How did you build The Sandbox?
The Sandbox is the 4th company we have founded. We first started a peer-to-peer technology company, which was one of the very first applications of decentralization in 2007. That company got sold a couple of years later, and we started a network user-generated content website. That website enabled users to plot their photos, music, and video in the cloud. This was for anyone to stream their content, but we sold that company as well. In 2011, we started a mobile games company that was one of the first free-to-play mobile game platforms. It focused on Liquidity Providers, LPs, and eventually would turn players into game creators. That was the time we wondered how to enable anyone with no skills in programming and game creation to become a game creator. That gave birth to our biggest success, The Sandbox, built on the Ethereum blockchain, and we started building on it in 2017.
Growth of LANDs and Owners
Initially, the total value of the Sandbox map was 166,424 lands that in total were worth $5 million$5 million dollars one year ago. After the release of different tools to build content on the LAND, increased LPs, and the community becoming more and more involved, there are 3,500 landowners today. The value of the Sandbox lands is $25 million$25 million dollars today, so it is 5 times more than last year. We are not taking that value and the opportunity from the users though we still sell land at the $5 million price point. However, users sell and trade land at the current $25 million value. Thus, if players become creators and build content on The Sandbox, they can grow the value of their land and potentially earn real revenue from it. This is why we are introducing the play-to-earn model.
We are hearing more success stories from hundreds of artists working with us and who are supported by our foundation. Many are making a living being paid in the SAND token, the currency of the platform, for producing content. Some of them are making even more by creating content, buying land, and selling it to others. People from around the world who had lost their jobs due to COVID-19 are creators on The Sandbox today. Most of them didn’t have any skills in creating games. They had never programmed games, and many were accountants or had worked in other fields prior to The Sandbox. After losing their jobs and finding an interest in us, they started building games with the free program software. Today, they are generating real income for themselves. This does take time, and skills, and motivation, but once you get the hang of it and you are passionate about creating game content, you will enjoy it.
Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or ETH are fungible tokens. This means that all BTCs are the same, and so there is no difference between the 2 BTC. They have the same value, and they are not unique to other BTCs. Fungible coins like BTC are divisible, and you can have up to 18 decimals. However, an NFT is actually unique, and CryptoKitties is a great example. On CryptoKitties, you can have a gold sword or a silver sword, and those assets have different characteristics. Unlike BTC, it is not divisible in the sense that each token represents a game asset with a unique function or feature. NFTs are created on a blockchain, and once created they cannot be erased or altered. Furthermore, only one person can be the owner of an NFT at a time
The SAND Token
The SAND token is a fungible cryptocurrency like BTC and Ether, and the utility of the SAND token is being a medium of exchange. People use SAND to buy LAND or send the token to play other games besides the ones on The Sandbox as it is a widely accepted token. Players can earn SAND by playing or creating games and assets. SAND is also a governance token and enables users to participate in the governance of the platform via DAO, Decentralized Autonomous Organization. Via DAO, users can exercise voting rights on the key decisions of the ecosystem. For example, users can vote on how to handle issues, matters, functionality, projects, fees, and granting of projects for the platform. They can determine the future of The Sandbox platform in a way that the community wants more than the developers. Our vision for the next 5 years is for The Sandbox to become 100% decentralized, and all the SAND tokens will be in the hands of the players, not the company.
SAND provides staking which is enabling people who are not creators or players, to get financially interested by locking their SAND. In return, they can receive rewards and resources after staking for a certain time. We have launched the first version of “The Sandbox Liquidity Mining Staking Reward”. There is over $2 million$2 million dollars’ worth of SAND on Uniswap at the moment that is being locked from staking. Also, we distribute 1.5 million SAND to all the liquidity providers and users who continue to put SAND into Uniswap each month. This is just the beginning as we are planning on expanding even more in 2021. We want to spread to new fields in terms of governance, staking, and the virtual gaming world to create a multiplayer experience.
