The metaverse is a new idea and so far, there are a lot of products on the table with the sole purpose to shape and form this virtual world. Of course, this means that the metaverse is not this one special place where all the action happens but a collection of virtual places and games. Some of them are connected and others are not.

Why are there rumors that Meta could possibly acquire the Sandbox and is true?

Meta is not the metaverse

Meta is preparing to become the center of the metaverse and presents itself in such style. But as we already discussed the metaverse is not necessarily a homogenous space. Another factor is blockchain technology. There are literally dozens of big projects based on top of Ethereum and Solana that want to become the next big thing in crypto and play a central role in the development of the metaverse.

Tokenization of digital goods is a success model. eBay has just started delving into NFTs and most metaverse projects that make use of blockchain technology chose to tokenize in-game items through non-fungible tokens. That could be one reason why Meta might be indeed considering blockchain technology for its own products.

As eBay has clearly shown, it is easier for a company of this size to acquire a smaller but specialized entity and integrate products and services into its own structures. eBays’ acquisition of KnownOrigin might be the reason why the rumors were seeming more plausible than ever before. Who would have thought that PayPal and eBay would opt for crypto and NFTs five years ago, right?

A $4 billion offer

Social media went wild last weekend and so did the price of SAND despite the raging bear market crypto is going through since the beginning of this year. The rumor spread that Meta is about to offer $4 billion for the Sandbox.

Sandbox co-founder and COO Sebastian Borgets denied that such an offer exists publicly and also denied that an acquisition is possible at all. It seems that didn’t faze the enthusiasm of many investors who still kept buying SAND, driving the price up further last Sunday. It remains to be seen if the rumors prove to be true despite the statement of Borgets.

Other metaverse tokens saw a price hike as well. The reason why the rumors took off was the Metaverse Standards Forum that was held last week. Participants were Microsoft, Meta and Alibaba among others. The goal of this forum is to discuss what the metaverse is going to look like and to define goals in terms of its design. It seems that the companies participating aren’t that sure where they would like to take the metaverse. This makes this space even more exciting since consumers are left with the choice between a corporate space and a space that driven by open-source and blockchain technology. Another option would be that big corporations adopt blockchain technology, possibly making their products interoperable.