Among the general public, the concept of Metaverse seems to be inseparable from Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg indeed made a big noise in October 2021 by renaming Facebook to Meta to signify his company's 180-degree turn in the Metaverse, which he believes in like a rock.
Proof if it were needed, Mark Zuckerberg is burning money in R&D at a rate never seen in the history of tech. Even worse, his strategy doesn't convince anyone, especially not the users, and Meta has lost 75% of its value on the stock market since the beginning of the year 2022!
However, I'm going to tell you here about a Metaverse that exists without Mark Zuckerberg or virtual or augmented reality headsets. Better still, this universe is popular with brands such as Gucci, Adidas, and Warner Music. Concerts by the rapper Snoop Dogg are held there regularly, and Paris Hilton comes to party from time to time in the midst of a happy few walking around in the form of a pixelated avatar.
This Metaverse is called The Sandbox. It's a video game created by Frenchmen Sébastien Borget and Arthur Madrid in 2012.
The idea of The Sandbox is simple: each user can buy a space in this virtual world, accessible on a computer for now. Then he is free to build a store or to allow curious people to buy a product or to live an experience. “Our map is valued at 1.4 billion dollars,” explains Sébastien Borget, in his Parisian offices. “In 2021, land transactions represented a volume of $500 million.”
The Sandbox works with a Blockchain and a cryptocurrency specific to the universe, the Sand.
Regular new features
While many metaverses have a fluctuating business model, The Sandbox is already raking in revenue. It collects the full amount when a user buys a plot, and 5% of the transaction when it is purchased on the secondary market. The company has recorded $180 million in sales in 2021. Many NFTs are offered for sale in The Sandbox.
Bought by Hong Kong-based Animoca Brands in 2018, the company has since raised $98 million from well-known players such as SoftBank or Binance. Growing, it has 400 employees, the vast majority of whom are in Argentina and Uruguay after the June 2022 acquisition of Cualit.
The key to the future of The Sandbox platform will be its rate of adoption by the public, and especially the recurrence of the use of this Metaverse. Like the game Fortnite, The Sandbox structures its platform into different seasons so that players don't get bored. The goal is to bring new features regularly.
Season 3 began in the summer of 2022. “We need to create a habit so that users come back to The Sandbox,” details its co-founder. “Often people confuse Metaverse with games, but we can gamify a lot of things: quests, socializing with meetups or an NFT showcase.”
Beware of bad buzz
The actual attendance of this universe is at the heart of the speculation. The Sandbox claims to have 39,000 unique visitors per day, and 201,000 per month. This is still far from a massive adoption. The companies that invest in it don't always do it for the right reasons. In May 2022, the CEO of Carrefour Alexandre Bompard boasted on social networks about the job interviews he would do in the Metaverse facing the sea ... A very miscalculated exit that had generated a flurry of mocking comments about the aesthetic poverty of the virtual store ... The art of creating a bad buzz.
Many brands invest in the Metaverse only for fear of missing the next big trend, the famous FOMO syndrome. Even the rugby world is getting involved. The Racing Club Toulonnais (RCT), three-time European rugby champion, will land in the Metaverse in early 2023. “Fans will be able to gamify their experience through the purchase of NFT,” says François Pesenti, general manager of the club. A prudent first step.
Because The Sandbox does not yet replace traditional media. Every weekend, the Top14 matches are still broadcasted, in a real and old-fashioned way, on Canal+ in France. Nevertheless, sports clubs see in the Metaverse the possibility of a new source of revenue. There is no guarantee that it will work in the long run, but being present is essential just in case.
Like other established Metaverse players, The Sandbox has seen a speculative bubble emerge following Mark Zuckerberg's announcement that he was banking on the Metaverse for the future of his company. The bursting of this bubble is hurting the weaker players, but The Sandbox may well be one of the players who will emerge stronger from the crypto winter we are going through.
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