, and shows a consistent hemorrhaging of about 100,000 daily active users every week.More on Axie's current state in this new Bloomberg story.
As for Arcane Research's flawed report:
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Writing about the Metaverse increasingly becomes (sorry) meta:
[30 years ago] Neal Stephenson was just about to publish “Snow Crash,” the book that literally defined the Metaverse and in the process inspired a generation of technologists. I’m from a generation of technologists inspired by Neal as well — the slightly later 1999-era “Cryptonomicon” reading group.
“Cryptonomicon” included Neal’s musings on how a group of nerds might start the first online bank; it inspired PayPal, and I would argue created what we call “FinTech” as an industry in its current incarnation. Bitcoiners now include many of the early PayPal founders and investors…
Like many of you, I’ve been curious what Neal thought about the world’s sudden adoption of his term “Metaverse” last year. Luckily for me, that curiosity turned into a deep series of conversations. From those conversations came our conviction that it is time to found a new Layer 1 Blockchain, and so today I am super pleased to announce that we are co-founding LAMINA1.
There’s a lot to say about LAMINA1, and we’ll be talking about it a lot this year. In brief, I think of it as the base layer for the Open Metaverse: a place to build something a bit closer to Neal’s vision — one that privileges creators, technical and artistic, one that provides support, spatial computing tech, and a community to support those who are building out the Metaverse.
Much more here from LAMINA1 co-founder Peter Vessenes, though not the specific details of how blockchain will practically work with an "open metaverse". While nothing like blockchain was mentioned in Snow Crash's original conception of the Metaverse, Stephenson does allude there to a kind of quasi-nonprofit body laying down its foundation:
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Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
While scrolling through Facebook, I came upon this picture featuring one of the Shelbys from Peaky Blinders, the critically-acclaimed series on Netflix. I confess I have not watched it because the commercials look so depressing. Still, it is frequently suggested as something I would like. I sure like this picture from Eddy who is also new to me. His stream is worth a column of its own, especially as he seems to like doing movie poster pics in SL. But the Peaky Blinders theme seemed intriguing. Did other people do homage to Peaky Blinders in Second Life?
Yes, yes they did. For more, click here:
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As comparison data to that chart on blockchain-based metaverse platforms from yesterday, here's VRChat's daily peak concurrency on Steam since 2017. (Via SteamDB.) Important qualifier: This is not a full reflection of user activity on VRChat, since it doesn't count people logging in via the Quest headset/store.
After a brief spike in late 2017/early 2018 due to the infamous Ugandan knuckles meme, VRChat's user concurrency slipped for a time but then in mid-2019, started steadily and strongly growing to now in 2022, when VRChat's peak is consistently over 30,000 every day, and sometimes over 40,000K. (Again, this is only via Steam — the total CCU tends to be nearly double that, counting Quest devices.)
This data is just a bird's eye view of the real thing that's important to have on a metaverse platform:
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Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Lidsa’s Chevy pickup is giving her grief and giving us a great slice-of-life picture. This makes me wish she was still blogging because we all need a dirty shirt. Her dog seems determinedly helpful. I imagine he passes her the tools when asked. I like Chevy pickups. I learned to drive on my dad’s 1938 Chevy pickup that had a double clutch, two gears in reverse, and two low gears. Superlow! This meant when I first drove a normal manual transmission car, I had no idea what to do.
For a more metaphorical picture, click here:
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Update, 6/10: In a conversation with Axie Infinity's developer on Twitter, Arcane Research amended its report of Axie Infinity usage, saying it's much more than initially suggested in this infographic; Sky Maven COO Aleksander Leonard Larsen claims current usage is 588K DAU / 1.5M MAU. Read this post for more details.
Many crypto enthusiasts insist that NFTs and the blockchain are an integral part of the Metaverse, but somewhere along the way, actual consumers did not get that memo. Metaverse developer Rafael Brown just shared this rather jaw-dropping chart with me, taken from this in-depth usage report. And while I've previously expressed some skepticism around the Sandbox and Decentraland, the leading blockchain-based metaverse platforms, the active user numbers are even more dire than I last reported:
"They were both sub-1000 per week much of last year, Sandbox spiked to 7000 per week in November and is back down to 1000 per week or less, " as Rafael summarizes. "Decentraland spiked to 2000 per week in November and is back down well below 1000 per week." (Also note the now-miniscule weekly usage of Axie Infinity, once a darling of "play to earn" advocates. NOTE: See update above.)
I cannot emphasize enough how small these usage numbers are. For instance, VRChat and metaverse grandaddy Second Life each typically have peak daily concurrent users of 30,000+. (And often much more than that.)
But within the blockchain industry, Rafael observes, the paltry user numbers for The Sandbox and Decentraland aren't seen as concerning: "[T]hey just see it as the very early part of their pre-ordained growth to take over the world, whereas I see it as numbers that are so small as to be unsustainable."
A longtime member of the game industry and frequent conference speaker, he believes continued enthusiasm for blockchain games is not coming from game developers per se:
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Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Hope Van Mansdaele or Hopey offers an intriguing challenge, “Look into my eyes…” is an example of what she hopes other SL roleplayers will create. I was struck by the power of those eyes lined up, so different from each other and so compelling. From her description:
I was highly inspired by a friend of mine who yesterday took some photos of people their eyes during a roleplay event and actually made me realise how beautiful eyes can be.I photographed the eyes of my current active roleplay characters i use on different sims and all have their own story to tell… I challenge YOU to make a photo like this too and tag me so i can have a look to your characters eyes too!
- Maylea Magnolia May – Fae unicorn
- Ayana Arai – Spirit Koi / Feesh
- Nyxeris – Unseelie Fae / pixie
- Khione Sakai – Yokai Kirin
For more great roleplay, click here:
