Garry Taylor · Follow
Published in · 7 min read · Jun 21, 2022
While the popular Decentraland and the Sandbox platforms are taking up much of the Metaverse market share. There is an emerging competitor, Enjin who is looking very promising to rival these two massive, popular platforms. In this article, I’m going to compare all three projects and who is best positioned to dominate the Metaverse and provide the greatest return to investors.
Okay, let’s look into who will be number one in the crypto gaming industry; Enjin, Sandbox, or Decentraland.
First, let’s look at Enjin.
Enjin is a platform built for blockchain games. The ecosystem that Enjin uses allows it to develop games on blockchain platforms with ease. The Enjin tool is centered on developing, distributing, managing, and integrating blockchain assets into games.
Unlike other forerunners, Enjin is focused on building a platform that allows developers to launch different types of content; rather than within a single metaverse. The Enjin team is decentralized as its members are from different parts of the globe.
Enjin was launched in 2009, and since then, the platform has built more than 52 million blockchain assets. Enjin has worked with some of the top dogs in the industry, including Unity, BGA, Samsung, and Godot, among others, to build more tools for the gaming community.
Beyond good features, Enjin is the first platform to embrace and distribute the pioneer version of ERC-1155, which was developed in collaboration with Sandbox Horizon Games. ERC-1155 is the most creative idea token that can be used to create non-fungible tokens and fungible ERC-20 tokens.
One advantage of ERC-1155 is that once it is incorporated into an app by a developer, it becomes easier to incorporate another one.
Enjin wallet is deemed one of the most adaptable mobile wallets in the crypto ecosystem and has been adopted by some companies in the gaming industry like Samsung.
The Enjin platform also has a comprehensive archive of games to repurpose to build skills, make money from content, and form coalitions with some of the best players in the industry.
Another exceptional product from Enjin is the Enjin browser which sets it apart from its competitors in the metaverse. The browser is easy to use, especially for searching subjects in relation to the market, transactions, assets, and projects.
The mobile gaming industry is worth more than $41 billion, and a lot of that is gotten from microtransactions supported by platforms like Enjin. The Enjin platform allows developers to sell in-game items to fund their projects. The benefit of these transactions is that it saves on credit card processors and other platforms like Google and Apple charge high fees for every transaction.
Also, the Enjin platform allows users to own virtual items in the real-world, and a currency can be used on more than one platform. It is safe to say that the Enjin platform has achieved what many cryptocurrencies have been trying to achieve by infiltrating the gaming industry.
Now, let’s move on to Sandbox. The platform has continued to evolve ever since initially launching in 2016 called The Sandbox Evolution. At the time became a major competitor with some popular games like Minecraft and many others.
The sandbox metaverse was introduced in 2021 and got millions of downloads immediately after it was launched.
The sandbox game went further to launch its Alpha model in November 2021, which brought about an even larger user base making it one of the forerunners in the crypto gaming industry alongside Decentraland, Axie Infinity, and others.
Sandbox was first introduced as a mobile 2D pixel game that enabled players to take on the roles of digital avatars. Players could alter several elements in the game to build their own virtual universes. The game grew popular very fast, with over a million downloads after the first launch. But the game’s fame spread like wildfire following the popularity of NFTs, which played a major role in the growth of the Sandbox metaverse.
The Sandbox game has evolved into a 3D game with vibrant lighting and shading. The alpha version of the Sandbox game was launched in 2021, and the user base has grown rapidly and will grow even more in the NFT domain. This prediction is based on the growing popularity of NFT-based games such as Axie Infinity.
The technical infrastructure of Sandbox comprises a traditional backend that is backed up by cloud computing and a web frontend backed up by Amazon Web Services(AWS), one of the most reliable methods to ensure maximum uptime.
Sandbox adopts Amazon S3 to store developers’ assets before creating them as NFTs. However, Sandbox depends on Ethereum to record token ownership and the trading, selling and transferring of users’ assets. Sandbox also uses InterPlanetary File System or IPFS for short to record information on in-game assets in order to prevent unauthorized changes.
The Sandbox game runs on the Ethereum blockchain and allows players to play and lease virtual assets like land as well as create their innovations and use ERC-20 tokens known as SAND in the game.
