[Xangle Original]

Written by Moon Bit

Are you sure that SandBox and Decentraland can survive?

Tech Giants are coming

Recently, you might have heard that tech giants are developing metaverse platforms. From Samsung's metaverse platform launching announcement to Microsoft's Mesh, Tech Giant companies are planning their own metaverse services. Also, you may have heard that Facebook changed its name to Meta and "all-in" to the metaverse. With so many IT companies investing in metaverse and planning services, what will happen to Sandbox and Decentraland, blockchain-based metaverse?

Current Metaverse Platform

As you know, the concept of metaverse already exists. The metaverse is defined as a ‘virtual world where there is a social and economic activity'. Commonly Sandbox, Minecraft, Second Life, Roblox, and Zepeto are considered metaverse.

Among them, Decentraland and Sandbox are Metaverse that applies blockchain technology to their platform. Compared with other existing metaverses, they have their own strength like a technological advantage(economic fairness, openness, interoperability, permissionless).

In other words, Sandbox and Decentraland apply blockchain technology to Metaverse, so they must make good use of the strengths of Metaverse and the strength of Blockchain to succeed.

• Permission-less: There should be no need to trust a third party. In the metaverse, there should be no need to worry about the system being manipulated. In addition, data and personal information should not be accessible or available to anyone else.
• Openness: Anyone should be free to access and operate all services on Metaverse and should also be able to participate as a system developer.
• Economic fairness: Users should be able to receive economic rewards as much as they contribute to Metaverse.
• Interoperability: The metaverse has to offer unprecedented interoperability of data, digital items/assets, content, and so on across each of these experiences

Currently, blockchain-based metaverse has a low DAU. Before saying it, you should see why DAUs and Active users are important. The reason why indicators such as DAU and Active users are important to Metaverse is a platform where users require interaction with others. In the end, the metaverse is a place where people stay in the world and talk and interact with people, and the metaverse is circulated as users in the platform reproduce contents with each other. Therefore, no matter how much blockchain technology is applied, if the number of users is not based, it will only become a meaningless platform.

Sandbox VS Roblox

So, let's compare Sandbox and Roblox, which are representative cases. First, unlike Roblox, Sandbox has a P2E model that pays compensation to users. In other words, sandboxes have a Web 3.0 model that distributes rewards to users who contribute to creating network value, so they can satisfy various stakeholders such as users, investors, and landholders. In addition, it has its own modeling program called Voxel, creating an environment where anyone can become a creator on the land.

On the other hand, Roblox already has 10 million developers and 40 million of Game. One of the most popular Roblox games accrued 5.2 billion visits. The factor making it possible is users can communicate with the same ages. However, Roblox only consumes users who consume content, and there is no reward for participants other than developers. In other words, it is typically a Web 2.0 model in which the platform takes the value.

Barriers to Sandbox Metaverse and Decentralized Metaverse

However, the metaverse platform based on blockchain, Including Decentraland and Sandbox, also has barriers to entry. Decentraland and Sandbox mainly serve on the web, making PC-based access, and require their own Wallet to log in. In the first place, the only person with knowledge of cryptos can become a user. So, 

On the contrary, tech giants will support multi-device for the metaverse. The metaverse will be shaped by the technology we use to access it, which could be AR or VR. To enter the metaverse, So, they also try to monopolize the market by utilizing multi-device from the fully immersive head-mounted displays (HMDs) to phones and tablets on iOS or Android. They have already built their own value chain. In addition, even compared with Minecraft and Roblox which support PC and mobile devices, Sandbox and Decentraland are inferior to them.

Endnotes

In the end, the tech giants will monopolize the metaverse market as before. Unless each other’s metaverse is freely compatible (if they do, there must be problems) or blockchain-based metaverse like Sandbox creates a new turning point, the metaverse market will be a battlefield between tech giants which can make barriers lower and secure IPs with cash. On the contrary, because there are many barriers to entry into the crypto space including wallet and knowledge of cryptos, the blockchain-based metaverses are likely to be ignored.

To be a game-changer, they must make more active users by utilizing their own strengths. For this, they need to prove themselves by making an environment where users can easily communicate with each other and enable economic activities. And they need to create killer content such as Roblox's "Adopt me" so that many users can stay on their platform. so that they cannot be swayed by huge capital.