The Sandbox is all about Gaming
Gaming is a world where you have characters, and avatars, enemies, fights, platforms, shooting, racing, etc. You can win and lose as you go on many quests and have a lot of interactions with other players. There are other virtual Art galleries and virtual events, but The Sandbox is a virtual gaming world with open doors to many more gaming platforms in the future. People sometimes put pressure on themselves thinking, “If I play to earn, I need to earn one or two thousand dollars”. However, we have created a platform for players to come onboard without having to lose anything. Conversely, they can make some profit while benefiting from the experience of the game. Play-to-earn starts by letting people earn more than what they spend to get on. As a contributor, the time and any investment in SAND, LAND, and NFTs can produce a return investment for you in the long term. This feature is very compelling to many, and one of the things that make us unique.
Get to Know Crypto Through The Sandbox
This platform has created a space that has allowed many people to come onboard onto the crypto space, as well as get crypto people to become familiar with NFTs. Partners like BINANCE and Houbi have allowed liquidity to flow into The Sandbox, increasing usage and understanding for NFTs. I believe we have contributed to the overall NFT market. Today, one million dollars’ worth of NFT tokens are traded daily. The Sandbox is usually amongst the top 10 projects that contribute to this trading volume.
New users are usually people who were not exposed to the crypto world until they encountered The Sandbox due to their gaming interests. They are learning about blockchain technology and what cryptocurrencies are all about here. What attracts them is the accessibility, fun and it offers unique and engaging games. The Sandbox has a very attractive community with over 40,000 users. Many users learn about NFTs and SAND progressively and they want to be involved and hold SAND because they believe in the long-term vision of the platform. The Sandbox team’s role is to empower creators and foster creativity in the community. We do not build their games, but we assist, provide support, help, and lead them in the right direction.
Evolution of Games
People have been connecting through games for decades. Many players would try to farm content and sell rare items for real money, but they were limited by what the developers allowed them to do. It was more of a white and black market and not creating a real legitimate opportunity. However, we are taking the opposite approach; we are embracing the idea of opening the doors to the virtual world and encouraging the players to create and trade the content. We hope that we will unlock more value for players and creators, and the gaming industry in general by increasing conversion as the 4th industrial revolution is progressing.
The 4th Industrial Revolution is the concept of humans spending more and more time in the virtual and digital world. This includes working remotely, creating content online, playing and learning online, at the same time becoming less and less visible in the physical world. An economic-system for transacting assets and the value of digital assets is necessary to build for the 4th Industrial Revolution. The economy of the virtual world is going to outgrow the economy of the physical world soon. Thus, there will be more value and revenue made in the virtual world than in the real world in the next decade, and we are already seeing this shift happening. For example, people are acquiring a piece of digital art for hundreds of thousands of dollars. There was one incident where a virtual car for a Formula Racing Game on the blockchain sold for over $150,000. That is more expensive than an actual car, nevertheless, it is unique and it enables the owner to earn revenue by playing the game with it. That is what the owner saw as its return investment potential in it.
We have seen games like Infinity creators breed, raise, and fight in games where some of the most creators are worth 50-100 thousand dollars each. Now that there is scarcity, ownership, and real utility for such assets, it is proven that they can generate income and be a source of revenue. They can hold and store value as well, so they can be used for collateral in loans. This potential marketplace was discovered, and as a result, nftfi.com was born from it. Such functional innovation of this new technology enables the construction of a new economic layer for opportunities that contributes to this revolution.
We see The Sandbox as having the potential to be an integral part of the 4th Industrial Revolution, empowering gamers to become creators who are able to profit from their passion. We encourage anyone interested to come to www.sandbox.game to explore the possibilities for themselves.
Interviewer , Editor : Lina Kamada
【Disclaimer】
The Article published on this our Homepage are only for the purpose of providing information. This is not intended as a solicitation for cryptocurrency trading. Also, this article is the author’s personal opinions, and this does not represent opinion for the Company BTCBOX co.,Ltd.