The Sandbox Cuts Half Its Team and Changes Strategy
Date: 2025-08-29 Author: Henry Casey Categories: BUSINESS
A major project in the field of virtual worlds, The Sandbox, is in the process of major changes. According to The Big Whale, the place of co-founders Arthur Madrid and Sebastian Borges in management has been taken by a representative of the investor Animoca Brands. This step became part of a broad restructuring that will affect not only the management team, but also the global structure of the company.
The cuts turned out to be radical - the staff is being cut by more than half. At the same time, offices in Argentina, Uruguay, South Korea, Thailand, and Turkey, as well as the head office in Lyon, are closing. Official reports note that the Web3 Gaming direction is no longer considered a priority. Instead, the team intends to develop a platform for issuing memecoins on the Base blockchain.
According to CoinDesk, these steps confirm The Sandbox's difficulties in converting multi-million dollar investments into stable user interest. Despite the fact that the project has attracted about $300 million over the eight years of its existence, the daily audience has shrunk to several hundred active users.
The expectations of Animoca Brands, which has been trying to raise $2 billion to invest in metaverses and digital property since late 2022, have also not been met. The company expected that over time, such assets would be recognized on a par with traditional real estate and property rights.
At the peak of interest in virtual worlds, in early 2023, metaverses were even discussed at the World Economic Forum in Davos. At that time, surveys showed that about 60% of crypto investors saw prospects in this direction. The Sandbox was considered one of the market leaders, second only to Otherside in terms of sales of virtual land. At that time, the value of some NFT plots reached 100 ETH (about $450 thousand), and the SAND token demonstrated an 80% increase.
SAND reached its historical maximum in November 2021 - $8.4 with a capitalization of $6.8 billion, according to CoinGecko. Today, the token price has fallen by almost 96% and is hovering around $0.28.
Thus, the rapid decline in interest in metaverses and a change in investor priorities have led to The Sandbox being forced to refocus on new niches of the crypto market, leaving its previous ambitions behind.
