You can’t really talk about the SAND token without talking about The Sandbox metaverse.
That’s because SAND is the utility token used in The Sandbox metaverse to buy and sell and interact with just about everything. It’s an ERC-20 utility token built on Ethereum, which means it’s tradeable, fungible and operates like a cryptocurrency but uses Ethereum’s blockchain. There is a finite amount of sand—with the number being 3 billion.
The Sandbox itself is a virtual world where players can build, develop, own and monetize their own gaming experiences using the Ethereum blockchain using SAND. Players can make their own digital assets in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFT), and upload and sell them to the marketplace, and integrate into games using the game’s proprietary GameMaker tool.
But if you’re going to have your place in The Sandbox, you’re going to need to use SAND to buy LAND.
The SAND/LAND connection
LAND is a different kind of token.
First, it’s a digital representation of real estate in The Sandbox that players can buy and build their experiences for. Once a player owns some LAND, the player can add games and ASSETS. Multiple LANDS put together can be combined to form an estate. The total amount of LAND that will ever be available will be 166,454, contained in a map that will form the The Sandbox metaverse.
You can earn SAND by owning LAND, and you can use SAND you’ve earned from your LAND to buy more LAND. You rent it out and buy more LAND to rent with the profits.
The term ASSETs refers to everything that isn’t LAND or other people in The Sandbox. They’re the pieces of raw content from trees to books to random pools of water. They are designed on LANDs and can be collectables. They’re also completely monetizable and can be traded, because essentially, they’re all NFTs and there’s a good sized marketplace on-site, but also in places like OpenSea, for items like this.
The Sandbox is Play to Earn
You can choose to buy SAND from the list of exchanges given below, and it’s probably best to do that if you’re just starting out. After awhile, though, especially if you’ve sunk some time, money and energy, into developing your holdings, you can make SAND on the side.
The Sandbox uses a fee capture model. Five percent of all transacted value is collected from marketplace transaction fees. The other 95% comes from LAND, premium NFTs, and subscription services. Also, 26.5% of all SAND transaction volume finds it way back to the Foundation.
You can monetize your time on the platform, keeping 95% of SAND as revenue share, by:
- Selling ASSETS: Users can create and sell ASSETS on the marketplace as NFTs.
- Owning a LAND: Buy a LAND in one of the LAND sales. Players can then rent them or populate them with content to increase the LAND’s value.
- Building Games on the Game Maker: Build and monetize games using the Game Maker on the LANDs that are owned by players.
ASSETs can also increase and decrease in price as scarcity and other market indicators influence the price. You can get certain augmentations for your ASSETs, which can then be sold for SAND.
These are called GEM and CATALYST. They’re measures used to define the tier, scarcity and attributes of an ASSET. CATALYST adds empty sockets to the NFTs which you can fill with GEM—this is a fairly common attribute to modern video games including roleplaying games, but in case you’re unfamiliar, these gems technically boost the price and value.
The curious bit is that The Sandbox uses a type of token called an ERC-1776 which gives platform users the ability to use the Ethereum blockchain to do their minting while mitigating the hit taken by high gas prices. This would have been one of the main stumbling blocks of the program if it weren’t resolved. Gas fees aren’t cheap.
Traders can buy or sell Sandbox (SAND) on top crypto exchanges such as Binance, Crypto.com, Kraken, Uniswap, and FTX.
At present, SAND is trading at $3.51 with a roughly $4 billion market cap, and comes in #42 in market cap by size. The curious bit is that since the metaverse became a going cultural concern, the price has enjoyed a substantial bump of 339.1%.
And it’s still early yet.
—Joseph Morton