Decentraland versus Sandbox, what’s the best Metaverse project？

[TL;DR]

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Differences

• Decentraland has 90,601 immutable parcels of land, while Sandbox has 166,464.
• Decentraland utilises MANA and LAND as its tokens while Sandbox has four: SAND, ASSETS, GAMES and LAND. They are all Ethereum-based as ERC-20 for trade and ERC-721 for NFTs.
• Decentraland pioneered the decentralized metaverse concept. Sandbox, however, is older as a company - being around since 2012.
• Decentraland can be accessed through a browser, while Sandbox users must download a Windows PC application and install it.
• Overall graphics, physics and style of the game. Since Sandbox must be downloaded, its graphics are far superior to Decentraland’s, but they are still not realistic to be considered a major discrepancy in user experience.

Similarities

• Leading metaverse projects of the crypto market.
• Decentralized initiatives where users can interact, trade, create events and buy parcels of land.
• Backed by major companies such as Samsung, JPMorgan, South Korea (Decentraland), Adidas, Softbank, AMC, Atari and celebrities like Snoop Dogg (Sandbox).
• Both are available for trading here at Gate.io!

Which one to choose?

At this point, both projects are in a very close tie. They are both free to try it out, so check them out and make up your mind. You will definitely grow to enjoy one more than the other, but the outcome of which is better is entirely up to you. Enjoy!


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The metaverse is an unstoppable trend of digital evolution towards a virtual-based financial, social and entertainment system. Although it is still very early to define what the future is going to look like for the next step in the world wide web, some crypto projects are already taking over mainstream adoption and making waves in worldwide media. The main ones are, as you definitely know by now, Decentraland and Sandbox.

In this article, we analyse these two main open metaverse projects; what they are, similarities, differences and which one may suit you better as a new user diving into a new virtual world

So let’s start off with the most popular metaverse project right now: Decentraland.

What is Decentraland?

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Decentraland, operating under the token MANA, describes itself as a decentralized virtual world platform built on the Ethereum platform. It allows its users to not only experience the world but monetize it, create value and trade assets.

The goal of Decentraland is simple: creating a virtual open world where its users can do pretty much anything they want - an extension of our physical reality. This means that Decentraland citizens are able to socialize, explore and create commerce all across the environment. The decentralization exists, of course, thanks to the blockchain technology that powers Decentraland, distributing the ecosystem through a voting consensus framework for updates and tokenomics.

The idea behind Decentraland came from the minds of Ariel Meilich and Esteban Ordano back in 2015, taking a full two years until the project was officially launched through an ICO - an Initial Coin Offering in the crypto market. Although a fully decentralized metaverse, Decentraland is managed by an entity called the Decentraland Foundation, which is managed by enthusiasts and contributors of the project.

Decentraland MANA and LAND tokens

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Being the first fully-open metaverse project, it’s no surprise that Decentraland was also the first open-world to make a clear distinction between economies by utilizing two tokens. The first one, MANA, is a governance and trading token within the platform. With it, users are able to conduct pretty much all activities - buy and sell content and land, vote on updates, buy NFTs and more. It’s also the main token traded in exchanges.

Then you have LAND, which is the NFT basis itself of Decentraland. They represent the actual parcel, the land, where users can buy and build up their real estate. Each parcel, no matter how big or small, is represented by a single LAND token.

Buying virtual land

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What made Decentraland so innovative back in 2017 wasn’t only the fact that it formed the groundwork for other open-world metaverse projects to prosper. It was also the very first project to allow users to buy actual virtual land, and transform it however they wish.

Lands in Decentraland are distributed as NFTs and defined as “parcels.” Each parcel represents an actual piece of the immutable Decentraland map, that users can not only buy but build anything - theme parks, stores, museums, you name it. Just recently, both Samsung and JPMorgan bought parcels of Decentraland to have the very first tech store and bank branch in a metaverse.

Speaking of land, MANA is not the only token utilized in Decentraland, as we explain in the following section.

What is Sandbox?

