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The Sandbox vs Decentraland —

Where Should You Set Your Bets
The fight for the best virtual reality is on!

Pavle Marinkovic Follow

Nov 22 · 6 min read

Photo by FunkyFocus from Pixabay

Your digital self will inevitably become part of a metaverse.

The question is which one has a better chance of luring you in.

Decentraland and The Sandbox are among the most promising contenders
and have much to offer to both players and investors.

With currently 3.2 billion gamers around the world and their average
spending between $100–200 per year on gaming, it’s only natural for these
metaverse projects to fight for their piece of the pie.

So which of these two should interest you more?

Let’s compare them and find out.

Brief History
The Sandbox was founded in 2012 and launched as a 2D mobile game (still
available as The Sandbox Evolution). In 2017 it started migrating into a 3D
game built on the Ethereum blockchain. In 2018, it was acquired by
Animoca Brands, a Hong Kong-based software company, and has had
multiple investments since to further develop this virtual world.

Decentraland was founded in 2015 as a 2D reality that later evolved into a

3D world. It became available to the public last year and has become one of
the biggest metaverse ecosystems worldwide. Around the same year that
Animoca Brands purchased The Sandbox, they also invested in
Decentraland, and today there are multiple investors behind the project.

How do they work?

Both platforms have developed virtual worlds on the Ethereum blockchain.
On the one hand, these realities mimick what people do in the physical
world (like purchase land or get a job) and on the other hand expand their
power beyond the possibilities of the outer world.

The Sandbox consists of 166,000 plots of land which can be grouped into
estates (owned by one person) or districts (owned by 2 or more people).
You can both customize and monetize the land (rent or feature play-to-earn
games) and trade items on the Sandbox marketplace. Just so you know, its
marketplace is currently ranked in the top 10 NFT projects by sales volume.

Decentraland has 90,601 parcels of land and they can be purchased in the
Decentraland marketplace with its native token MANA. These are grouped
into individual parcels, estates (multiple parcels), districts (parcels with
similar themes), and plazas (untradable parcels owned by the community).
As in The Sandbox, you can modify parcels and monetize them as both rent
or play-to-earn games. Decentraland’s marketplace is currently outside the
top 10 NFT projects by sales volume.

The Team
The team behind The Sandbox, Pixowl, has been in the game industry for a
long time. They’ve created multiple games for mobile and PC and works
with multiple teams across the world.

They’re very involved in the project, unlike Decentraland founders. Both

founders have stepped down from major roles and only act as advisors.
Even one of its co-founders has parted ways and is not ready to launch his
own crypto game Big Time.

The team behind Decentraland is the Decentraland Foundation, and they’ve

only recently been granted the authority to create a roadmap. It seems that
Decentraland is more of a practice project to the main team since they’re so
absent from the further development of their metaverse.

Who’s backing them?

The Sandbox has partnered with Skybound Entertainment (the company
behind The Walking Dead show), Big Fan (esports project), Ubisoft, and
even Snoop Dogg. They’ve also been recently supported by SoftBank, one of
the biggest investment companies in the world, with a $93 million funding
round.

Decentraland is backed by more than 20 investors, like Digital Currency

Group, CoinFund, Animoca Brands, and has partnered with Samsung,
Polygon, and even the South Korean Government. In addition, Grayscale
has created a Decentraland trust with over 20 million MANA tokens locked
in it.

Where are they heading?

The Sandbox metaverse is in beta mode and the alpha launch is set for
November 29th, after four years of development. It should’ve happened
earlier, but the deadline was pushed further probably because of its
integration with Polygon (currently in development).

They plan to bring the virtual world to its origins, mobile devices, before the
end of 2022, and they’re also thinking about launching it on consoles like
Xbox and Playstation. They want to have 5,000 games available by the end
of 2023, some of which have already received funding from The Sandbox
Foundation.

Similar to Decentraland’s casino jobs, The Sandbox wants to create in-game

jobs where people can work as they would in the outer world.

Decentraland doesn’t have a specific roadmap in place. At least not until

now. It’s more community-driven, but recently a proposal to delegate it to
the Decentraland Foundation has been approved and we’ll hopefully soon
see its release.

Decentraland has been expanding the NFT space with in-game art galleries
where people can buy and sell art and even talk with the artists directly via
voice chat. In addition, Decentraland recently partnered with Sotheby, one
of the biggest auctioneers in the world. Many lucrative sales have occurred
inside these virtual galleries, like the sale of 914 Wonder Woman NFTs from
former DC comic artist, Jose Delbo, for $1.85 million.

They also want to bring creators, brands, and celebrities to the space and
allow them to make NFT drops and advertisements. By early 2022 this
should already be active.

It’s also exciting to point out that there’s a proposal to make Decentraland
interoperable with at least four other metaverse worlds. Although there’s no
concrete date to start this integration, once it’s carried out it will be a game-
changer to the whole metaverse ecosystem.

Are they eco-friendly?

The Sandbox is becoming more eco-friendly by the day. It aims to reduce
its carbon footprint by 99% by purchasing carbon credits, planting trees,
and integrating with Polygon (more energy-efficient thanks to its proof-of-
stake system).

Decentraland has also partnered with Polygon to reduce the high gas fees
that come from using the Ethereum blockchain. Now you almost have no
gas fees when using MANA in Decentraland.

Price
The Sandbox has one of the most traded NFT marketplaces in the space.
Purchases in the SAND token make it more valuable. It also has a mid-sized
market cap, with around $2.5 billion, which makes it easier to keep
climbing through the ranks.

The Sandbox has a total supply of $3 billion with around 900 million in
circulation today. In December they’ll release another 300 million SAND
which can potentially drive the price down. They don’t burn their tokens
and instead place them back into the ecosystem as grants to creators and
staking pools.

Another point of concern is that the company and team are planning to sell
their SAND tokens in the next 3 to 5 years so that 100% of the tokens are
held by the community which can significantly affect the price of the token.

Decentraland on the other hand has a much larger cap, at around $7.3
billion, which makes the cryptocurrency more difficult to move upwards.

The total supply of MANA was fixed initially at 2.8 billion but already 600
million have been burned thanks to LAND auctions. This makes it more
valuable over time which will increase as more parcels of LAND are
transacted.

Parcels of LAND are scarce (only 90,601 units) and now the cheapest parcel
you can find is priced at around $10,000, a significant increase from
March’s average price of $5,800. This is very bullish if you ask me.

Overall, we’ve seen that both projects have reached all-time highs since
Facebook’s rebrand announcement. We should expect them to keep
appreciating in the short term given all the hype around metaverses these
days.

The Takeaway
We’re seeing more people fleeing from the physical into the virtual world
and frankly, our lives are becoming more digitized by the day.

These metaverses are taking advantage of this trend and both projects seem
very solid with a bright future ahead.

Their teams have a lot of experience in game development, both projects

have big supporters, and they’ve got strong communities. All this brings a
bright future ahead.

The Sandbox and Decentraland have different approaches when it comes

to the way they envision their metaverse development. While The Sandbox
is more centralized and has a clear roadmap ahead, Decentraland is more
dispersed and dismembered. Both approaches are valid and only time will
tell which is more effective in the long run.

Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I prefer a strong backbone that can set a
coherent vision for the future. So in my case, my bets are set on The
Sandbox, what about you?

Disclaimer: None of the above is financial advice and you should always do
your own research.

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