The Sandbox is one of the most popular projects in cryptocurrency space, for its promise to build and launch a metaverse of user-generated games, items and original scripts. The Sandbox, with its native SAND token, launched in the summer of 2020 as one of the most widely applauded projects on Binance Launchpad, the startup incubator of Binance, Inc.
What is The Sandbox
The Sandbox is, as its name suggests, a sandbox-type game that allows almost infinite creativity. The game’s action happens in a world of land plots, known as The Map.
Sandbox players can currently download the Game Builder and explore the game’s features to create items, weapons, skins and looks packages. Those items are already making up another key part of the mix – the Sandbox marketplace. The Sandbox aims to be one of the first play to earn games that will show the potential of a virtual world and will support completely free game creation and experiences for each plot of land sold.
Before its alpha launch, the Sandbox game has an explorable map, which will give a general idea of how plots are getting reserved even before the wider launch. Binance, as the game’s supporter, has already reserved significant plots of digital land. It’s easy to notice the Atari logo, as well as other whales with medium or large land plots. Hopefully, when The Sandbox finishes its launch, each plot will offer experiences and games built by the owner, for a constantly shifting game metaverse.
The Sandbox market is already in beta, showing items priced in SAND tokens. Those items can be combined with land plots to build metaverse experiences. Joining the league of Modelers may expand beyond the initial restrictions, and open the Marketplace for a larger number of creators. Before the Beta launch, one of the approaches suggested is to take the time to learn item building in the free Sandbox editor, with the potential to sell the items as NFTs in the future.
As for experiences, The Sandbox Alpha release first targeted November 29, 2021. Before that, signing into the game gave the option of pre-release notifications on when experiences would be ready.
The Sandbox Community
The official Sandbox Discord server has more than 134,000 signed up users. Another 309,700 followers on Twitter are aware of the game. The Reddit community is still small at around 4,700 members.
Overall, The Sandbox was, until November 2021, a much overlooked game project. The community may only grow once the alpha release makes an impression.
Who is Behind Sandbox
The Sandbox game was proposed by a large international team, with multiple regional managers. The game project was co-founded by Marcus Bläsche, Jerome Wong, Sebastian Borget and Serena Tabacchi. The Sandbox has a full design and development in-house team, putting the foundations for upcoming contributions from the community. As previously mentioned, the first NFTs for the game will be restricted to around 1,000 initial creators.
The Sandbox received an unannounced seed funding round, followed by $2M venture funding and a late Series B funding for $93M giving the project its boost in the fall of 2021.
Why is The Sandbox Unique
The Sandbox was one of the earliest play to earn projects, with a high-profile launch and significant social media publicity. In about 18 months since inception, The Sandbox is offering the early experience package with a free item editor and the foundations of buying digital plots for the future game.
The Sandbox also looks unique, with elaborate characters and skins, as well as items potentially drawing in from a large pool of creators. Each land plot in the future may have its own experiences, with no limit to the types of gameplay. LAND tokens also use a different ERC-1155 token standard and represent a new type of digital asset.
How to Earn with The Sandbox
The Sandbox offers versatile tools to achieve earnings. The currently available approach is to grab the still free plots of land and plan on building a part of the metaverse. Land plots are a constantly appreciating asset that may be resold in the future.
The other way to earn is through the Marketplace, once it moves to allow more listings from a wider pool of creators.
The immediate way to win with The Sandbox is the SAND token. SAND is available through the Ethereum blockchain, and can be used through the MetaMask wallet. Signing into The Sandbox game also requires a MetaMask and an Ethereum address.
SAND can be acquired by selling in-game items in the Sandbox Marketplace, as well as valuable land plots. For now, SAND has limited history on Binance Smart Chain, so use the official SAND asset and avoid other networks because of the risk of fakely added tokens.
The SAND token itself can be used to acquire extra earnings. Native to the Sandbox game, SAND can be staked for extra passive earnings. The staking of SAND may be somewhat risky because it happens through depositing the tokens to be used by the Uniswap exchange. The Uniswap exchange is an automated market, which requires deposits of various tokens organized in pairings. The big problem is that locking in tokens may lead to a temporary loss and require more waiting time until SAND recovers its market price. This is partially compensated by additional rewards.
SAND itself has been a boon for early owners. In 2021, the token started with a market price of $0.04. In mid-November 2021, the asset set all-time highs and entered price discovery at above $4.30. SAND can be volatile, but its growth is expected to reflect the adoption of the game metaverse and the growing community of play to earn enthusiasts.
The SAND token has a max supply of exactly 3B tokens, with around 892M in circulation. Some of the tokens may be locked for staking.
SAND is not entirely distributed, with more than 91% of the tokens still held in the top 20 addresses. This includes incentive funds, large exchanges, liquidity pools, as well as unidentified large-scale holders.
With time, SAND may find a wider distribution. Before the beta Sandbox launch, the token was held by 45,247 addresses in total, with the potential to flow into a much larger game community, based on social media and group interest.
What Makes The Sandbox Unique
The Sandbox is a dedicated, growing ecosystem of creators, sellers and buyers. It has one of the most complete art packages, significant Opensea NFT presence and is a competitor of Decentraland in selling digital land plots.
The Sandbox also has a partnership with Binance, ensuring significant token liquidity and higher popularity.
The Best Wallets for SAND
The most suitable type of wallet for SAND are browser extensions for easy sign-in. MetaMask, Binance Wallet, BitKeep or Phantom Wallet may hold the SAND token while also displaying the available NFTs. Initially, the game recommended MetaMask and uses it as its central sign-in tool.
How to Start with The Sandbox
For now, The Sandbox only offers an experience through its free builder tool. Using it to get acquainted with the game is free.
Buying SAND tokens is possible with an in-wallet swap. Binance also offers trading and swapping services for this asset. Bidding for and buying LAND assets is done through the Sandbox browser app. In the future, new experiences and types of play will be added.
The Verdict on The Sandbox
The Sandbox is an ambitious, though yet incomplete project. It is one of the biggest potential worlds in the blockchain-based metaverse. The SAND token is gaining speed and inviting speculative trading interest. The Sandbox still has only 220 users according to DappRadar, as well as 61 active Marketplace shoppers, so there is much leeway for the social media crowd to move in as active players.
The play to earn potential for the game may be significant, once experiences are completed and the beta version for the full game is released. The links to Uniswap and Binance help ensure liquidity, establishing SAND as a key play to earn token.
The Play2Moon score for The Sandbox is 38 out of 50 possible points, on a scale measuring the project, team and game quality.