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Sandbox is also a blockchain-based, Ethereum-based decentralized cryptocurrency metaverse which allows users to build and use the world however they wish - with very similar properties as Decentraland to buying land, creating commerce, trading NFTs, customizing avatars and more.

Contrary to most metaverse projects that have surfaced from 2017 to even this very year, Sandbox could be considered almost ancient. In fact, it’s older than most cryptos except for Bitcoin. But Sandbox didn’t start out as a crypto project, rather as a regular gaming initiative.

Sandbox actually started out as a mobile game service back in 2012, and accumulated over 40 million downloads since its conception. It was only in 2018 when creator Arthur Madrid, also founder of the gaming company Voxwl, started working on a new vision for the game - to transform Sandbox into a 3D, fully customizable and decentralized world centered around computers instead of mobile phones.

Since then, Sandbox has grown exponentially to a multi-billion dollar enterprise with over 500,000 active daily users. Since October last year, when Facebook changed its name to Meta and metaverse tokens skyrocketed in the market, Sandbox has been running neck-to-neck with Decentraland. Both projects’ market caps are very similar, and seem to trend that path for the near future.

The SAND Token

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Like Decentraland, Sandbox utilizes two cryptos for the project’s economy. But unlike MANA and LAND which are both ERC-20 based tokens, Sandbox utilizes one ERC-20 token, three ERC-721 tokens and ETH itself - which is not a token, but a layer-1 crypto.

Basically, SAND is used for pretty much everything in the metaverse, but once it gets traded into particular products or assets, the tokens are then converted to represented that particular material.

For instance, trading SAND into objects and clothings will convert the type of token into ASSETS, which are ERC-721 to represent NFTs. The same happens in two other situations: when interacting with gaming commerce, SAND is converted into GAMES, and when buying property, the asset is converted to an NFT of the parcel named LAND.

Despite these differences, SAND is the baseline reference of commerce across the entire ecosystem. Ethereum is often used as reference for external marketplaces like OpenSea’s NFT market, which hosts most of the parcels available for purchase.

Decentraland versus Sandbox Differences and Similarities

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Although Decentraland and Sandbox are much more similar than different, especially to a newcomer in the metaverses, there are a few important differences that one must keep in mind to distinguish the two on a base level.

Differences

• Decentraland has 90,601 immutable parcels of land, while Sandbox has 166,464.
• As said previously, Decentraland utilises MANA and LAND as its tokens while Sandbox has four: SAND, ASSETS, GAMES and LAND. They are all Ethereum-based.
• Decentraland pioneered the decentralized metaverse concept. Sandbox, however, is older as a company - being around since 2012.
• Decentraland can be accessed through a browser, while Sandbox users must download a Windows PC application and install it.
• Overall graphics, physics and style of the game. Since Sandbox must be downloaded, its graphics are far superior to Decentraland’s, but they are still not realistic to be considered a major discrepancy in user experience.

Similarities

• Leading metaverse projects of the crypto market.
• Decentralized initiatives where users can interact, trade, create events and buy parcels of land.
• Backed by major companies such as Samsung, JPMorgan, South Korea (Decentraland), Adidas, Softbank, AMC, Atari and celebrities like Snoop Dogg (Sandbox).
• Both are available for trading here at Gate.io!

Which one to choose?

This might not be the answer that you are looking for, but at this point both projects are in a very close tie. There’s a reason why they’ve been neck-to-neck in the crypto market over the past few months; the crypto sphere really enjoys both almost equally, and defend each of their communities with a passion.

The important thing to note is this: they are both free to try it out, with a fairly quick and simple process. In a matter of just a few minutes, you can start your journey onto their metaverses and make a decision by yourself.

So get onto your desktop, check them out and make up your mind. You will definitely grow to enjoy one more than the other, but the outcome of which is better is entirely up to you. Enjoy!



Author: Gate.io Researcher: Victor Bastos
* This article represents only the views of the researcher and does not constitute any investment suggestions.
*Gate.io reserves all rights to this article. Reposting of the article will be permitted provided Gate.io is referenced. In all other cases, legal action will be taken due to copyright infringement.

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