From $48 to $4000 in two years of virtual world development
Demand for virtual land in The Sandbox has never been higher, and the value of land in the virtual world of The Sandbox has skyrocketed. Land that sold for $48 in a presale in December 2019 now has a floor price of more than $4000.
In the first 3 days of November alone, The Sandbox has seen $4.2 million in trading volume. That’s more than the dapp generated in the entire month of September. Without a doubt, November will become the biggest trading month in the history of The Sandbox.
Over the past 7 days trading volume increased 645% to $7 million. Despite increasing token prices, the number of traders has tripled.
Increasing demand for land
The world of The Sandbox consists of 166.646 land parcels in total, giving the game world without its assets and creations an estimated minimum value of $666.6 million. However, at the moment of writing, not all land has been sold just yet. That’s not without reason, as The Sandbox wants to use their latest $93 million investment round to establish more partnerships with brands and creators.
Nonetheless, demand for land in The Sandbox is enormous right now. Where it took the very first land sale in December 2019 roughly 4 hours to sell 3096 land parcels with a $48 in price tag in ETH, land now sells out almost instantly. A regular parcel costs 1011 SAND, which during the September land sale translated to $616. Premium lands even sell for 4683 SAND, or $2856 during that last land sale.
With the price of SAND soaring, $3.34 at the time of writing, a regular land parcel in a future land sale will also cost 1011 SAND, which now translates to $3376. While the cheapest land parcels selling on the market right now have a price tag of 0.9 ETH or roughly $4000. Despite the prices of SAND going up, demand for virtual land in The Sandbox has never been higher. The Sandbox has consistently seen 300 or more land NFTs sold per day since the metaverse became a mainstream talking point.
This year so far we’ve already seen estates, pieces of land consisting of multiple parcels, sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars. The biggest sale that ever took place was for a 24×24 estate, selling for 3.6 million SAND. This was roughly $650.000 at the time of the auction, and that would now translate to more than $10 million.
Why The Sandbox is trending now
The metaverse has been top of mind for mainstream audiences since Facebook announced their transition to Meta. However, companies like Decentraland and The Sandbox have been building virtual worlds with a player-owned economy for a couple of years. Timing couldn’t be better for The Sandbox, as they are now preparing to launch their first play-to-earn season and introductory Alpha Season this November.
The Sandbox has built a reputation of inclusion and rewarding community activity. Even without their world being fully accessible at this moment, their name is out there. They’ve grown their number of registered wallets by 500% this year, reaching more than 500.000 wallets. The Sandbox Creators Fund supports six game development studios, each of them making interactive experiences for The Sandbox.
In addition, hundreds of creators make assets using VoxEdit and the GameMaker and roughly 30.000 users per month try out game experiences that are currently in development. Every week, hundreds of community creations are shared in GameMaker, giving players a taste of what’s to come. All this activity without their play-to-earn world being live.
The Sandbox is trending thanks to mainstream attention for the metaverse. But even without that attention, they’ve been carefully building and rewarding a community of creators, builders, and collectors.
What’s happening next
This month The Sandbox will launch its first play-to-earn season, but the virtual world will open its doors to more players in Q1 2022. That will also be the time they will host the first virtual concerts with partnered artists like Snoop Dogg and Deadmau5. Furthermore, a game experience based on The Walking Dead comic books will launch as well.
Later in 2022, the team will introduce a voting mechanism, giving players a say in the future of The Sandbox. They will also be working on a mobile version of the game world, as well as the ability for communities to launch their own tokens. Ultimately, The Sandbox wants to become a go-to destination for gamers and creators thanks to their unique value proposition. Essentially, they want to compete with Minecraft and Roblox.
