Sandbox to migrate to Ronin: Will two metaverse and GameFi veterans cross paths?
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Sandbox to migrate to Ronin: Will two metaverse and GameFi veterans cross paths?
Can the Hype Around RON Save the Slumping SAND?
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Loopy Lu, Odaily Planet Daily
Recently, the GameFi sector has seen a resurgence. As a former star project in the GameFi space, Ronin has also been making frequent moves over the past few months.
According to Coingecko data, RON token has reached a new yearly high, currently trading at $1.79 with approximately 18% gain in the last 24 hours.
Yesterday, rumors began circulating in the market about a potential collaboration between Ronin and The Sandbox. As a veteran metaverse project, The Sandbox appears to be planning a migration to the Ronin chain. Although this news hasn't been officially confirmed yet, speculation has already drawn significant attention to both projects.
SAND Appears on Ronin Chain, Sparking Speculation
Recently, an old on-chain transaction was suddenly unearthed by the community. On-chain records show that a mysterious address deployed the SAND token on the Ronin testnet and conducted multiple transfers.
Following the browser trail, we find that the wallet initiating these SAND transfers is ronin:eb6d18bc9d2c80308e6224de78062453364cec1d. This wallet, ending in "ec1d", received its RON tokens from a Ronin network address with the domain name Seb.ron.
It should be clearly stated that there is currently no definitive evidence proving that the Seb.ron address belongs to an official representative of The Sandbox.
Despite the unconfirmed identity of the Seb.ron address, many community members speculate it could belong to Sebastian Borget, co-founder and CEO of The Sandbox.
This action may indicate that The Sandbox is preparing for a migration to the Ronin chain.
With Frequent Positive Developments, Can SAND Token Be Revived?
Although this news remains unconfirmed, it has sparked widespread speculation within the community. If The Sandbox does migrate to Ronin, what impact would this have on both platforms?
Recently, The Sandbox has been highly active. In the early hours of today (Beijing time), The Sandbox updated its Game Maker version, releasing the latest 0.9 version. This update provides creators with more tools and creative space.
The new version introduces richer gameplay possibilities, including puzzle games, resource management, loot-based mechanics, and more. Additionally, features such as NFT gating have been introduced.
For players, the update includes various gameplay enhancements. New tools like collision correctors and render range limiters help creators optimize gaming experiences.
Beyond version updates, The Sandbox has secured numerous partnerships recently—achieving several collaborations within just the past month. Since November, newly announced partnerships include:
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Collaboration with Korea Creative Content Agency to host a pop-up metaverse exhibition themed around the TV series "Extraordinary Attorney Woo."
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Launch of a new virtual community called "Cinerama," featuring Hollywood brands such as "The Walking Dead," "Black Mirror," "Sons of Anarchy," and "Cheech and Chong."
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Luxury brand Gucci enters The Sandbox with the launch of the Gucci Cosmos Land experience.
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Aave ecosystem NFT game Aavegotchi announces collaboration with The Sandbox on a new game titled "Ripples of the Gotchiverse."
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French fashion brand Lacoste announces a strategic partnership with The Sandbox to create the "Lacoste World Tour."
At the beginning of November, The Sandbox also announced an upcoming ecosystem fund. In 2024, The Sandbox plans to launch a Game Maker Fund worth 100 million SAND tokens. Based on a DAO-driven selection system, it will reward not only content creation but also platform engagement.
But have these frequent developments translated into growth in The Sandbox's market value?
SAND Token Price Performance Over the Past Year — Source: CoinGecko
In the short term, the SAND token has surged recently and seems to have ended its year-long downtrend. However, one cannot ignore the broader context: the entire crypto market has improved significantly, leading to a general price rally. When using BTC as a reference, the downward trend of SAND still appears ongoing.
SAND/BTC Price Trend Over the Past Year — Source: CoinGecko
Currently, SAND’s price performance is underwhelming—some might even say mediocre. If The Sandbox indeed migrates to the Ronin chain as speculated, it could inject fresh momentum into the project.
Ronin's Rise to Prominence
While The Sandbox has struggled, Ronin has emerged strongly during the recent GameFi revival.
