The Sandbox — Guide to Virtual Lands & The Metaverse
A guide on purchasing your first LAND, valuing your LANDs, how to spot frauds, and where to reach out for support.
Buying LAND in The Sandbox is a big step for many people, but a very rewarding one. This article will explain how to effectively and safely acquire LAND from The Sandbox’s LAND sales and the secondary market.
But first, what is LAND and what can you do with it?
LAND is a digital piece of real estate in The Sandbox’s metaverse. Each one is a unique and non-fungible ERC-721 token on the Ethereum blockchain.
The main purpose of LANDs is to allow game designers and developers to publish experiences onto them, which can be played by gamers and monetised by themselves. But other utilities will be available, such as the ability to rent out LANDs and stake on LANDs. There are two types of LAND — regular and premium.
Read more about LANDs at these following links:
What is LAND? | The Sandbox Knowledge Base
What is premium LAND? | The Sandbox Knowledge Base
What can you do with LANDs? | The Sandbox Knowledge Base
Purchasing LANDs from The Sandbox
LANDs are purchased from The Sandbox during public LAND sales, which are announced in our official communities in advance. To purchase LAND from The Sandbox, you need to have registered an account first.
- How to register an account at The Sandbox | The Sandbox Knowledge Base
You will also need SAND inside the wallet that you have connected to your account at The Sandbox, as well as ETH for the blockchain’s transaction fees.
- How to get SAND | The Sandbox Knowledge Base
- How to get ETH | The Sandbox Medium
During public LAND sales, those interested in purchasing LANDs will need to head over to the map on The Sandbox’s website. And then to purchase LANDs:
- Click on the available LAND that you wish to purchase.
Available regular LANDs will be grey and available premium LANDs will be yellow. - A panel will open on the right of the screen. Click the blue buy button.
The LAND will become booked until the transaction is complete, the transaction is cancelled, the transaction fails (ie due to insufficient gas), or the transaction times out (after two hours). The LAND will turn purple to indicate it is booked. - Your wallet should now pop up, asking you to confirm the transaction and set how much gas (charged in ETH) to use.
- Once confirmed via your wallet, the transaction will be in progress. The time it takes to complete is affected by your chosen amount of gas and also any congestion on the blockchain.
Once successful, the LAND will turn red to indicate that you now own it.
Other useful links:
- A more detailed written guide on buying LANDs from The Sandbox.
- Public LAND sale frequently asked questions & troubleshooting.
Purchasing LANDs from OpenSea
OpenSea is a secondary, third-party marketplace where you can purchase many NFTs, including The Sandbox LANDs. You would need to register for an account at OpenSea to purchase the LANDS from there. And you would also need to register an account at The Sandbox to use the LANDs on the platform. LAND can be purchased in SAND or ETH on OpenSea, which is dependent on the choice of the seller.
We advise using the same wallet on both platforms, to avoid having to pay fees to move the LAND from the wallet you’re using on OpenSea to the wallet that you’re using on The Sandbox.
Identifying genuine LANDs on OpenSea
Just like most other places in the online world, there are a fair share of shady and malicious individuals trying to mislead good, genuine people via secondary NFT markets. Below, we will share some advice to make sure the LAND you are viewing on OpenSea is genuine.
The search results page
On the search results page, make sure that:
- There is a blue verified checkmark next to the collection name.
- The name of the collection is written correctly. For example, we are not called “Sandbox”, we are called “The Sandbox”.
- The co-ordinates are written in the correct format and aren’t nonsensical.
Check these co-ordinates on The Sandbox’s map. - There is a snowflake icon indicating that the metadata is frozen, and therefore the LAND is stored on a decentralised server.
On the LAND’s listing page
On the page of the LAND which gives further details about it:
- Make sure there is a blue verified checkmark at the top of the page. And that the collection name — The Sandbox— is written correctly.
- Make sure the snowflake icon is shown in the top-left, indicating the metadata is frozen and that the LAND is stored on a decentralised server.
- Click the button in the top-right corner that looks like an arrow jumping out of a box. If this LAND is genuine you should be taken to The Sandbox’s map where you will see the location of the LAND.
- Check the Data tab on the left of the page, the information should match that which is below:
— The Sandbox’s LAND contract address is 0x50f5474724e0ee42d9a4e711ccfb275809fd6d4a.
— The Sandbox LANDs are ERC-721 tokens, not ERC-1155 tokens and so on.
— The blockchain network is Ethereum.
— The metadata needs to be “frozen”, not “centralised”.
If you believe you have found a fake LAND being sold on OpenSea, or have been caught out and fallen for a fraudulent sale, please contact OpenSea as soon as possible. Click here to learn how to make reports to OpenSea.
Valuing the price of LAND on the secondary market
One thing about the blockchain that you may have noticed is that values of NFTs and coins tend to fluctuate. This fluctuation is based on many factors. It’s understandable that this makes valuing things a bit confusing.
On top of that, the value of LANDs in The Sandbox are also affected by other factors, such as the proximity of that LAND to major partner ESTATEs. For example, a premium LAND that is touching a large ESTATE that belongs to a major partner may generally be valued much higher than a premium LAND not touching the ESTATE or a regular LAND further away from it.
Why? Because players will spawn into the metaverse via portals that are found on these partner ESTATEs. These players will then branch outwards and visit the nearby LANDs, of which premium LANDs are the nearest.
There is a useful third-party tool that will help you to gauge the value of your LAND. You can find it by clicking here. This tool is provided by MetaGameHub DAO.
UPDATE: A new link for the valuation tool can be found here: https://app.metagamehub.io/valuation. You can join MetaGameHub’s Discord community as well, here: https://discord.gg/2mMCQNSmkr
Our knowledge base page about premium LANDs will also provide more insight on why premium LANDs are valued higher than regular LANDs. Click here to see that.
Get help and support from The Sandbox
We have an official Discord community, where you can chat with other community members, including Ambassadors, LAND Owners, artists, and so on. You can also seek live support from The Sandbox’s support staff (timezone dependent). You can join our official Discord community through this link: https://discord.com/invite/cgCFFjj.
Note that genuine support staff on The Sandbox’s Discord community:
!- Always have blue usernames.
!- Do not send you any direct messages (DMs).
!- Do not ask for wallet passwords, security keys, passphrases, etc.
!- Do not ask for funds or NFTs to be sent.
!- Do not ask you to connect your wallets to third-party websites or apps that are not The Sandbox’s official website: https://www.sandbox.game.
Other reads
You may also find these to be interesting or helpful:
- Article: Why people are buying digital lands in The Sandbox and why you should too.
- Article: Why owning LAND on The Sandbox could make you rich.
- Research Paper: The Sandbox Project.
See you in the metaverse!
