Sandbox ($SAND) made headlines in 2021 for a game that runs on the blockchain and lets players and developers build their own immersive metaverse. The Animoca Brands subsidiary raised $93 million in a Series B funding round and has major brands queuing up to use the technology.
But it’s not the first blockchain metaverse; Decentraland ($MANA) was built on Ethereum ($ETH) and sparked similar buzz back in 2018.
Deciding between these two metaverses could be difficult, not least because it’s not cheap to get involved. Plots of land in either game can cost you as much as real-world real estate, so this guide is meant to help sort things out.
Let’s get started.
What Is the Point of Decentraland?
Decentraland is an Ethereum-based 3D virtual reality world founded in 2017 and now with a market capitalization over $6.5 billion. It was originally created by two Argentinian developers and received a 2018 investment from Animoca Brands after launching its own crypto token MANA.
The VR-compatible world consists of 90,601 parcels of virtual real estate called LAND, which originally sold for as low as $20 and now can cost $100,000 or more.
These land parcels are used by developers to create whatever they imagine in metaverses, like Roblox (NYSE:RBLX) and Horizon Worlds from Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:FB). The difference between Decentraland and the others is that MANA runs on a decentralized smart contract network.
It has multiple layers that include the game’s content, script files, and interaction. This enables a sandbox development environment that was already used to create interactive apps, in-world payments, and peer-to-peer communication.
Everything is accomplished using different token types leveraging Ethereum’s ERC standards.
LAND and MANA: What’s The Difference?
Decentraland has three token types that drive in-game purchases: MANA, WEAR, and LAND.
MANA is an ERC20 cryptocurrency token. These fungible tokens are used to govern the system through the Decentraland DAO. This DAO determines the direction of development, new implementations and changes, and any other issues, acting like a city council for the project. It’s also used as the in-game currency to buy LAND.
LAND is a non-fungible ERC721 token used to represent a parcel within the game environment. Parcels are grouped into estates themed districts, or untradeable community plazas. They’re sold in online auctions; one patch of this digital real estate containing 116 parcels sold for over $2.4 million in November 2021, breaking the previous record of $913,228 from June.
Wearables were introduced via the WEAR token developed on the Polygon Layer 2 sidechain. These are NFTs like LAND, but they represent clothing, accessories, and body features to enable character customization. This lets players fully personalize their experience, although there are only a few thousand people online at any given time.
What Is the Sandbox Game?
The Sandbox brand was bought by Animoca to release an Ethereum-based 3D game that could compete with Decentraland. This Voxel-style game attracted over $97 million in investments from major partners, like Square Enix (OTCMKTS:SQNNY), True Global Ventures, and SoftBank Group (OTCMKTS:SFTBY).
By the time The Sandbox Metaverse launched in November 2021, it had several big-name promotional partners. Snoop Dogg, Deadmau5, The Smurfs, and more were on board for launch. Brands like Adidas and Atari jumped on the bandwagon too. This propelled the project to a market cap over $4.8 billion, as land next to Snoop Dogg’s estate sold for $450,000.
Sandbox partnered with BlockchainSpace to port 680,000 players and 2,600 guilds to the platform, which would surpass Decentraland’s userbase.
The Sandbox has clear development prospects, with expansion to mobile platforms and Xbox and PlayStation consoles on the horizon. By the end of 2023, the project roadmap predicts 5,000 games will be onboarded with in-game jobs available for players too. That could jumpstart its virtual economy.
Understanding SAND and LAND
While similar concepts, The Sandbox has a different economy than Decentraland. There are 166,464 plots of LAND grouped into estates (owned by a single person) and districts (owned by two or more people). Sandbox LAND is an NFT just like in Decentraland, and it’s bought with SAND, the game’s native currency.
It also includes ASSETS, which represent user-generated content much like the wearables in Decentraland.
The most expensive plot of land in The Sandbox sold for $4.3 million, and a luxury yacht sold for $650,000. Not only that, but influential Hong Kong real estate mogul Adrian Cheng bought one of the game’s largest plots of virtual land to create an innovation hub.
With so much money and so many high-profile investors involved, one can only wonder which is the best metaverse project?
SAND vs MANA: Which Metaverse Is Best?
Although the numbers involved make them seem popular, neither game has the popularity or user base of today’s top-tier games. PUBG: Battlegrounds, for example, has over one billion users, while Minecraft has 600 million users. Even the Pac-Man Google Doodle captured 505 million peak daily players.
By comparison, both Decentraland and The Sandbox combined to draw fewer than 2,000 daily active players. Needless to say, we’re dealing with a small niche community within the $37 billion video game industry.
Both projects offer a metaverse, and each is attracting brands, influencers, and developers. What they haven’t drawn yet is a user base large enough to justify their billion-dollar valuations. While a small group of people make money hand-over-fist, the average person may want to wait for more user traction before investing in either of these blockchain gaming startups.
Sandbox vs Decentraland: The Bottom Line
Decentraland and The Sandbox both offer an open virtual world running on the Ethereum smart contract network. Each has multiple tokens (both fungible and non-fungible), and each is building its vision of the web3 metaverse.
They both have in-game currencies that are used to buy NFT real estate and accessories. Those in-game assets could be the more valuable investment, even though the platforms have relatively low adoption rates so far.
Still, neither MANA and SAND should be ignored, as they have a lot of capital, buzz, and partnerships that could spark serious growth to rival existing user bases of more conventional games. Just don’t invest more than you can afford to lose, because they’re a long way away from drawing the audience of larger game franchises.
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