SandBox and Decentraland are both one of the biggest Metaverse platforms in the world. The question we’re going to answer is, which one is better. In this post, we’ll look at the current position, functionality, backing, and future plans of these platforms to decide which one is the winner. But first, we like to talk about their history a bit.
The history is connected with the overall comparison. Let’s begin.
The SandBox
In May 2012, the GameStudio Pixowl developed a mobile game called SandBox. At the time, the game brought a revolution into the mobile gaming industry by providing nonlinear gameplay.
Because SandBox was quite a hit, Animoca Brand decided to purchase it in 2018. Again, because of the games’ popularity, Animoca Brand decided to keep the name. But, this company wasn’t just interested in buying this game or marketing it to reach its fullest potential. They had a completely different plan in mind.
The company decided to use the universe of this game to create a Metaverse. The original version of the SandBox is still available and is known as The SandBox Evolution.
In 2019, the company received $2.01million to create The SandBox Metaverse. Of course, this money wasn’t enough for creating and launching the Metaverse, but it helped.
Then on November 2021, The SandBox got a huge investment of $93 million dollars. By the end of the month, on 29th November, the Alpha version of The SandBox Metaverse was released. Unfortunately, the full version hasn’t been released yet, but it’ll be in due time.
Decentraland
In 2015, the founders of Decentraland Esteban Ordano and Ariel Meilich developed the Metaverse project. Almost two years later, in 2017, they had successfully created an early version of Decentraland.
The team needed capital for developing an advanced version of the project. Therefore, they launched an Initial Coin Offering (ICO). The ICO was successful, and the team raised 86,206 ETH (at the time, this was worth $26 million).
The main investor for Decentraland was The Decentraland Foundation, therefore, the foundation owns the intellectual copyrights and website of Decentraland.
How Do These Projects Work?
Decentraland and SandBox mostly work in the same way, but there are some differences as well. Let’s look at differences and similarities of these two Metaverse’.
Similarities
Both projects have two similarities. The way the lands are used, and the blockchain the projects operate on.
Lands Usage: The users can purchase land and use these lands however they want. The users can use their land as private property, build a business, etc. Furthermore, the users can sell their lands on the marketplace in exchange for native tokens of the Metaverse.
Blockchain: Another similarity between these two Metaverse’ is they’re both based on the Ethereum blockchain. The lands basically exist as NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain.
Major Differences
There are two differences between Decentraland and SandBox. The name and categorization of the lands, and the number of tokens available on the Metaverse. Let’s look at both of these differences.
Lands: In Decentraland, the lands are called parcels. The Metaverse has 90,601 parcels of land, and they’re grouped into individual parcels, districts, plazas, and estates.
Since each land is called a parcel, an individual parcel contains one parcel of land. Here is what the remaining three mean. Districts: Parcels with similar themes. Plazas: Untradeable parcels owned by the community. Estates: A group of parcels.
In SandBox, the lands are called plots. The Metaverse has 166, 464 plots. The plots are divided into two categories: Estates and Districts.
A single person can own an Estate but 2 people are required to own a District.
Tokens: Decentraland has 3 types of tokens and the SandBox has 4 types of tokens. Let’s talk about these tokens.
First let’s take a look at the tokens of Decentraland. MANA: The native currency. LAND: The virtual plot of land. WEAR: Wearables and articles.
Now let’s look at the tokens of SandBox. SAND: The native currency. LAND: The virtual plot of land. GAMES: Games created by the users. ASSETS: The content the users created.
Investments and Backing
While both platforms are backed by various brands, SandBox has a lot more brands backing it. The number of brands backing Decentraland is 20 and for SandBox the number is a whopping 165.
Let’s look at some of the big brands backing both these platforms:
SandBox: Opera, Adidas, Binance, AMC TV Series “The Walking Dead”, Snoop Dog, The Smurfs, CryptoKitties, Care Bears, Atari, and SoftBank.
Decentraland: FBG Capital, Atari, South Korean Government, CyberPunk, Polygon, Samsung, and Coin Fund.
Upcoming features
While both projects have upcoming features, SandBox has a clear roadmap, and Decentraland doesn’t. Let’s look at the future plans of both projects.
SandBox: The SandBox has four major goals. Let’s look at each:
- Make their platform compatible with mobile devices by the end of 2022.
- Make the platform compatible with Xbox and PlayStation as well.
- Make 5,000 games by for their Metaverse by the end of 2023
- Create jobs for their users so they can earn real money by just putting in the effort
Decentraland: While they are not clear when they will make these decisions, they have set two future goals.
- Bring creators, brands, and celebrities to make NFT drops and advertisement
- Make their platform interoperable with 4 other Metaverse
Which One Is Better?
By judging what we’ve read so far, we’ve got to go with SandBox. The SandBox has much higher investments, they’ve got a clear understanding of their goals, and they’re working on more goals.
For these reasons, SandBox is currently a better option.
Please note: This is not financial advice, do your own research before investing in any projects