In mid-October, Ronin Network announced the Lucas (v2.6.2) upgrade and Shillin hard fork on the Ronin mainnet, advising users running validators or RPC nodes to upgrade to the Lucas version.
By the end of October, the Shillin hard fork was completed. This upgrade implemented Optimistic Fast Finality (REP-0003) and REP-0002 protocol improvements. REP-0003 introduced a new fast finality mechanism aimed at accelerating transaction confirmation speeds on Ronin. REP-0002 outlined the process of moving the Bridge to a standalone application on Ronin, allowing it to be operated independently by its own set of operators without requiring validator involvement.
This hard fork introduced a voting mechanism to accelerate block finalization. Block finalization time has decreased from 45 seconds to just 6 seconds.
Following this upgrade, both Ronin's ecosystem development and token price have shown impressive results.
Starting with non-gaming initiatives: in mid-November, Ronin Name Service (RNS) launched public sales. At the beginning of December, DeFi protocol Impossible Finance was introduced to the Ronin network, deploying a Launchpad. Projects listed on this Launchpad may require staking RON, AXS, and IDIA tokens for allocation.
Similarly, the integration of Ronin Wallet with Binance Pay was recently announced. The "Top Up from Binance" feature has now been added to the Ronin Wallet mobile app, enabling users to convert assets held on Binance into Ronin-chain assets—such as converting BTC or ETH into AXS, SLP, or USDC on Ronin.
Amidst these positive developments, the RON token has indeed performed well.
Data from Coingecko shows strong gains for RON, whether measured against USD or BTC.
Extending the timeline to the full year, RON has achieved a new yearly high. Its current price of $1.79 surpasses the previous high of $1.42 reached in April.
But how are these developments related to The Sandbox, and can they help revive its performance?
Polygon Exodus? Is Migration the Answer?
Beyond market sentiment and the broader GameFi rebound, on-chain metrics have also played a key role in driving RON's recent price increase.
Over recent months, migrating to the Ronin network has become a growing trend, with multiple games publicly announcing such plans.
At the start of November, Ronin developer Sky Mavis partnered with South Korean game studio ACT Games to bring all of ACT's games onto the Ronin Network.
Zoids Wild Arena TCG, previously deployed on Polygon and still in testing phase, has already migrated to Ronin. The team expressed confidence in Ronin’s gaming capabilities, stating, “Ronin Network is a blockchain built specifically for games.”
Not only existing games are migrating—new titles are also choosing Ronin for future deployment.
On December 6, Ronin announced a partnership with Singapore-based game developer Foonie Magus to bring their new game "Apeiron" to the Ronin blockchain. A demo version of Apeiron is already available on the Epic Game Store, with the mobile version expected to launch globally in Q1 2024.
Some earlier migrants have already shared their performance data.
At the end of October, Pixels—a P2E MMO metaverse game—migrated to Ronin Network. Previously, Pixels raised $2.4 million in a seed round led by Animoca Brands and PKO Investments and was originally deployed on Polygon. In mid-November, Jeff Zirlin, co-founder of Ronin and Axie Infinity, announced on X that Pixels had surpassed 100,000 daily active addresses.
An intriguing coincidence is that nearly all these migrating games were previously based on Polygon—and The Sandbox happens to be one of Polygon’s flagship metaverse projects.
Source: The Sandbox Documentation
To reiterate: the migration of The Sandbox remains purely speculative at this stage, driven by community discussion. However, the exodus of games from Polygon is undeniably happening repeatedly.
For The Sandbox, which originally launched on Ethereum before migrating to Polygon, could history repeat itself once again? Will the story of "Mencius' mother moving three times" unfold here too?
According to DeFiLlama data, Ronin chain’s TVL currently stands at $124 million, reaching a new yearly high.
It's difficult to determine whether increased game migrations are bringing more users to Ronin, or whether Ronin's thriving ecosystem is attracting more projects. Regardless of causality, the current trend is clear—Ronin took off early in this GameFi resurgence.
If the speculated migration does happen, can Ronin’s growing ecosystem breathe new life into The Sandbox, which has underperformed during this latest wave of enthusiasm?
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