Digital Real Estate Investing: Top Five Metaverse Projects (2023 List)

One important aspect of digital real estate would be the Metaverse. An array of virtual worlds that allow users to disconnect from reality, build their own virtual personalities, and gaming events to hang with their virtual or IRL friends.

The Rise Of The Digital World

The plethora of digital worlds allows you to purchase virtual real estate and in-world items such as sneakers, weapons, clothes, armor, etc.

The Metaverse is currently worth around $47 billion, with some predictions putting that figure up to around $800 billion by 2024.

There's been a huge increase in metaverse projects with all this hype, and people are scrambling to find the best.

So, let's take a look at the metaverse projects that we think are worth researching.

What is Digital real estate?

Before we dive further into the metaverse projects, let's summarize what digital real estate is exactly. Digital real estate is everything you see online, from URLs, websites, social media accounts, domain names, and now virtual property in the Metaverse can be classed as digital real estate. Like all assets, they're worth money.

Virtual land is now mainly known as metaverse land and Web3 projects that work within the property sector. They can also be considered proptech companies.

We've got a few articles dedicated to this if you want to dive deeper into understanding digital real estate.

How do you buy NFTs and digital assets?

You can buy NFTs from various sources, including 3rd party marketplaces or straight from the project themselves.

Platforms such as MagicEden, OpenSea, and many others, including the projects listed below, will all sell virtual assets and NFTs.

You simply need to connect your cryptocurrency wallet and have enough cash to bid on items. If you want to learn how to set up a crypto wallet, check out our setup guide for the Phantom wallet.

Before you set that up, you'll need to research to understand what wallet you want; we've got another article that highlights the best Solana wallets currently available. Check it out.

What are the top metaverse crypto projects in 2023?

1) Sandbox

One of the most popular and user-friendly options on our list is the metaverse crypto project, Sandbox.

The project is built on the ethereum blockchain and is similar to Decentraland in its ambition to be the top metaverse project. The in-game economy is powered by their native token SAND and the crypto coin, Ethereum.

The game editor makes playing this Metaverse so fun and accessible as it makes the development of events and assets super easy. These assets can then be sold for profit, further boosting the in-game economy.

The main attraction for users to spend their time in the Sandbox metaverse is its user-friendly experience, NFT marketplace, and UGC gaming technology.

Before buying land in the Metaverse, check out our article that shows you what to consider before investing in a metaverse project.

2) Decentraland

Another mighty titan on our top metaverse list. Decentraland became open to the public in February 2020 after development starting in 2016.

The platform also operates on top of the Ethereum blockchain. Like Sandbox, it allows users to build gaming events, create NFTs to sell and use in those events.

The Decentraland platform is world-renowned as the original metaverse project, and billions of dollars worth of virtual land have been sold on the platform.

The Metaverse Group recently bought a chunk of land on Decentraland for $2.43 million; at the time, this was a record-breaking sale. The two native tokens are MANA and LAND.

The main difference between Decentraland and Sandbox is that the former focuses less on a user-friendly experience. If you want to build on Decentraland, it'll require some coding skills.

The metaverse crypto project will most likely battle it out for the top spot in the next few years between the others on this list. But, it has the beginner's advantage.

3) Axie Infinity 

The next metaverse crypto project on our list is like the Web3 version of Pokemon. Axie Infinity is one of the most successful crypto projects and play-to-earn games in Web3.

97% of NFT holders had three or more Axies in their possession, with the NFT collection recently surpassing $4 billion in sale volume.

Players of Axie Infinity generate creatures called Axies and use them to battle with other players. Their native crypto is AXS, and all Axies can be bred, traded, upgraded, and bought from 3rd party marketplaces.

The project could do more to build out its virtual reality features and has been lacking in ambition the past few months. Consider Axie Infinity as Web3's version of Pokemon. Nevertheless, it can still be regarded as one of the best metaverse projects.

The project also sold a record-breaking plot of land, with one parcel being sold for $2.5 million.

4) Star Atlas 

Star atlas is most likely the most ambitious of the projects and certainly the most gamified. Have you ever heard of the sci-fi game Eve Online, the space MMO strategy game? Well, Star Atlas is like the P2E version of that. It can certainly be considered for the title of the best Metaverse.

Unlike the other projects on this list, the world is built on the Solana network, which is known to be the fastest, in terms of transactions, in Web3.

The game is set in the year 2620, and the main objectives of the game are to conquer, dominate and build vasts amounts of wealth by traveling the universe in your spaceship. You'll be able to buy digital assets such as land, equipment for your ship and crew, other vessels and crew members to join you on your mission.

This is one of the metaverse crypto projects that can one day be the most popular or even best metaverse project, hands down.

You'll probably have noticed by now that the metaverse crypto projects are mainly popular with those interested in gaming, regardless of whether they're primarily a gaming platform.

5) Zepeto

Zepteto would be another great choice for the best Metaverse, like Sandbox in its easy-to-use tools and platform.

The avatars that users can build give off 'Mii' character vibes, and the customization options make it fairly easy to build your own physical attributes into the characters accurately.

There are already over a dozen different user-generated content listed on the platform from people to play around with. The project is Korean-based and popular with the country's younger generations to socialize with their friends during Covid-19.

The platform makes it fairly easy for people to build their own games by making the creator studio pretty straightforward to use. Providing dozens of helpful tutorials and guides makes this platform pretty promising to become more popular.

Which Metaverse Is Best?

Deciding which virtual world is better than the others would be quite hard as they all offer value to various types of gamers and Web3 users.

For some, the community is the most important factor; for others, it could be a user-friendly experience, especially for beginners.

Many other people choose the virtual reality based on how easy it is to create and sell game items to other users. And another factor for people is how easy it is to leave the real world for the digital one; immersing yourself in the world is key to an exceptional experience.

At the end of the day, if you can put on your VR headset, escape the real world and enjoy time roaming the multiple metaverses, that's all that matters.

Main Metaverse Coins

The metaverse coins for these platforms are listed below; all of these metaverse tokens can be used on their native platforms and on 3rd party marketplaces whenever you're trading their non-fungible tokens.

There will be multiple tokens that can be used on each platform most of the time.

Sandbox: SAND

Decentraland: MANA

Star Atlas: ATLAS & USDC

Axie Infinity: AXS & SPL (Special Love Potion)

Zepeto: COIN & ZEM