SAND is the native cryptocurrency of The Sandbox; a popular 3D "metaverse" game built on the Ethereum network that users can explore, purchase land on and create structures that can be monetized. All items acquired in The Sandbox are 100% owned by the players themselves, creating revenue opportunities for gamers.

The Sandbox is powered by the SAND token, one of the two most popular metaverse gaming tokens to date and one that gained prominence in 2021.

SAND has a hard cap of 3 billion tokens. The initial token distribution of SAND tokens was roughly 55%. That was split among The Sandbox's team, advisers and the company reserve. Twelve percent went to The Sandbox Foundation, a nonprofit tasked with giving grants to developers and others building projects on the platform to encourage growth, and the remaining 33% went to investors, distributed in a variety of public sales.

SAND is a utility token that can be used to play games, purchase equipment or customize avatars. Users can earn the token while playing the game. SAND is also a governance token, meaning that users who hold the token can vote on decisions affecting the future of the game.

The Sandbox metaverse game is composed of slabs of digital real estate called LAND, of which only 166,464 will ever be available. Like real estate in the real world, LAND can be used to erect buildings or games or other digital experiences, which developers can create using developer toolkits provided by The Sandbox.

SAND's price hovered at around $0.04 to $0.06 after the token was first released in 2020, and it climbed sharply in 2021. SAND hit its all-time high of $8.40 in November 2021. Though SAND's price dropped to $6.55 after that, the price surged 25% to another peak of $7.49 in late November 2021 on news that sportswear maker Adidas teased a partnership with The Sandbox gaming platform.

The Sandbox is a game that uses blockchain technology to empower players and give them complete control over the game and any assets they accrue. That’s different from traditional online games, where users lack voting powers, don’t truly own in-game items and can’t generate revenue from the structures or experiences they create.

LAND and other assets in The Sandbox are non-fungible tokens (NFTs), a popular way to turn digital assets into collectibles. With the help of the unique cryptographic features of blockchains, NFT digital collectibles (from modern art pieces to collectible digital creatures) can be proven to be unique – and it's easy to verify that they are so.

Some predict that NFTs will become a bigger part of gaming, because gamers already spend billions of dollars on digital assets, from skins for their avatars or “power-ups.” Some visionaries predict that gamers will one day be able to transfer their assets from game to game and see NFTs as a key piece to such an interconnected gaming ecosystem.

The Sandbox game was created in 2012 without any blockchain technology involved. The goal was to encourage players to create their own unique digital worlds. Although that aspect of the game has lived on, Hong Kong investor and video game software company Animoca Brands purchased The Sandbox in 2018, pivoting the game toward blockchain and NFTs.

In November 2021, The Sandbox raised $93 million in a Series B funding round led by SoftBank. Other investors include True Global Ventures, Liberty City Ventures, Galaxy Interactive, Kingsway Capital and Blue Pool Capital.

The Sandbox has partnered with a number of well-known celebrities and brands, such as rapper Snoop Dogg, electronic musician Deadmau65, and zombie post-apocalypse TV show “The Walking Dead.” Multinational consulting firm PwC Hong Kong also purchased LAND in the game in 2021.