A plot of virtual land that went for $4.3 million in The Sandbox is the most expensive metaverse property sale ever (2024)

• Republic Realm bought land in The Sandbox metaverse for a record $4.3 million, the Wall Street Journal reported.
• The virtual land developer purchased the metaverse property from video game company Atari.
• The deal highlights growing interest in real estate set in the metaverse, which holds the potential to generate $1 trillion a year in revenue.

Prices for virtual land set a new milestone Tuesday with one company buying property in The Sandbox metaverse for a record $4.3 million, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Republic Realm, which invests in and develops virtual real estate and other digital assets, purchased the land from Atari SA, marking the biggest metaverse property sale publicized to date, the WSJ reported citing Republic Realm and data from NonFungible.com.

The new record broke the one set just last week by Metaverse Group, a subsidiary of Tokens.com, when it purchased a patch of digital land for 618,000 mana, or about $2.43 million at the time. That land is set in the so-called fashion district of Decentraland, an online, virtual-only environment.

The deals underscore the increasing appetite for stakes in the metaverse, or the online space of interconnected 3D worlds in which people in avatar form can socialize, work, shop, and play games. Crypto asset management firm Grayscale has said the metaverse holds a $1 trillion-a-year revenue opportunity.

Republic Realm owns about 2,500 plots of digital land across 19 worlds, according to WSJ. The company sometimes decides to sit on vacant metaverse property and wait for it to appreciate. Other times it will pay an architect to design virtual homes or malls and then hire a game developer to build them, the report said, citing Republic Realm's co-founder Janine Yorio.

The company and Atari plan to team up on developing some of the properties Republic Realm purchased on The Sandbox, the report said.