Animoca Brands and its subsidiary, Bacasable Global Limited, the operator of the Sandbox metaverse platform, have secured $20 million through convertible promissory notes, valuing the company at $1 billion.

The recent funding round, spearheaded by Kingsway Capital, also saw participation from LG Tech Ventures and True Global Ventures. Holders of the promissory notes have the option to convert them into equity of Bacasable Global Limited on the same terms as existing preference shares.

This financing event, marking a valuation of $1 billion, follows a previous attempt by Sandbox to raise $400 million at a $4 billion valuation around two years ago.

Sandbox's official statement revealed that the funds from this round will be utilized to expand the creator economy and support the upcoming decentralized mobile metaverse platform scheduled for a 2025 launch.

Key plans include the addition of new social features, enhancements to avatar skills, and upgrades to the Game Maker and VoxEdit 3D editing tools on the platform.

To enrich gameplay options, Sandbox is developing a new multiplayer rules system, expected to enter beta testing later this year and be fully released in 2025.

Since the Alpha version of The Sandbox went live in November 2023, the platform has seen more than 1,000 user-generated experiences created and has attracted 5.7 million user accounts connected to cryptocurrency wallets.

Animoca Brands co-founder Yat Siu highlighted that mainstream games like Minecraft and Roblox lack digital property rights for users, contrasting them with The Sandbox that empowers users with digital ownership in the era of user-generated content games.

According to McKinsey, the metaverse economy is anticipated to reach $5 trillion by 2030. Despite early enthusiasm surrounding the metaverse, including Facebook's rebranding efforts, user adoption has been slow post-cryptocurrency bull run. A recent survey indicated Meta's metaverse project had only 38 daily users in 2022, underscoring the challenges faced by major projects in the space.

While some metaverse initiatives struggle to gain momentum after the bearish market phase of 2022-23, Sandbox has seen positive growth, with over 330,000 unique creators adopting The Sandbox's no-code Game Maker in the past year.