During a period when major metaverse projects are struggling to gain traction following the bear market of 2022-23, The Sandbox announced it has added over 330,000 unique creators. Animoca Brands and its subsidiary Bacasable Global Limited, which operates The Sandbox, have raised $20 million through convertible promissory notes, valuing the company at $1 billion.
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The funding round was led by Kingsway Capital and included participation from LG Tech Ventures and True Global Ventures. Investors holding the promissory notes can convert them into Bacasable Global Limited’s equity under the same terms as existing preference shares.
This latest funding at a billion-dollar valuation comes nearly two years after The Sandbox aimed to raise $400 million at a $4 billion valuation.
In its official announcement, The Sandbox stated that the new funding would be used to expand the creator economy and develop its decentralized mobile metaverse platform, slated for a 2025 launch. Notable enhancements include the addition of new social features, avatar skills, and upgrades to its Game Maker and VoxEdit 3D editing tools.
The metaverse platform also promised to enhance gameplay options with a new multiplayer rules system, expected to enter beta later this year and be generally released in 2025.
Sandbox Sees Significant Growth Despite Bearish Sentiment
Since the Alpha version of The Sandbox launched in November 2023, over 1,000 user-generated experiences have been developed. The platform now boasts 5.7 million user accounts linked to cryptocurrency wallets.
Yat Siu, co-founder of Animoca Brands, noted that many popular games like Minecraft and Roblox, despite having millions of daily users, do not offer digital property rights to their users. He emphasized that The Sandbox represents “the evolution of UGC games for the age of digital ownership.”
Investment management firm McKinsey projects that the metaverse economy could grow to $5 trillion by 2030. However, despite early enthusiasm that led Facebook to rebrand as Meta, the concept has struggled to gain user traction post-bull run. A report indicated that Meta’s $1.2 billion metaverse project had only 38 daily users in 2022.
While major metaverse projects face challenges following the 2022-23 bear market, The Sandbox has seen the addition of over 330,000 unique creators in the past 12 months, who have downloaded The Sandbox’s no-code Game Maker.
