metaverse platform Following Facebook’s announcement on Oct. 29 that it was renaming to “Meta” as it works out its vision of a “embodied Internet” with immersive locations and experiences where people can digitally connect, Google searches for the term “metaverse” skyrocketed.
Following Facebook’s Meta rebranding, prices of metaverse tokens such as Decentraland’s MANA and The Sandbox’s SAND skyrocketed.
According to CoinGecko data, SAND reached an all-time high of US$3.33 today and was trading at US$2.73 as of writing time, up over 7,500 percent from the start of 2021.
metaverse platform Vision Fund 2 led a US$93 million Series B investment round in The Sandbox, a platform built on the Ethereum blockchain that allows users to engage in a virtual environment using non-fungible tokens (NFTs). This is the fund’s first investment in crypto assets.
In a statement, Sebastien Borget, COO and co-founder of The metaverse platform , said, “This investment round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 will help scale up our growth strategy, operations, and player acquisition in The Sandbox ecosystem while sending a clear statement that the world’s most innovative fund believes in Web3 and decentralization as the next major trend.”
“Adding new strategic partners like Liberty City Ventures and Galaxy Interactive will help The Sandbox expand its worldwide reach and expand the network of brands, IPs, and gaming studios interested in embracing an open metaverse with a player-owned economy and user-generated content.”
metaverse platform Following Facebook’s announcement on Oct. 29 that it was renaming to “Meta” as it works out its vision of a “embodied Internet” with immersive locations and experiences where people can digitally connect, Google searches for the term “metaverse” skyrocketed.
Following Facebook’s Meta rebranding, prices of metaverse tokens such as Decentraland’s MANA and The Sandbox‘s SAND skyrocketed.
According to CoinGecko data, SAND reached an all-time high of US$3.33 today and was trading at US$2.73 as of writing time, up over 7,500 percent from the start of 2021.
metaverse platform Vision Fund 2 led a US$93 million Series B investment round in The Sandbox, a platform built on the Ethereum blockchain that allows users to engage in a virtual environment using non-fungible tokens (NFTs). This is the fund’s first investment in crypto assets.
In a statement, Sebastien Borget, COO and co-founder of The metaverse platform , said, “This investment round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 will help scale up our growth strategy, operations, and player acquisition in The Sandbox ecosystem while sending a clear statement that the world’s most innovative fund believes in Web3 and decentralization as the next major trend.”
“Adding new strategic partners like Liberty City Ventures and Galaxy Interactive will help The Sandbox expand its worldwide reach and expand the network of brands, IPs, and gaming studios interested in embracing an open metaverse with a player-owned economy and user-generated content.”
The Sandbox plans to use the new funding to recruit more engineering expertise to scale its platform, bring on more IP, brands, and celebrities, broaden its marketing to a worldwide and mainstream audience, and pay infrastructure costs, according to Borget in an interview with Forkast
Animoca Brands, True Global Ventures, Liberty City Ventures, Galaxy Interactive, and Hong Kong-based alternative investment firm Sun Hung Kai & Co were among the other investors in the round.
The Sandbox is a subsidiary of Animoca Brands, a Hong Kong-based blockchain gaming and NFT unicorn.
The Sandbox’s strategy is to bring in the top brands and creators with whom people want to associate themselves,” stated True Global Ventures (TGV), a Singapore-based venture capital firm, in a statement. “The turning moment came in March 2020, when we observed the sale of $450,000 in virtual LAND NFTs in under four hours. Many of the LAND NFT sales since then have sold for millions of dollars and sold out in minutes, if not seconds.”
The metaverse platform Sandbox's rapid expansion
The Sandbox has seen remarkable growth this year, with over 500,000 members. This coincides with the advent of blockchain gaming and NFTs.
It includes 166,464 parcels of land and 12,000 individual virtual land owners, including the Winklevoss twins, cryptocurrency exchange Binance, and Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post.
Snoop Dogg, The Walking Dead, The Smurfs, Care Bears, and Atari are among the 165 businesses that have collaborated with The Sandbox to develop voxelized replicas of their worlds and characters.
According to a press release, the platform has produced US$144 million in lifetime gross merchandise value (GMV).
