Metaverse company The Sandbox has reportedly reduced 50 percent of its workforce as part of an internal restructuring. Around 250 employees have been impacted in this lay off and more could follow in the coming weeks, The Big Whale reported on August 28 citing unnamed sources.
The Paris-based platform was launched in 2011 as part of a mobile gaming company called Pixowl. In 2018, however, Animoca Brands acquired Pixowl for around $4.87 million and became a backer of The Sandbox.
Owing to the slowdown in the NFT and metaverse sectors in the recent years is among key factors that led to this decision to restructure internally and use its resources better.
As reported, Animoca Brands and The Sandbox have invested close to $300 million over the last eight years only to sustain a platform that largely attracts bots in the present day among only a few hundred daily uses.
Sébastien Borget and Arthur Madrid, the original co-founders of The Sandbox have also reportedly been distanced from the platform as part of this restructuring. Although, a confirmation from them on the development remains awaited for now. Both Borget and Madrid have been active throughout August in posting snippets from The Sandbox ecosystem to keep the community updated.
In the coming weeks, the metaverse platform could pull down the shutters to its offices in Argentina, Uruguay, South Korea, Thailand, and Turkey.
For now, the head of Animoca Brands, Robby Yung is reportedly taking charge of the platform.
The reports also highlighted that the native token of The Sandbox ecosystem called SAND has lost 95 percent of its price to sink to its current rate of $0.2822. The token’s total market cap, that presently stands at $726.3 million, had hit a whopping $8 billion between 2022 and 2023.
The Big Whale report has also claimed that the platform is looking to launch a memecoin launchpad backed on Coinbase’s Base blockchain in the near future. More details on the development remain awaited.