The idea of buying plots of land in virtual spaces was ridiculed by many during the initial days. However now, things have already started changing. The real-estate hype in the metaverse has been getting intense with every passing day and Decentraland and The Sandbox are at the forefront.
Decentraland is typically a 3D virtual world platform that leverages ERC721 and ERC20 tokens to drive its economy. Users here can create, buy and sell content and apps. The Sandbox, for its part, is an NFT gaming metaverse based on Ethereum. Users here can create, sell, use and monetize their own NFTs and use the native SAND token to interact with the in-game economy.
The neck-to-neck ‘land’ competition
The number of unique owners of The Sandbox LAND has risen by almost 10x over the past two years. Nonetheless, on the micro set-up, these numbers have started dwindling. There are currently 17,706 owners, down from a high of 18,924 one week ago.
The cumulative owners of Decentraland LAND are comparatively lower, but the trend tracks a similar growth trajectory. Its performance has been quite strong since the fourth quarter of last year and currently has over 4,378 holders, with the curve still pointing upwards.
Now even though Decentraland LAND has fewer total owners, its monthly average price has been consistently higher. For instance, it peaked at around $25,483 in September 2020 and managed to fluctuate in a wide range throughout last year. In fact, it has now been able to keep up with the uptrend.
The Sandbox LAND has, however, depicted a slightly different trend. It has held steady since mid of 2021 and hit a high of $10,821 last month.
Parallel to this, the number of Decentraland LAND units sold peaked at a massive 36,549 in November 2018 but has been hovering in the 250-3000 range of late.
The Sandbox LAND, on the other hand, has grown steadily in units sold through 2021. It hit a high of 16,511 in November and leveled off around 7k in the past two months.
What’s more, The Sandbox has tremendously improved on the floor price aspect too. The same lagged evidently when compared to Decentraland for most of 2021. However, it has gradually managed to gain ground. Now, even though both the projects currently depict strong performances on this front, it shouldn’t be forgotten that Decentraland still retains the upper hand.
A 2-2 tie
As highlighted above, both these projects have their respective edges. Even though The Sandbox leads on the ownership front, it shouldn’t be forgotten that the state of this metric has already started deteriorating, while Decentraland has been able to maintain its uptrend streak. The latter project, however, has an upper hand when it comes to the average price while, yet again, the former lead the units sold around. As far as the floor price is concerned, Decentraland triumphs, but The Sandbox ain’t much behind.