Published in · 8 min read · Feb 6, 2023
From the teams backing the platforms to celebrities marketing the metaverse. Which one is more likely to be adopted into the mainstream and innovate to offer increasing value. This article will settle the battle for the metaverse between Decentraland and Sandbox.
If you’re familiar with the metaverse space, the two biggest metaverses to come out of the boom were Decentraland and The Sandbox. This article will look at a detailed comparison of these two main metaverses. We’ll look at everything from how they work, who’s backing the projects, their scalability and adoption, and celebrity collaborations.
We start with Decentraland…
Decentraland began as a pixelated 2D grid and a place to buy pixels, but today, it has grown into an unbelievable 3D experience. Decentraland is an Ethereum-based project where users can buy and sell virtual plots of lands. You can also create micro-worlds and populate them with all kinds of items like aircraft, trees, and more.
Decentraland feels like a virtual reality video game, but it is more natural and immersive since you can own virtual assets. These assets tend to be replicas of items you can find in the physical world, such as hotels, skyscrapers, movie theaters, etc.
Two tokens govern Decentraland’s operation, and these are:
● Land — A non-fungible token (NFT) used to define ownership of digital real estate.
● Mana — A cryptocurrency you can use to buy LAND and other goods and services in Decentraland.
The interest in Decentraland has grown since Facebook changed its name to Meta, leading to a significant surge in popularity in the metaverse.
The most well-known aspect of Decentraland is its infrastructure for supporting shared virtual worlds. A decentralized ledger for property ownership, a protocol for specifying the characteristics of each LAND parcel, and a P2P network where users can interact are all part of the platform. Users can suggest policy changes and vote on future LAND auctions through the DAO.
Three layers make up Decentraland’s protocols: the consensus later, the content layer, and the real-time layer. The consensus layer uses smart contracts to track LAND ownership and content. The LAND content layers render virtual content using a decentralized distribution system. And finally, a real-time layer provides peer-to-peer connections for users to interact with each other.
You can buy LAND on Decentraland using MANA, a decentralized cryptocurrency. Transactions on Decentraland are paid for using MANA. Trading occurs in the marketplace, which serves as an all-purpose shop for the various commodities on Decentraland needed to develop a world.
Now onto Sandbox… The Sandbox is a virtual world created on the blockchain which allows users to create, build, and trade digital assets in a game. Sandbox is a decentralized platform that combines the power of non-fungible tokens (NFT) and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO) to give users hassle-free gaming. One of its goals is to make blockchain technology mainstream in the gaming industry.
It offers a unique “play-to-earn” system that allows players to simultaneously develop and play a game. In addition, the platform is powered by the SAND utility token, which allows for easy transactions.
Since SAND is a standard ERC-20 token, owners can stake it to earn rewards.
The Sandbox is a living, breathing virtual environment populated with user-generated creations. Using VoxEdit and Game Maker, players can create their own NFTs, such as avatars, virtual items, and even games. Sandbox also allows users to utilize virtual products to communicate with different players. They can also trade their NFTS on the Sandbox Marketplace to make money.
● VoxEdit
Artists and players can use VoxEdit to make, rig, and animate voxel-based NFTs. Voxels are three-dimensional square pixels with a striking resemblance to lego blocks. You can easily edit these blocks with VoxEdit to create various shapes. Users can design animals, flora, game tools, or avatar-oriented stuff like weaponry or clothing to use in The Sandbox. After making these items, users can export or trade them as NFTs on the Sandbox Marketplace.
● Game Maker
With Game Maker, you can test and build 3D games in The Sandbox. Game Maker is simple to use, and the best part is you don’t need any coding skills. You can design and organize objects and elements (such as the NFTs developed with VoxEdit). They can, for example, edit landscape, insert buildings characters, and create quests from a library of community-developed resources. They can also show off their work to the rest of the Sandbox community.
By now, you have a better understanding of Sandbox and Decentraland. Let’s look at how they compare to one another.
Age
In the battle between Sandbox and Decentraland, the age of the project plays an important part. And in that criteria, Decentraland comes first. Decentraland was the first to develop a virtual world as its primary product and develop a 3D blockchain metaverse. In addition, Decentraland was also the first to go public with a working proof of concept. In contrast, Sandbox is still running an Alpha version.
Backing
No matter the industry, you can also determine how a product will perform by looking at the type of support. For example, Decentraland is backed by several well-known corporations, including FBG Capital, CoinFund, and Digital Currency Group. Furthermore, it has formed alliances with Polygon, Samsung, Cyberpunk, and the South Korean government.
