MANA, the native token of the Decentraland metaverse, is up 12% in the past 24 hours and is trading at $0.44 at the time of writing. The metaverse is a kind of new layer of reality that merges the real and virtual worlds.
In one week, the value of MANA has increased by 38%, although it is still 92.4% below its all-time high of $5.85 in November 2021, according to cryptocurrency price tracker CoinGecko.
The price jump came after Decentraland introduced new features to users on Thursday (12), such as avatar functionality and profile features. The update did not directly increase the number of users of Decentraland or change the value proposition of the project’s original digital asset.
Decentraland is a virtual reality ecosystem where users can buy land, create virtual structures such as concert halls and poker rooms, and charge visitors for the experience. Recently, the project has been criticized for not having a huge number of users.
Cryptocurrencies with smaller market caps have outperformed Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) in recent days as sentiment in the broader crypto markets has improved on the back of positive macroeconomic data.
Metaverse crypto assets have become the best performing assets since the beginning of the year.
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industry index CoinDesk Culture and Entertainment (CNE)which includes metaverse tokens like MANA, gained 37% in 2023, making it the best-performing asset class among CoinDesk’s sector indices.
For comparison purposes, the CoinDesk Market Index (CMI)which tracks the performance of the broader cryptocurrency market, is up 17.4% over the same period.
Other major Metaverse tokens also saw impressive gains over the past week. Sandbox (SAND) jumped 31.3%, while Gala (GALA) nearly doubled, according to data from CoinDesk.