The Sandbox, once a leading metaverse platform, is reportedly making dramatic changes to survive in today's crypto market.The Sandbox, once a leading metaverse platform, is reportedly making dramatic changes to survive in today's crypto market.

The Sandbox Reportedly Cuts Half Its Staff, Pivots to Meme Coin Platform

2025/08/29 02:15
4 min read
The Sandbox Reportedly Cuts Half Its Staff, Pivots to Meme Coin Platform

According to reports from French media outlet The Big Whale, the company is cutting 50% of its workforce and shifting away from virtual worlds to focus on meme coin launches instead.

This major shift comes as metaverse projects struggle to keep users interested. The Sandbox’s native token SAND has dropped 97% from its peak of $8.40 in November 2021 to just $0.28 today.

Leadership Shakeup at The Sandbox

According to The Big Whale’s report, Arthur Madrid and Sébastien Borget, who founded The Sandbox, are stepping back from running the company day-to-day. Robby Yung, CEO of parent company Animoca Brands, is reportedly taking over as the new CEO.

The reported layoffs hit teams across multiple countries including Argentina, Uruguay, South Korea, Thailand, and Turkey. The company is also allegedly closing its Lyon office in France. The Big Whale reports that more than half of The Sandbox’s roughly 250 employees are affected by these cuts.

Borget will continue as an ambassador for the platform, saying he remains “the person who best represents The Sandbox globally.” Madrid will become non-executive chairman, shifting to a less hands-on role.

From Virtual Worlds to Meme Coins

According to the reports, The Sandbox is abandoning its metaverse focus to build a meme coin launchpad on Base blockchain. This platform would reportedly be similar to pump.fun, which has become hugely popular on Solana.

@gregory_raymond

Source: @gregory_raymond

The timing makes sense from a business perspective. Meme coins saw a 400% increase in trading volume during 2024, while metaverse platforms struggled with declining user engagement. Virtual land sales on major platforms like Decentraland dropped significantly, with only $170,000 worth of LAND sales in February compared to $7.7 million in January 2022.

Base blockchain offers advantages for meme coin launches including low fees and fast transactions. This makes it attractive for creators who want to launch tokens without high costs.

Why The Sandbox Made This Move

The metaverse boom that peaked in 2021-2022 has largely faded. Major companies have pulled back from virtual world investments, and user engagement on metaverse platforms has dropped sharply.

Despite some recent success with Season 4 attracting over 580,000 players in six weeks, The Sandbox recognized the need to adapt. The platform has over 6.3 million user accounts and more than 1,500 user-created games, but this wasn’t enough to sustain the business model.

The reported restructuring is described internally as a “strategic reset made possible by technology gains that allow the team to operate with a smaller headcount.” This suggests the company believes it can maintain operations with fewer employees while focusing on a more profitable market segment.

What This Means for Users and Investors

Current Sandbox users can still access the platform and their virtual assets. The company hasn’t announced any plans to shut down the metaverse features entirely. However, development resources will likely shift toward the new meme coin platform.

For SAND token holders, this pivot represents both risk and opportunity. While the token has lost most of its value, a successful entry into the thriving meme coin space could provide new utility and demand.

The choice of Base blockchain is strategic. Base has gained traction as a platform for meme coin launches, and Coinbase’s backing provides credibility and infrastructure that could help The Sandbox compete with established players like pump.fun.

Animoca Brands, which backs The Sandbox, has a strong track record in crypto investments. The company has made over 550 investments across various crypto projects, giving it experience in adapting to market changes.

The Road Ahead

The Sandbox joins other companies pivoting away from metaverse projects. Even Disney shut down its metaverse division in 2023, laying off 50 employees as part of broader cost-cutting measures.

This shift reflects the crypto industry’s quick adaptation to changing trends. While the metaverse narrative dominated 2021-2022, meme coins and practical Web3 applications have gained more traction recently.

The Sandbox’s brand recognition and existing community could provide advantages in this crowded market. However, the company must prove it can build a competitive platform while managing the transition from its original business model.

Market Opportunity
Memecoin Logo
Memecoin Price(MEME)
$0.0006166
$0.0006166$0.0006166
+0.16%
USD
Memecoin (MEME) Live Price Chart
Disclaimer: The articles reposted on this site are sourced from public platforms and are provided for informational purposes only. They do not necessarily reflect the views of MEXC. All rights remain with the original authors. If you believe any content infringes on third-party rights, please contact crypto.news@mexc.com for removal. MEXC makes no guarantees regarding the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of the content and is not responsible for any actions taken based on the information provided. The content does not constitute financial, legal, or other professional advice, nor should it be considered a recommendation or endorsement by MEXC.

You May Also Like

XRP Volume Rises 212%, Bitcoin ETFs Back in Demand With $506 Million, Dogecoin Price Reclaims $0.10 — U.Today Crypto Digest

XRP Volume Rises 212%, Bitcoin ETFs Back in Demand With $506 Million, Dogecoin Price Reclaims $0.10 — U.Today Crypto Digest

Crypto news digest: 212% increase was seen in XRP volume; BTC ETFs have recovered from the low capital; DOGE price jumps 8%.
Share
Coinstats2026/02/28 05:27
Facts Vs. Hype: Analyst Examines XRP Supply Shock Theory

