Somnium Space kicked off its tertiary land sale this week amidst possibly the biggest metaverse hype to date. In its first four days, the Somnium Space land sale event already raked in more than $700,000. The NFT sale marks the first time users can buy virtual land stored on the Solana blockchain.
The land sale kicked off on the 14th of November and runs until December 18th. Less than four days into the action, 38 NFT items have been sold, generating a total of $727,305 at the time of writing. That’s a leap of over half a million dollars in the last two days. SOL parcel #2830 is the highest-grossing land sale, selling at auction for $36,456. At the other end of the scale, a yellow Planet-VR avatar sold for just over $5,000.
Additionally, for the first time, NFT assets are available through Solana-based NFT marketplace Holaplex, as well as Ethereum marketplace OpenSea. Now, users are able to display Solana NFT art in Ethereum- based land parcels, and vice versa. As well as opening up the ability to jump into the Ethereum- based virtual world using a Solana NFT avatar.
Somnium Space Worlds are a part of this land sale. Somnium Worlds are independent instances, created by utilizing the Somnium Unity SDK. Each offers unique, immersive experiences built entirely by players. Allowing Somnium residents to interact, socialize, play, and do business. Depending on what parcel you own, you can link and deploy small, medium, or XL worlds. Meaning, in order to operate a world, a holder must also have a land parcel on which to place it. Which is having an additional positive effect on land parcel sales in the virtual world.
The best investment on earth is earth
As a wise man once said, “buy land, they’re not making it anymore”, whilst not precisely true in the metaverse it appears investors are acting similarly. A look at the top NFT sales through Ethereum based marketplace OPENSEA on DappRadar reveals some big sales in the last 24 hours. More interesting is that one wallet scooped up two XL land plots and one medium land plot within the last six hours. Spending over $63,000.
A deeper look inside their wallet reveals this person is a bit of a virtual world mogul. Holding 120 Sandbox NFTs and eight Somnium Space land plots. Further showing their clout, the wallet has a BAYC NFT avatar worth over $200,000.
Virtual land
Ever since Facebook’s Mark Zuckerburg announced the Meta name change, attention has been almost squarely focussed on virtual worlds and the metaverse. An announcement by another virtual world platform, the Sandbox, pushed the value of their native SAND token up. By the end of this month, they will launch their first play-to-earn alpha test. At the same time, the value of virtual land in The Sandbox reached record heights. One land parcel now costs at least 3000 SAND or more than $10,000 at the current exchange rates. While the two platforms are quite different in their approach, it’s clear virtual land is in demand.
??Somnium Space allows people to fully submerge into a full VR world, hop in casually to attend an event, and visit their favorite parcel. It’s arguably the most advanced, immersive VR experience out there. The current land sale runs until the 18th of December. Those interested in getting involved can find out more here.
