The Sandbox token price continues to soar after the metaverse game platform revealed discussions of a partnership with Saudi Arabia. 

SANDUSDT chart by TradingView

SAND was trading around $0.887, up 22.8% by 7 a.m. EST, according to TradingView data. The token began to climb following news of a memorandum of understanding, around 4 p.m. EST. 

Metaverse tokens experienced a mysterious January bull run. SAND hit a January high of $0.84, climbing from $0.38 at the start of the year. 

Selling pressure could eclipse this most recent rally, with 12% of SAND supply set to be unlocked on Feb. 14. Roughly 50% of the unlock is allocated to investors and advisors. The last unlock in August could be a useful gauge, wrote Kaiko Research Analyst Conor Ryder.

"In August, we saw these investors sell en masse as soon as they had the chance, creating huge sell pressure for SAND, which underperformed ETH by 20% that month. Again, we look at the SAND-USDT pair on Binance, which is the highest-volume market. As we can see, the day after the unlock, August 14th, nearly 75% of all significant trades were sell orders as investors looked to cash out of SAND."

The Sandbox x Saudi Arabia

The Sandbox co-founder and COO Sebastien Borget announced the news on LinkedIn.

"It was a true honor to sign our [memorandum of understanding] partnership … between The Sandbox and the Saudi Arabia Digital Government Authority (DGA)," he said. "We look forward to exploring, advising, and supporting mutually each other in activations of the Metaverse!"

The agreement was forged between Borget and Saudi Arabia's DGA at the Leap Tech Conference in Riyadh. Borget told The Block that he could not reveal any further details, but they would be forthcoming in the weeks ahead.