In the past few years, "metaverse" and "non-fungible tokens (NFT)" have become buzzwords, and the prices of related assets have shown speculative bubble-like behavior. In this paper, we attempt to better understand the underlying economic dynamics. To do so, we look at Decentraland, a virtual world platform where land parcels are sold as NFT collections. We find that initially, land prices followed traditional real estate pricing models -- in particular, value decreased with distance from the most desirable areas -- suggesting Decentraland behaved much like a virtual city. However, these real estate pricing models stopped applying when both the metaverse and NFTs gained increased popular attention and enthusiasm in 2021, suggesting a new driving force for the underlying asset prices. At that time, following a substantial rise in NFT market values, short-term holders of multiple parcels began to take major selling positions in the Decentraland market, which hints that, rather than building a metaverse community, early Decentraland investors preferred to cash out when land valuations became overly inflated. Our analysis also shows that while the majority of buyers are new entrants to the market (many of whom joined during the bubble), liquidity (i.e., parcels) was mostly provided by early adopters selling, which caused stark differences in monetary gains. Early adopters made money -- more than 10,000 USD on average per parcel sold -- but users who joined later typically made no profit or even incurred losses in the order of 1,000 USD per parcel. Unlike established markets such as financial and real estate markets, newly emergent digital marketplaces are mostly self-regulated. As a result, the significant financial risks we identify indicate a strong need for establishing appropriate standards of business conduct and improving user awareness.

翻译：过去几年中，“元宇宙”与“非同质化代币（NFT）”已成为热门词汇，相关资产价格呈现出投机性泡沫特征。本文试图深入理解其背后的经济动力学机制。为此，我们以虚拟世界平台Decentraland为研究对象，该平台将土地以NFT资产包形式出售。我们发现，早期土地价格遵循传统房地产定价模型——特别是价值随与核心区域距离增加而递减——表明Decentraland的运行模式类似于虚拟城市。然而，当元宇宙与NFT在2021年获得广泛关注并引发投资热潮后，这些房地产定价模型不再适用，暗示着资产价格形成了新的驱动力。在此期间，随着NFT市场价值大幅攀升，持有多个地块的短期投资者开始在Decentraland市场大量抛售，这表明早期投资者更倾向于在土地估值过度膨胀时套现离场，而非致力于构建元宇宙社区。我们的分析还显示，虽然市场多数买家为新进入者（其中许多人在泡沫期加入），但流动性（即地块）主要由早期采用者抛售提供，这导致投资收益出现显著分化。早期采用者平均每地块获利超过10,000美元，而后期加入的用户通常无利可图，甚至平均每地块亏损约1,000美元。与金融和房地产等成熟市场不同，新兴数字市场主要依靠自我监管。因此，我们发现的重大金融风险表明，亟需建立适当的商业行为准则并提升用户风险意识。