World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen is taking his seat at The Sandbox’s chess table as Animoca Brands partners with Play Magnus Group (PMG) to bring the ancient pastime into the metaverse. The partnership will introduce virtual world activities and NFT collections, bringing the classic mind game to a new frontier.
It used to be that humans and machines played chess against each other; now humans are playing inside the machine as chess arrives in the metaverse. Blockchain-based virtual world The Sandbox has announced it will host PMG’s Meltwater Champions Chess Tour as part of a partnership between PMG and Animoca Brands.
In addition Lympo, another Animoca Brands subsidiary, will lead the development of a Champions Chess Tour NFT collection. Over the next five years, the company will create a range of collectible chess player cards and a “blockchain chess-inspired” game based on PMG’s Champions Chess Tour. They will also mint social tokens that grant extra player and community access to the holder.
The Sandbox, also owned by Animoca Brands, made headlines during last year’s November bull run as its land prices became the most expensive in the metaverse. They count Snoop Dogg as a citizen; the rapper can be found in his own virtual mansion. And Adidas recently staked a claim on the blockchain by acquiring some land they’ve named the AdiVerse. Now, The Sandbox can count World Chess Champion and Fantasy Football enthusiast Magnus Carlsen as one its newest arrivals.
The Sandbox keeps expanding
Since last year’s astonishing run, during which both the price of land (LAND) and the value of their token (SAND) multiplied massively, things have cooled down a bit for The Sandbox. As we can see in the graph below, following the November 2021 trading boom, transaction numbers have dropped significantly.
Saying this, investors and Sandbox inhabitants shouldn’t get too jumpy. Prices have held up relatively well and transaction fluctuations can, in part, be attributed to a blockchain migration The Sandbox recently undertook.
Let’s take a closer look at some areas of The Sandbox economy that have been affected over the past few months and where things might go in future.
- SAND – As the big coins go, so do the rest of the pack. This fact still remains true for cryptocurrency. While the prices of smaller coins and tokens are becoming less and less pegged to BTC and ETH, if those two behemoths drop, everything else falls too. SAND’s current price of $4.07 is just over 50% off its November high ($8.40). Whether or not you see this as a problem depends on whether or not you see the current market malaise as a necessary correction or a sign of terminal decline.
- Polygon partnership – The Sandbox recently announced the launch of a new staking mechanism on the Polygon network. Until this change, people who wanted to stake their SAND could only do it in Ethereum/SAND farming pools. Now, The Sandbox has partnered with Polygon and players can stake their mSAND with zero gas fees. Find out how to stake and earn SAND towards the end of this article.
- LAND – As a consequence of the Ethereum-Polygon bridging, LAND transaction rates have dropped. This move to a Layer-2 ecosystem is a temporary bump in the road though. As mentioned earlier, prices have not dropped considerably. In fact, the price trendline is going up, if we consider sales only in terms of ETH. But as ETH has fallen in relation to USD, the LAND price in fiat currency has sagged.