Sandbox’s biggest support is the multinational Japanese Conglomerate, SoftBank. However, it also enjoys support from renowned companies like Uber and Slack. With so many big names behind it, The Sandbox looks like a project perfectly positioned to succeed.
Working Principle
Earlier, we talked about how both projects work, and to an extent, they both seem to work similarly. However, if we look deeper, you’ll notice a few differences in how they work.
There are over 90,000 digital parcels of land on Decentraland’s platform. All virtual real estate parcels combine to form estates or individual properties with several parcels of land. There are also districts made up of parcels with similar themes and plazas, essentially untradeable parcels owned by the community. Three different tokens exist on Decentraland; LAND, MANA, and WEAR (wearable pieces of clothing that users can mint on the Polygon/Matic blockchain).
Sandbox has a higher real estate supply than Decentraland, with over 150,000 plots that users can group into estates. Individuals own estates, whereas a group of people owns districts. You can find four types of tokens that exist on the Sandbox metaverse: SAND, LAND, GAMES, and ASSETs.
Collaborations
One thing the cryptocurrency space is big on is community, and a great way for projects to grow their community is to collaborate with successful projects. So polygon, Cyberpunk, and Atari have chosen to collaborate with Decentraland. On the flip side, Sandbox collaborates with many heavy-hitters such as CryptoKitties, Snoop Dogg, The Walking Dead, OpenSea, and lots more.
Wallet Compatibility
Wallet compatibility is the next critical factor to consider when comparing the two metaverse platforms. Here Decentraland has a leg up on Sandbox. You’re probably wondering how since both platforms are compatible with ERC-20 wallets. Although that’s true, Decentraland recently added a new feature that allows Polygon users to interact with Decentraland.
Purchasing Land
Virtual real estate is a common feature with Decentraland and Sandbox. However, the way you buy these virtual land and the user experience on both platforms differ. However, the opportunities for purchasing the virtual land on both platforms also define the user experience and differentiate both platforms. In this case, Sandbox provides users with better options for purchasing virtual land by utilizing both the OpenSea and the Sandbox marketplace. Meanwhile, Decentraland users can only buy land from its marketplace.
Scalability
Scalability is an issue because both Sandbox and Decentraland are Ethereum-based blockchain platforms. Unfortunately, due to the volatility of the Ethereum token, not to mention ridiculously high gas fees, both platforms’ scalability is limited. As a result, both platforms may encounter some setbacks in large-scale adoption.
Innovation
Another area of interest would be how fast both projects are developing. In this regard, both Decentraland and Sandbox have been making rapid advancements and bringing new features to the platform.
Platform Accessibility
Another way to differentiate or compare both projects is to see how easy it is to access both platforms. Most users find it easier to access Sandbox since it provides multiple options to interact with the platform. For example, you can access The Sandbox by connecting through your Metamask wallet, email, or social media account. Decentraland, on the other hand, only enables access by connecting a wallet.
Now that we’ve looked at how both projects compare across the board, let’s see what they have in store for current and future users.
Adoption
Decentraland has a rapidly expanding community, having achieved numerous milestones in the last year. Lockdowns throughout the world played a part in the community’s growth since more people spent more time online. Ari Meilich, Decentraland’s co-founder, reports that the platform has over 300,000 active users each month.
Decentraland is the unofficial “metaverse of choice” for brands wishing to market themselves. Coca-Cola recently entered into the NFT market space, and one of their collaborators is Decenetraland. Coca-Cola has created several NFT goods that users can buy and sell in Decentraland. Why not buy a virtual mini-fridge and fill it with co*ke and other drinks to make your digital home more comfortable?
You can also host business and social meetings on Decentraland. For example, Consensys (a conglomerate that includes Santander and JP Morgan) has held meetings in Decentraland.
Samsung has also joined Decentraland, launching their digital store, “Samsung 837X.” Decentraland gamers can take part in an adventure in the store to gain NFT badges and other prizes.
The Sandbox allows gamers to create their own virtual world, pixel by pixel, and convert anything they make into an NFT. They can then trade this NFT in-game or on marketplaces such as OpenSea. As a result, sandbox users have far greater flexibility and freedom than Decentraland.
So what’s the final verdict? Both platforms have their strengths and weaknesses and strengths as you can see. Therefore it’s hard to say who comes out on top in this battle for the metaverse. In the end, only you can decide who you want to back as a winner. I know that isn’t a great answer, so I’ll give a bit of guidance. Go with Decentraland for collaborations or choose The Sandbox for its flexibility. One thing is for sure, I for one, will be exploring both of these metaverses over any others.
If all this talk about the metaverse is confusing, you can learn more about it by watching this video here on how to step-by-step buy land in the metaverse or by reading one of my articles down below. Till next time :)
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