The Sandbox Knowledge Base (English)

Public LAND sales (Ethereum) (Depreciated)

Learn more about public LAND sales on Ethereum.

Ethereum public LAND sales were depreciated in November 2022.

From now on. Public LAND sales will take place on the Polygon network.

See Public LAND Sales (Polygon) for the updated information and guides.

About public LAND sales

What is the difference between presales and public sales?

Presales were sales which occurred before 2021. Presales also contained discounts ranging from 40% in the first presale to 10% in the final presale.

Public sales are those that occur from2021 onwards. Public LAND sales will not have any discounts applied to them.

When did the first public LAND sale occur?

The first public LAND sale was on the 11th February at 1pm UTC. You can read about our first public LAND sale in a medium article by clicking here.

Where do public LAND sales take place?

On the map of The Sandbox metaverse.

pageThe Metaverse Map

Sometimes there will also be ESTATEs sold on OpenSea in auctions during the LAND sales.

Where will specific public LAND sales occur on The Sandbox's map?

The map showing the area of the LAND that will be sold in public sales will be released along with the official announcement of those sales. You can also use the sale map to go there directly.

Will the remaining LAND be sold in one public sale or several?

Several public sales will occur across the next few years, with a limited amount of LAND available for sale in each one.

When are or were the public LAND sales?

These are announced in our official communities, as well as our official social medias - such as Discord, Twitter, Medium and so on. You can also see this page for the LAND sale dates:

pagePublic LAND sale dates

Will there be ESTATEs in the public sales?

Yes, there will be readily-assembled ESTATEs in the sales. These may be sold auction-style.

Remember, you can also merge single 1x1 LANDs into ESTATEs of any shape and size, as long as they are adjacent on the metaverse map.

Buying in public LAND sales

How do you buy LAND in public LAND sales?

🔗 For a written and video guide on purchasing LANDs on The Sandbox's metaverse map, click here.

🔗 For a guide on purchasing ESTATEs in OpenSea auctions during LAND sales, click here.

What do I need in order to buy LAND in public sales?

Will the public sales be entirely "first come first serve"? Or will there be auctions, lotteries, etc too?

There will be "first come first serve" LANDs and ESTATEs available on The Sandbox's map. Sometimes some ESTATEs will be sold in an auction via OpenSea.

Do LANDs become booked and, if so, how long for?

When you click the buy button, the LAND will be booked until either one of the following conditions are met:

  • The transaction is cancelled by you.

  • The transaction successfully completes.

  • The transaction fails (see the troubleshooting section below).

  • The transaction times out (after two hours).

What will the price of LANDs and ESTATEs be?

The prices of LANDs and ESTATEs in the public sales will be announced at the same time that the date of the sale is announced. You will usually find the price table in the official Medium article for the sale. See the Public LAND Sale Dates page for links.

Do I need to refresh the map in public LAND sales?

No, do not refresh the map. On the map ahead of sales will be a countdown timer. Once this timer reaches zero, the map will automatically refresh.

Manually refreshing will refresh and reload the entire webpage, not just the map. Which means it can take slightly longer for everything to reload for you, leading you to possibly miss out on the LAND plot you wanted.

How much ETH do I need for the gas transaction fee?

There is no way to accurately predict this in advance because gas fluctuates depending on congestion on the Ethereum blockchain as a whole. However, there are third-party resources to help you get a rough estimate. Two such resources are linked below.

What do the colours on the map mean?

  • Grey: LANDs or ESTATEs that are available for purchase.

  • Yellow: Premium LANDs that are available for purchase.

  • Purple: LANDs or ESTATEs that are booked by you or another person.

  • Red: LANDs or ESTATEs that are owned by you.

  • Green: LANDs or ESTATEs that are owned by someone else.

  • Blue: LANDs or ESTATEs that are reserved by The Sandbox for partners and Game Maker Fund recipients.

Premium LANDs

What are premium LANDs, how do they differ from regular LANDs, and why are they more expensive?

pageWhat are premium LANDs?

