‘Metaverse’ is a term that has recently become ubiquitous in crypto, doubtless due to the success of immersive virtual projects like Decentraland and Iluvium. The metaverse describes a vast ecosystem of often interconnected virtual environments, where players can interact with one another, explore parallel digital worlds, and buy and trade tokenized collectibles with real-world value. The metaverse concept is not native to crypto, incidentally – the term comes from Neal Stephenson’s sci-fi novel Snow Crash, published in 1992. Three decades and a raging pandemic later, the metaverse concept is gaining ground as a range of virtual experiences become available, many of them built on blockchain rails. Even social media giant Facebook is positioning itself to capture a share of the market, with Mark Zuckerberg claiming ‘we will effectively transition from people seeing us as primarily being a social media company, to being a metaverse company.’ Build Your Own Metaverse Into this fast-evolving milieu comes Planet Sandbox, a metaverse project developed by The Minders Studio and backed by over two dozen VC firms. Currently gearing up for an IDO on October 2, Planet Sandbox shares many of the hallmarks of existing metaverse games – the lurid vistas, varied terrain and coveted collectibles – but introduces new features, most notably the ability for players to build and customize their very own sandbox worlds. What does this mean, in rea...