Facts Vs. Hype: Analyst Examines XRP Supply Shock Theory

Prominent analyst Cheeky Crypto (203,000 followers on YouTube) set out to verify a fast-spreading claim that XRP’s circulating supply could “vanish overnight,” and his conclusion is more nuanced than the headline suggests: nothing in the ledger disappears, but the amount of XRP that is truly liquid could be far smaller than most dashboards imply—small enough, in his view, to set the stage for an abrupt liquidity squeeze if demand spikes. XRP Supply Shock? The video opens with the host acknowledging his own skepticism—“I woke up to a rumor that XRP supply could vanish overnight. Sounds crazy, right?”—before committing to test the thesis rather than dismiss it. He frames the exercise as an attempt to reconcile a long-standing critique (“XRP’s supply is too large for high prices”) with a rival view taking hold among prominent community voices: that much of the supply counted as “circulating” is effectively unavailable to trade. His first step is a straightforward data check. Pulling public figures, he finds CoinMarketCap showing roughly 59.6 billion XRP as circulating, while XRPScan reports about 64.7 billion. The divergence prompts what becomes the video’s key methodological point: different sources count “circulating” differently. Related Reading: Analyst Sounds Major XRP Warning: Last Chance To Get In As Accumulation Balloons As he explains it, the higher on-ledger number likely includes balances that aggregators exclude or treat as restricted, most notably Ripple’s programmatic escrow. He highlights that Ripple still “holds a chunk of XRP in escrow, about 35.3 billion XRP locked up across multiple wallets, with a nominal schedule of up to 1 billion released per month and unused portions commonly re-escrowed. Those coins exist and are accounted for on-ledger, but “they aren’t actually sitting on exchanges” and are not immediately available to buyers. In his words, “for all intents and purposes, that escrow stash is effectively off of the market.” From there, the analysis moves from headline “circulating supply” to the subtler concept of effective float. Beyond escrow, he argues that large strategic holders—banks, fintechs, or other whales—may sit on material balances without supplying order books. When you strip out escrow and these non-selling stashes, he says, “the effective circulating supply… is actually way smaller than the 59 or even 64 billion figure.” He cites community estimates in the “20 or 30 billion” range for what might be truly liquid at any given moment, while emphasizing that nobody has a precise number. That effective-float framing underpins the crux of his thesis: a potential supply shock if demand accelerates faster than fresh sell-side supply appears. “Price is a dance between supply and demand,” he says; if institutional or sovereign-scale users suddenly need XRP and “the market finds that there isn’t enough XRP readily available,” order books could thin out and prices could “shoot on up, sometimes violently.” His phrase “circulating supply could collapse overnight” is presented not as a claim that tokens are destroyed or removed from the ledger, but as a market-structure scenario in which available inventory to sell dries up quickly because holders won’t part with it. How Could The XRP Supply Shock Happen? On the demand side, he anchors the hypothetical to tokenization. He points to the “very early stages of something huge in finance”—on-chain tokenization of debt, stablecoins, CBDCs and even gold—and argues the XRP Ledger aims to be “the settlement layer” for those assets.He references Ripple CTO David Schwartz’s earlier comments about an XRPL pivot toward tokenized assets and notes that an institutional research shop (Bitwise) has framed XRP as a way to play the tokenization theme. In his construction, if “trillions of dollars in value” begin settling across XRPL rails, working inventories of XRP for bridging, liquidity and settlement could rise sharply, tightening effective float. Related Reading: XRP Bearish Signal: Whales Offload $486 Million In Asset To illustrate, he offers two analogies. First, the “concert tickets” model: you think there are 100,000 tickets (100B supply), but 50,000 are held by the promoter (escrow) and 30,000 by corporate buyers (whales), leaving only 20,000 for the public; if a million people want in, prices explode. Second, a comparison to Bitcoin’s halving: while XRP has no programmatic halving, he proposes that a sudden adoption wave could function like a de facto halving of available supply—“XRP’s version of a halving could actually be the adoption event.” He also updates the narrative context that long dogged XRP. Once derided for “too much supply,” he argues the script has “totally flipped.” He cites the current cycle’s optics—“XRP is sitting above $3 with a market cap north of around $180 billion”—as evidence that raw supply counts did not cap price as tightly as critics claimed, and as a backdrop for why a scarcity narrative is gaining traction. Still, he declines to publish targets or timelines, repeatedly stressing uncertainty and risk. “I’m not a financial adviser… cryptocurrencies are highly volatile,” he reminds viewers, adding that tokenization could take off “on some other platform,” unfold more slowly than enthusiasts expect, or fail to get to “sudden shock” scale. The verdict he offers is deliberately bound. The theory that “XRP supply could vanish overnight” is imprecise on its face; the ledger will not erase coins. But after examining dashboard methodologies, escrow mechanics and the behavior of large holders, he concludes that the effective float could be meaningfully smaller than headline supply figures, and that a fast-developing tokenization use case could, under the right conditions, stress that float. “Overnight is a dramatic way to put it,” he concedes. “The change could actually be very sudden when it comes.” At press time, XRP traded at $3.0198. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
Share
NewsBTC2025/09/18 11:00
Pi Network Fast-Track KYC Lets New Users Unlock Mainnet Wallets Early

Pi Network Fast-Track KYC Lets New Users Unlock Mainnet Wallets Early

TLDR: Pi Network introduces AI-powered Fast Track KYC to speed wallet activation for new users and non-users Users can activate Mainnet wallets before 30 mining sessions but cannot migrate mined balances yet Fast Track KYC maintains strict verification standards and may be more conservative than standard KYC Pi Network reports over 14.82M users fully KYC-verified [...] The post Pi Network Fast-Track KYC Lets New Users Unlock Mainnet Wallets Early appeared first on Blockonomi.
Share
Blockonomi2025/09/19 15:48