Time Magazine and The Sandbox to Rebuild NYC in Metaverse

Mainstream media outlets just can’t get enough of NFTs. First it was the Associated Press, then The New York Times. Now Time magazine, the 99-year-old publication that once set the agenda for the most powerful people in the world, is taking a bite from the, ahem, apple.

The publication has joined forced with The Sandbox, an Ethereum-based metaverse, to create a virtual space inspired by the biggest apple of them all, New York City.

Mass Adoption

“Time double-down on their metaverse play by partnering with The Sandbox is massive news for anyone in the space,” Kieran Warwick, co-founder of metaverse game Illuvium, told The Defiant. “The more mainstream brands we can get transitioning into web3, the quicker we can reach mass adoption.”

The collaboration was unveiled on June 21 as part of the NFT.NYC event. Time’s NFT initiative, TIMEPieces, will launch the space on a virtual land plot in The Sandbox. The project, inevitably, is dubbed TIME Square.

TIMEPieces has issued an open invitation for architects to submit designs for the space, which will serve as a location hosting virtual convening, art, and commerce.

The Sandbox is the third-largest metaverse project by market cap with $1.1B. In November, a virtual plot in The Sandbox set the record for the highest-valued digital land sale when metaverse developer Republic Realm paid $4.3M to purchase a digital parcel from Atari.

Virtual Access

Time President Keith Grossman said TIME Square will provide unique experiences to TIMEPieces NFT holders, providing virtual access to discussions, events, and screenings of TIME Studios projects.

The news is most welcome for an industry that’s reeling along with everything else in crypto. Most metaverse projects shed more than 90% of their value since tagging all-time highs in November 2021, according to CoinGecko.

Decentraland (MANA) last changed hands for about $0.82 and is down from a record high of $5.82, while Axie Infinity (AXS) is trading for $14.22 after peaking at $164.9, while The Sandbox (SAND) is $0.88 after grinding down from $8.40.

CoinGecko estimates the sector is worth $5.5B combined.