The Sandbox (SAND)

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Historical price evolution of The Sandbox

Daily historical data. Updated automatically.

The Sandbox has its roots in May 2011, when Arthur Madrid and Sebastien Borget, together with designer Adrien Duermael, founded Pixowl in San Francisco as a mobile video game studio. One year later, in May 2012, they launched The Sandbox on iOS, an open-world 2D pixel art universe creation game that Apple named amongst the best games of the App Store in 2012 and 2013. The franchise achieved over 40 million downloads on iOS and Android. In June 2016, The Sandbox Evolution arrived, a 2D sequel with more than 160 construction elements and internal economy with its own currency.

The project experienced a decisive change in August 2018, when Animoca Brands acquired Pixowl for $4,875 million in cash and shares. Pixowl was renamed TSB Gaming Ltd and began development of the 3D blockchain version of the game. In November 2019, a $3.21 million private seed round led by Animoca Brands was executed to finance the development of the blockchain metaverse, with SAND tokens sold at $0.0072 each. In December of that same year, the first public pre-sale of LAND parcels was carried out, representing ownership of virtual land in the metaverse.

During 2020, funding continued with a private strategic round in July, where SAND tokens were sold at an average price of $0.005. The 13th August 2020 marked a milestone with the IEO of the SAND token on Binance Launchpad: 360 million tokens sold at $0.008333 each, raising $3 million and setting the maximum supply at 3,000 million ERC-20 tokens. In November 2021, a Series B round of $93 million led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 was closed.

The metaverse boom following Facebook's name change to Meta propelled the SAND token to reach its historic ATH of $8.40 on 25th November 2021, exceeding a market capitalisation of $6,200 million. Four days later, on 29th November, the first Alpha Season kicked off with 18 playable experiences, where Alpha Pass holders could earn up to 1,000 SAND and exclusive NFTs. In 2022, the ecosystem's migration to Polygon as an Ethereum sidechain was announced to reduce gas fees, and a user paid $450,000 for a LAND parcel adjacent to Snoop Dogg's. In September 2022, the SAND staking programme on LAND parcels was launched.

Recent developments included the acquisition in January 2024 of QED, a Romanian software development company with six years of experience collaborating with the project, integrating it as Sandbox Romania. In May 2024, The Sandbox DAO was launched, an off-chain governance mechanism that allows LAND and SAND holders to vote in nine decision categories, whilst the SAND token added support for BNB Chain, Base and Polygon. Alpha Season 4 in Q4 2024 registered 580,000 unique players, with 276,000 in the first two weeks, and LAND exceeded $481 million in accumulated secondary sales volume on OpenSea, with 80% of the 166,464 parcels sold. Alpha Season 5 with Jurassic World theme ran until 31st March 2025, offering more than 40 experiences from more than 20 brands, $1 million in rewards and an average of 97 minutes of session per player.

On 28th August 2025, Animoca Brands announced a restructuring that included the dismissal of 50% of the workforce (around 125 employees) and the closure of offices in Argentina, Uruguay, South Korea, Thailand, Turkey and Lyon. Co-founders Arthur Madrid and Sebastien Borget left their executive roles: Madrid became chairman of the board and Borget became global ambassador, whilst Robby Yung, an Animoca Brands executive, was named CEO. On 30th September 2025, the new CEO presented at TOKEN2049 Singapore the SANDchain strategy, a Layer 2 based on zkSync designed for the creator economy, with capacity exceeding 10,000 transactions per second. Its testnet was launched on 14th October 2025, and in February 2026 it successfully completed phase 1 with 203,000 wallets signing the Creator Manifesto, 2,600 registered projects and 35 ecosystem partners, whilst phase 2 focused on the integration of artificial intelligence agents.

The Sandbox functions as a decentralised metaverse built on the Ethereum blockchain and the Polygon sidechain, where users can create, own and monetise digital gaming experiences. Its economy is structured around three types of tokenised assets: the SAND token (ERC-20) with a maximum supply of 3,000 million units that acts as the ecosystem's currency for transactions, governance and staking; LAND parcels (ERC-721) limited to 166,464 units that represent ownership of virtual terrain on which experiences are built; and ASSETs, objects and characters created by users and minted as NFTs under the ERC-1155 standard.

The platform provides two creation tools that do not require programming knowledge: VoxEdit allows for designing 3D objects in voxel style, whilst Game Maker facilitates the construction and publication of interactive experiences on LAND parcels. Creators can commercialise their assets both in the project's internal marketplace and in external secondary markets such as OpenSea. LAND owners can stake SAND tokens to obtain rewards and participate in ecosystem governance through the DAO implemented in 2024.

From 2025, The Sandbox expands its infrastructure with SANDchain, a Layer 2 solution based on zkSync technology designed to expand the creator economy beyond the metaverse itself, including support for creators from external platforms such as YouTube, TikTok or Roblox. The ecosystem has registered more than 400 associated brands and franchises along with more than 400,000 creators, consolidating a network of participants who utilise these tools to develop monetisable digital content within the blockchain environment.

Data verified against external sources. Some values may have changed since the last update.