The SAND project’s合作 roster can really scare people. Gucci, Adidas, Playboy, the British Museum, Jurassic World, Terminator, Bruce Lee, Atari, Paris Hilton… Pick any one of them and it’s an IP that could make headlines. The major-tier brands basically have all been signed by it. In 2022, its valuation was $4 billion, and it was also planning to raise another $400 million. Then what? The coin fell from $8.4 to more than $0.25 now—down by 99%. The project’s market cap is just over $100 million, shrinking by nearly 40 times from its original valuation.

The problem has never been the partners. It’s that people don’t come. Brands were signed, land was sold, and the game was developed—but daily active users simply won’t rise—this is the dead spot the project has been repeatedly talked about in recent years. You can do 100 IP collaborations, but if nobody truly plays inside, it won’t matter. Now the team is pushing two paths: one is an AI creation tool, so people can make games just by describing them with words; the other is a mobile version, rebuilt with Unreal Engine, aiming to crush the barrier to entry. The direction is right—since the metaverse story can’t be told anymore, they need a different way to pitch it.

Whether it will work is another question, but at least this time it’s aimed at “getting people to actually come in and play,” not signing yet another collaboration. #SAND $SAND