🏰 The new SANDcastle

Metaverse projects continue to flop or pivot.

Yesterday, we saw that Futureverse — a crypto metaverse project that split itself in many directions and raised $54 million two years ago — is going through a “restructuring” because it’s apparently having financial troubles and hasn't been able to raise. It’s unclear how many employees Futureverse had, or how many have been laid off.

The Sandbox, once a hyped darling of the metaverse bubble, is now seeing its token repurposed and reinvented for CreatorFi: loans and payments for creators. 

I do wonder when crypto will become saturated with creator coin platforms, though.

— Kate Irwin

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Animoca tries to reinvent SAND with another blockchain

Just-launch-a-blockchain season continues.

The Sandbox-affiliated gaming token SAND will now be the center of a new ZKsync/Ethereum rollup chain focused on the creator economy.

The Sandbox and the newly created SANDChain Foundation are behind the new protocol, which will offer creator tokens, plus “Creator Points” and “SANDPoints.”

The SANDChain Foundation doesn’t have any members as it’s more a vehicle for facilitating the chain. But it does have a director (we don’t yet know who this is) who makes decisions alongside those who build on the chain, The Sandbox co-founder Sébastien Borget, who’s now the global ambassador for SANDChain, told me via email.

The one-man foundation chose to make SANDChain a ZKsync rollup using Caldera. SAND will be the native gas token and the main universal currency for games and apps built on the chain.

But I doubt being part of the existing ZKsync ecosystem will help SANDChain much. Currently, Abstract is the ZKsync chain with the most REV, which can be an indicator of interest in a chain. But because Abstract is focused on creators and being creator-first with livestreams and its own degen games and XP (points) system, Abstract is in direct competition with SANDChain. 

The ZKSync Elastic Network’s REV has not grown. The total value secured (TVS) has increased from roughly $853 million in Q1 2025 to over $1.3 billion in Q2, but the aggregate stablecoin supply across the ecosystem has decreased in that same period, per Blockworks Research data. 

SANDChain’s core DeFi offering will be “Patron Vaults” and “Creator Vaults,” which are expected to roll out sometime next year. Patron vaults are essentially loans that creators or projects can pull from, wherein liquidity providers earn points and yield. 

Borget likened Creator Vaults to “Patreon, but onchain,” where donations or merch purchases go toward creator revenue. Creator tokens can also be staked for yield.

Offering yield is key to attracting traders — but doesn’t guarantee SANDChain adoption. 

This announcement comes a month after a report surfaced that The Sandbox had laid off more than half its employees as part of a broader Animoca Brands takeover, which also involved a leadership shakeup and a pivot to AI and memecoins.

Animoca also announced another blockchain this year, Moca Chain, which is an EVM L1 focused on giving users “digital identities,” though it’s currently unclear what exactly that will look like and whether or to what extent that might ever connect with SANDChain.

The SANDChain testnet is slated to launch Oct. 14. 

So is SANDChain Animoca’s answer to Zora, which centers its platform around creator-based memecoins and has been pushing the narrative that it just wants to pay influencers for their posts online? Or is SANDChain trying to compete with Pump.fun’s attention economy, which offers creator tokens and livestreaming? 

Zora, which has been promoted by Coinbase, is seeing about $160 million in volume traded per month, Blockworks Research data shows, while Pump.fun holds court with over $12 billion in monthly volume. I suspect SANDChain, which won’t be able to tap into existing communities on Base or Solana, will be smaller than both. 

In a sense, SANDChain may offer a mix of Pump.fun and Zora tooling plus some other DeFi pieces. But creators will need to actually be able to make money — and SANDChain will actually need to make money — in order for the chain to hold itself up long-term. 

Like a broken record, I’ve been asking why crypto needs more gaming blockchains (or more chains in general) all year because many of these chains are simply unnecessary, lack a significant audience and won’t find adoption. 

But launching your own blockchain gives you the most control and, in theory, the most potential revenue upside. In gaming, the existence of so many blockchains has resulted in community and liquidity fragmentation. I’d also argue it’s distracted teams from the point of crypto gaming, which was supposed to be about building cool games that people could get some cash by playing. 

“Launching a blockchain today is less about the base layer — which has become increasingly commoditized — and more about whom you serve and how you differentiate,” Borget said, speaking on the decision to focus on the creator economy.

All that said, the SAND token could see a rebound. Or, it may not inspire confidence in the current environment. SAND is down over 96% from its all-time high during the late-2021 metaverse bubble, and is down 8% in the past year.  

Ultimately, SANDChain will have to hit crypto at the right time and with significant rewards and ease of use in order for it to see adoption. Animoca won’t be able to force it. I’m not yet sure if it’ll have the secret sauce to siphon traders away from Pump.fun, Believe, Kalshi, Polymarket and Zora. But maybe it could carve out its own little corner.

If the stars align, SAND could find new purpose as a DeFi token — or it could remain covered in dust for years to come.

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