MANA-mania swept the crypto-verse off of its feet after the token charted some unexpected gains on the back of Facebook’s ‘Meta’ rebrand. Decentraland, a decentralized 3-D virtual reality platform supported by the Ethereum blockchain, saw its native token MANA soar to an all-time high of $4.11 on 31 October.
With the crypto surging by 164% in just half a day, once again, the significant role played by bigger players in pumping cryptos was at the fore. So, how exactly did Facebook announcing its name change to Meta push the price of MANA? And, what impact will this have on gaming and the Meta platforms?
Crypto-verse losing its mind over Meta?
On the topic of Metaverse, blockchain technology and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) play a key role in the same. Combining blockchain tech with virtual reality technology has been something the social media giant has been looking forward to for quite some time. While there is still a long way to go, the fact that one of the biggest companies in the world has given the nod to the idea of the metaverse is already booming certain projects.
Now, according to some experts, MANA’s leading position in the metaverse ecosystem could be solidified further by Facebook’s move to rebrand. Notably, MANA was hovering around $0.77 on 28 October, before seeing a close to 500% hike in price by 30 October.
While this isn’t the first time a billionaire’s announcement has pumped a token, besides the hype, there is also a genuine use case associated with the same.
The ‘Meta’ war
Since the Metaverse has the roadmap of person-interaction and mass engagement, one of the best ways to achieve that is through games. This puts a lot more pressure on blockchain gaming giants like Axie too. So much so that after the recent rise in MANA’s market cap and price the narrative of Decentraland and Axie’s ‘war’ in the space intensified. So, can MANA take over Axie?
First things first, Axie has existed for quite a while. In fact, it has a first-mover’s advantage in the space. However, it remains to be seen whether it will remain the most profitable NFT game ever as more and more NFT games start to pop up, including Decentraland that got a lot of traction recently.
Here’s something even more interesting on the active addresses front.
MANA’s addresses, at press time, were not just higher but were also higher than AXS’s ATH active addresses in August.
Source: Sanbase
Now, Axie is way ahead in terms of market cap. However, MANA, after hiking dramatically, was ranked 40th ahead of coins like AAVE and Monero, at the time of writing.
Ergo, it is perfectly valid to conclude that for now, Axie’s dominance in the space can’t be challenged. This was the case this past month too as Axie Infinity led the way with $190.9 million in revenue from DApps.
To conclude, it seems like Axie’s throne isn’t in danger for now. However, with newer alternatives coming up, Axie might need to pull up its socks in the future.
