The Sandbox (SAND) is the token of The Sandbox, a blockchain-based virtual world in which players and creators build games, buy digital land and trade items as NFTs. SAND is used to pay for land and items, to stake for rewards and to vote on some decisions about the platform. It has a fixed maximum supply of 3 billion tokens.
SAND is an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum Blockchain, with a bridged version on Polygon where most staking now takes place. The token is distinct from LAND, the NFTs that represent plots in the world, and from the company that runs the platform, which is controlled by the Hong Kong investor Animoca Brands. Its closest rival is Decentraland (MANA).
The Sandbox in plain terms
Imagine a giant online model village divided into square plots. People can buy a plot, build a game or a shop on it, and charge visitors or sell what they make. The deeds to the plots and many of the objects inside are recorded on a blockchain, so they can be sold to someone else without asking the village's owners.
SAND is the village's money. You use it to buy plots, avatars and building materials, and to pay small fees when things change hands. Holders can also lock their SAND away for a while to earn more of it, and take part in some votes. The idea is that the people who build and play in the village, not just the company, share in its success, though in practice the company still makes most of the big decisions.
History
The Sandbox began in 2011 as a mobile building game made by the French studio Pixowl, founded by Arthur Madrid and Sébastien Borget. Animoca Brands bought Pixowl in 2018 and began turning the game into a blockchain world. SAND was sold to the public on the Binance Launchpad in August 2020, and the first playable season of the metaverse opened in November 2021, when interest in virtual worlds was at its peak and land sold for high prices to brands and celebrities, among them Adidas, Atari and the rapper Snoop Dogg.
Activity fell sharply after the 2022 crypto downturn. In August 2025 Animoca took direct control: its executive Robby Yung became chief executive, Madrid moved to a non-executive chairman role and Borget became a global ambassador, and about half of the staff were laid off. The company said it would widen its focus beyond the metaverse to other Web3 products. The full 3 billion SAND had been released from vesting by August 2025.
How SAND works
The world is a map of 166,464 LAND parcels, each an ERC-721 NFT. Owners can combine parcels into larger estates and build on them with the platform's free tools, and parcels can be resold on the official marketplace or on outside NFT exchanges such as OpenSea. SAND has several jobs:
- Payments. LAND, avatars, game assets and other items in the marketplace are priced in SAND.
- Staking. Holders can stake SAND, now mainly on Polygon, to earn rewards.
- Governance. SAND and LAND holders can vote on some proposals; see decentralized autonomous organization.
- Creator funding. A foundation uses part of the fees to give grants to artists, designers and game makers.
The project documents a fee on SAND transactions in its marketplace, split between a staking pool and the foundation:
- is the amount, in SAND, that a buyer pays for an item.
- is the 5 percent transaction fee.
- Half of the resulting fee goes to the foundation and half to the staking pool.
For example, on an item sold for 1,000 SAND, the fee is SAND, of which 25 SAND goes to the foundation and 25 SAND to the staking pool. Because supply is capped, SAND's tokenomics depend on demand rather than on issuance; for scheduled releases, see token unlocks.
Regulation
In June 2023 the US Securities and Exchange Commission named SAND, along with tokens such as MANA and Solana (SOL), as a security in its lawsuit against Binance. The case was dismissed at the SEC's request in May 2025, so no court ever ruled on whether SAND is a security. Exchanges that list SAND still have to follow the licensing and anti-money-laundering rules that apply to crypto assets, including MiCA in the European Union.
Criticism and risks
Critics note that visitor numbers have been modest compared with mainstream games, that much land was bought as a speculation rather than to build on, and that prices for SAND and LAND fell steeply after 2021. Control by a single company, the dependence on brand partnerships and the 2025 layoffs raise questions about the project's long-term direction. For the use of NFTs in games more broadly, see NFT in gaming.