The Sandbox platform allows users to make money from their skills and adopts decentralization to enforce five major functions: create, trade, govern, buy, and play.
The Sandbox ecosystem uses non-fungible tokens to boost ownership, interactiveness, digital scarcity, and monetizing content built within the Sandbox Metaverse with an effective graphic editor called Voxedit.
The Sandbox platform is easy to maneuver, and it has versions for both P.C. and mobile devices. Not to mention the beta version that is scheduled to launch on mobile devices in the near future.
All these features support its growth in the years to come, and with popular celebrities backing the platform, is well-positioned to keep a majority of market share.
The Decentraland concept was launched in 2015 as a 2D prototype of the present algorithm. But the platform has grown since then to something larger and more dependable; however, from their roadmap, there’s still a lot of room for growth in the future.
Decentraland is a bit different from the others as it is designed specifically for businesses, content creators, and people who are searching for a new tool for artistic expression, a source of entertainment, or business opportunities.
In Decentraland, the game universe is split into 90,601 single units of land, and an NFT depicts every unit. Every unit of land virtually measures 16 Square meters and can be found at particular coordinates in the metaverse.
Players who own land can create anything they want from their unit; however, the Decentraland metaverse is classified into different regions of different themes and sizes. These regions originated from single-crowd sales that use MANA tokens.
MANA holders are responsible for suggesting and voting on possible system updates, the sort of content permitted in the metaverse, and details of land auctions. Many users of the Decentraland platform make money by advertising and renting their land, while a few others sell them for MANA tokens.
Decentraland was the first Ethereum based virtual world that allows users to create, test, and make money from their content applications. Decentraland is similar to the others in the sense that it is decentralized in nature, which allows users to make money from content developed with simple builder tools and software development kits for more skilled users.
However, one major difference is that Decentraland is not a game developed to operate on several outlets or mobile devices, and content creation within the metaverse is for users with experience in creating graphic content. The Decentraland traverse is revered in the blockchain community so much so that independent companies like Matic and Decentral Games host their games on the metaverse. The Decentraland Metaverse also plays host to several online events.
Decentraland supports three types of tokens, which together make up a real estate market, and they are; LAND, WEAR, and MANA. MANA is the official currency of Decentraland, and it can be used to lease or purchase virtual land called LAND.
This transaction is supported by a smart contract established on the ERC-721 standard authorized and recorded in the blockchain. MANA can also be used to purchase wearables and articles known as WEAR.
One major accomplishment of Decentraland is the ability to illustrate real-life situations where the platform could have a maximum impact, such as the Coinfest Conference.
Decentraland platform allows users to be part of a community that converts real-life situations and occurrences to digital archetypes. Members of this virtual community engage in actual democratic government and ownership practices for the assets in the metaverse. The main currency for transactions between members of the metaverse is the MANA.
The Decentraland metaverse also runs on Ethereum, and users can purchase virtual landed assets, develop real-life contents and applications, and make money from them. The metaverse depends on the Ethereum blockchain to evaluate data across various nodes. This is a drawback as Ethereum is an inefficient blockchain compared to others such as Solana.
Having looked at the three platforms in the blockchain gaming industry, it’s hard to choose which is best as each metaverse displays distinct features that make it amazing. Between Sandbox and Decentraland, Sandbox has many advantages over Decentraland with it’s history and current popularity among celebrities. However, comparing both Sandbox and Decentraland to Enjin, Enjin is focused on another aspect of the Metaverse and in a league of it’s own.
So it all comes down to what market a person wants to invest in. If you want a platform that is easily adaptable to create games and items, you should consider the Enjin platform, and if you want an existing platform to build within, then choose a metaverse such as Sandbox and Decentraland.
You can choose the Sandbox metaverse if you want to create your virtual reality and monetize your assets with ease as the metaverse platform is already taken care of. Or, if you’re a businessperson or content creator, then the Decentraland platform is best for you.
If you liked this article, please consider following me for more articles on the Metaverse, NFTs, and cryptocurrency as I’ll be writing here more often this year. And it’s an asymmetrical risk for you. No downside, and all upside. Anyways, cheers :)
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