The Metaverse narrative keeps trying to reinvent itself — will “creator-driven” models work better?

In the last cycle, the metaverse hype was mostly about land speculation. Projects like Sandbox or Decentraland built their entire economy around buying and flipping plots of virtual land. It created a lot of buzz, but not much lasting engagement.

This cycle, I’m starting to notice a different angle: instead of land, some platforms are focusing on the creator economy letting users build avatars, host events, and create digital items that others can actually use. It feels closer to a social network with Web3 features, rather than just a real-estate bubble in 3D.

One example I came across recently on Bitget is SecondLive (LIVE), which is built more around user-generated content (UGC) and virtual events instead of land sales. Whether this shift is enough to spark real adoption is still an open question, but it’s definitely a change in direction from what we saw before.

Personally, I’m curious if this new wave of metaverse projects can keep people engaged beyond short-term hype. Do you think a creator-focused model has a better shot at survival than the land-driven one?