The first metaverse project n Cardano, Pavia, has already sold over 60 percent of its virtual parcels of land a few days after launch.

The project had minted 100K virtual plots, each unique non-fungible token (NFT). Every plot has special coordinates that help locate different parcels of land on the metaverse project.

Out of 100K plots, 60,000 plots were presold in 2021, and the rest, 40 percent, are set to find new owners before the end of March this year.

While NFTs are unique digital representations of objects on the blockchain, the metaverse focuses more on creating a virtual ecosystem identical to the real world. The first Cardano metaverse project has a base asset that trades at 0.13 ADA and has a market capitalization of 68,750,000 ADA at the time of writing.

Twenty-five percent of the native token was airdropped to NFT holders in December. According to a Twitter post by Pavia, there are more than 8,300 land owners on the project. Despite the massive uptake of its plots, buyers, for now, won’t be able to visit or develop their virtual land.

The launch of the first metaverse project on Cardano coincides with a growing appetite to own property on blockchain-based virtual spaces.

Cardano Becomes the Fifth Largest Cryptocurrency

Some virtual parcels of land, especially on projects powered by the Ethereum blockchain, have a million-dollar price tag. On Pavia, the highest-priced digital plots trade for roughly 45,000 US dollars.

The success of the Cardano-based project seems to have added steam to a recovering Cardano (ADA) price. According to CoinMarketCap, ADA leads the top 100 cryptos as the biggest gainer in the last 24 hours.

At the time of writing, ADA was changing hands at 1.55 USD, representing a 24-hour change of 11.22 percent. Cardano also beat other top coins like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) on its 7-day gains.

While most coins appreciated by between 10 and 20 percent, ADA increased by approximately 32 percent in the last week.

In the last 24 hours, BTC, ETH, and BNB have lost 0.90, 1.92, and 2.72 percent, while the three assets rose by 2.02, 3.43, and 10.12 percent, respectively, in the last seven days.

Apart from a rise in price, Cardano also moved up the rank to become the fifth-largest cryptocurrency beating the likes of Solana (SOL). ADA has a market capitalization of 52 billion USD compared to SOL’s 45 billion USD at the time of writing.

As metaverse projects launch on Cardano, Vitalik Buterin’s Twitter followers have revealed their best pick between Bitcoin and Cardano.

Best Pick Between Bitcoin and Cardano? 42% Choose ADA, 38% Pick BTC

In a Twitter poll, the Ethereum co-founder asked, “you wake up in 2035, and 80% of all transactions + savings in the world are in one currency that is not ETH. Which would you prefer it to be?”

His followers had to choose between BTC, USD, SOL, and ADA. The poll attracted over 600,000 votes. Those who preferred ADA stood at 42 percent. Bitcoin garnered 38.4 percent of the votes, while USD and SOL appealed to 6.5 percent and 13.1 percent of the voters.

The poll divided the cryptocurrency community, with some like Sam Bankman-Fried saying that the results are “wild.”

ADA critics pointed out that Cardano just recently added smart contract capability, implying that it still has a long way to go to beat top cryptos like ETH.

Cardano’s supporters agreed with Buterin’s poll, with some noting that “for five years in crypto, haven’t seen anything as promising as ADA.” A section of Ethereum supporters saw something more than just a poll.

Buterin Hunting “for a New Job?”

For instance, @ravi_f1 commented on the poll asking why Buterin doesn’t see ETH commanding the 80 percent. The Twitter user recommended that Buterin “should work on ETH development/improvement only.”

@ravi_f1 added that the Ethereum co-founder’s “recent tweets regarding performance issues with ETH and this poll makes [them] feel [they] should shift to SOL/ADA instead.” Tone Vays, a BTC trader, wondered whether the Ethereum executive is hunting “for a new job.”

Others hoped that no crypto project should control 80 percent of the world’s transactions and savings.

According to them, such a phenomenon “will be like what happened to the Internet, where we had a diverse network in the 90s and is now handled by a small number of huge companies.”