Will there be premium LAND with premium ASSETs in public sales?

Yes. As The Sandbox acquires and announces new partners, yes, more premium LANDs with premium ASSETs will be available around these partner ESTATEs.

Are there any premium ESTATEs?

No, premium LANDs are initially limited to 1x1 in size. See: How big are LANDs and ESTATEs?

Remember, you can also merge single 1x1 LANDs into ESTATEs of any shape and size, as long as they are adjacent on the metaverse map.

Troubleshooting

Why didn't my transaction go to through?

The most common cause of failed transactions on the blockchain is due to not putting in a sufficient amount of gas to process the transaction, especially during network congestion. There is nothing that The Sandbox can do to prevent a failed transaction on the blockchain, but we do sympathise with you. Everyone experiences failed transactions every now and again as it is part of the blockchain's nature.

If you are affected by a failed transaction then your $SAND will automatically be reimbursed (this may take a few minutes during heavy network congestion). But any ETH that was put towards gas fees will be unrecoverable. To prevent a failed transaction from occurring, always make sure you put in a good amount of gas.

What is the "Already Minted" error?

This means that the LAND you have tried to purchase is already taken.

Because the LAND sales are so popular and because there are a finite number of LANDs, it is possible for several people to click the buy button on same LANDs at the same time. When this happens, the person who put in the fastest/highest gas will acquire the LAND first.

We are working on developing a queue system to try and reduce the chances of this happening in future sales.

What is the "Out of Gas" error?

This means that your transaction failed due to you not putting in a sufficient amount of Ethereum for gas to process the transaction on the blockchain.

What is the "Wallet Locked" error?

This means that you need to unlock your wallet before you can make a transaction. If your wallet is locked, The Sandbox cannot access your funds to let you buy the LAND. You unlock your wallet by logging into it.

Forgotten what wallet you use or how to log into it? Click here.

The SAND balance on The Sandbox website's user interface says zero, but I definitely have SAND in my wallet.

  1. First of all, make sure your wallet is unlocked, so that The Sandbox can see your SAND funds and update the user interface on the website to reflect this. See the previous title above.

  2. Make sure you are using the correct wallet on your The Sandbox account. You can do this by comparing the wallet address in your The Sandbox profile to the wallet address within your actual wallet with the SAND tokens in them. Using the wrong wallet? Click here.

  3. If the wallet is correct, you can force your wallet to update its balance by switching to a test network and then switching back to the Ethereum network.

The Ethereum gas price is so high today!

We understand that gas prices can sometimes be rather silly and, at times, frustrating. We have heard all of your feedback and ideas and have taken them all on board. That's why we are going to implement a layer 2 solution through Polygon, who are one of The Sandbox's partners. This will lower the transaction fees and will also reduce The Sandbox's carbon footprint too. Read more about this by clicking here.

The map is laggy or loads slowly for me

Sorry to hear about that. The map is huge, with a total of 166,464 LANDs on it - some with custom thumbnail images too. Here are some suggestions to help:

  • Make sure you are using the Lite Mode feature on the map. Click here for information.

  • Close all unnecessary background programs before the sale starts, to allow more of your machine's system resources to be used on the map.

  • Make sure nobody in your household is using the WiFi or internet very heavily, such as downloading large files or streaming media content.

  • Check that your drivers, especially your GPU, is up to date.

  • Check your WiFi speed on third-party resources such as Ookla Speed Test or Which? Broadband Test. Use this data to make sure you are getting what it states you should be getting in your internet contract (note that your ISP has the right to throttle your internet speed if it deems that you are using it "unfairly and excessively", even if your plan is "unlimited". They do not need to notify you that you have been throttled, as it states this information in your contract).

My transaction went through, but I do not see any LAND in my inventory yet.

Please be patient. LAND sales at The Sandbox are very popular and the website gets a lot of traffic during them, this means that there may be some delays in updating the user interface for you. You can check your wallet contents on OpenSea or Etherscan in the meantime, while you are waiting for the inventory on your The Sandbox profile to update.

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