BlockTalks x The Sandbox AMA Transcript!
Hello! BlockTalkers & Blockchain Enthusiastic!
We recently hosted an AMA with The Sandbox, on September 12nd at 03.00 PM UTC. Many of you might have participated or many of not. But we make sure no one missed out from the knowledge shared by Sébastien Borget, COO, Co-Founder of The Sandbox. So here we are up with the AMA transcript, for those who missed the live session, this blog post will be a saver & feeder of knowledge for them.
INTRODUCTION
Sébastien Borget: Hello, I am Sébastien Borget, COO, co-founder of The Sandbox, which is a decentralized gaming platform (http://sandbox.game).
I am also the president of the Blockchain Game Alliance and an advocate for #NFTs & blockchain in games.
Introduction Questions Asked By BlockTalks
Q1. Could you please introduce The Sandbox to our community in layman’s term?
Ans — The Sandbox is a virtual world where players can build, own, and monetize their gaming experiences in the Ethereum blockchain using SAND, the platform’s utility token. In the coming year, our experienced and dedicated team will build an unique way to play in a virtual world where you can play, create, collect, earn, govern, and own anything in the game. Our $SAND tokens launched IEO on the Binance Launchpad.
Binance opened the trading for SAND/BNB, SAND/BTC, SAND/USDT and SAND/BUSD trading pairs on 2020/08/14 at 1:00 PM (UTC).
https://www.binance.com/en/trade/SAND_BTC
https://www.binance.com/en/trade/SAND_USDT
We are thrilled to see the demand for $SAND and also want to confirm our long term vision on buliding a gaming metaverse. We have great achievements, fantastic team, partners, ips and more. You’ll learn more about it today! And indeed the LAND presale ~
Q2. What are the advantages of The Sandbox to other alternatives in the Blockchain field?
Ans — Very good starting quesiton. Alright, let’s start with the basics :) At its core, The Sandbox is an ecosystem for Players and Creators, consisting of three main components: a Voxel Editor (named “VoxEdit”), a Marketplace, and the Game itself.
These 3 main components are:
- First VOXEDIT: it is a 3D modeling and animating package that allows users to create and animate 3D objects such as people, animals, foliage, and tools.
- Then the MARKETPLACE: it allows users to upload, publish, and sell their ASSETS made in VoxEdit, as Non-Fungible Tokens (Both ERC-721 and ERC-1155 tokens).
- And finally the GAME MAKER: it allows players to build 3D games for free. With the help of pre-assigned behaviors and visual settings, no coding knowledge is required.
We will be opening the public beta of the game in December 2020. Players will be able to pre-register, create their avatar and customize it. The first experience is for players to socialize, talk, walk and interact with each other.
We are preparing a MMO-RPG inspired gameplay, where players will need to complete quests across the map (kill enemies, collect items etc), either in lands made by players or in procedurally generated lands.
Players can collect tokens and resources and trade them with other players, creators, artists etc on the platform. This business model is called play-to-earn, as anything they collect in the game is truly owned by players, they can trade it to other players (inside the marketplace or outside on other websites), transfer it to other players or even resell it through our currency $SAND.
Here’s another video showing the 3 products in action, captured in-game
We think it is great to have many decentralized virtual worlds and even we share similarities, each one has its own specificities. The Sandbox is more focused on building a gaming virtual world, where players can socialize in lobbies or play adventure/mmo rpg like type of games, with quests, fights, killing enemies, collecting items and rewards etc.
We have been for 8 years already in the video game industry! The Sandbox project has been around since 2012 on mobile platforms and has gathered more than 40 million global installs on mobile.
Also, NFTs allow interoperability and users have the ability to use their NFTs across these multiple platforms. This is the beauty of the metaverse
If I may summarize The Sandbox, it would be
- Make NFTs with VoxEdit #Voxels
- Sell and Trade them on our #Marketplace
- Create fun games with our #GameMaker
- Play, Stake & Earn $SAND #Crypto
We think the the future for UGC games is 100% owned by players #NFTs
The community of players, creators, artists, land owners, $SAND holders are all stakeholders and they are directly being rewarded for their contribution to the growth of The Sandbox ecosystem. Their interests and our interests are aligned, and we are always thinking users-first. This is a very community-driven approach
Q3. What are the major milestones The Sandbox achieved so far & what are in the future pipeline?
Ans — Good question!
we have many achievements and more to be announced. Here’s below an overview. We have been for 8 years already in the video game industry!
The Sandbox project has been around since 2012 on mobile platforms and has gathered more than 40 million global installs on mobile. We’ve been working since July 2018 (2 years ago) on the new version of the game, 3D, multiplayer, multi-platform and using blockchain technology to offer a virtual world built on the Ethereum blockchain, where players can build, own, and monetize their gaming experiences. We’ve raised $4.5M USD from reputable investors on our Seed Round, including from Hashed (#1 cryptofund in Korea, True Global Ventures and Square Enix the video game company)
We’ve sold for more than $1,500,000 worth of #NFTs, our LANDS (ERC-721) over 4 presales, some of them finishing within minutes to a few hours with high demand. The last Presale 4 Round 1 introduced premium lands and assets and sold out 75% in 1 hour for reference on August 4th. We‘ve launched in October 2019 a $2,000,000 usd Game Makers Fund. This Fund will soon be in $SAND and managed by the Foundation, which supports the ecosystem of The Sandbox, offering grants to incentivize high quality content and game production on the platform. As of today the Foundation has funded over 15 game projects and granted 100 artists to produce NFTs.
We have a large community of over 750,000 members over Discord, Telegram, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. And 50 ambassadors actively engaged in supporting our community and promoting our vision — that is really exciting! VoxEdit, launched in December 2018 has been downloaded more than 100,000. Hundreds of artists use it to produce thousands of assets published on our marketplace.
And also 50 partnerships with award-winning game companies such as Atari, top decentralized games such as Crypto Kitties, major brands such as Shaun the Sheep to build a fun, creative “play-to-earn” Gaming platform, owned and made by players.
Questions Asked on Twitter For The Sandbox team!
Q1. How does Sandbox platform accommodate beginner game developers? Or does your platform only prefer to accommodate experts game developers?
Ans — We do believe millions of players are interested in exploring the benefits of decentralization, interoperability, and the creator’s ecosystem. The edge of The Sandbox over Blockchain based Metaverse is our focus on gaming and our “no-code” approach, as we think that no-code game development is primed for growth as it has become increasingly easy for anyone to become a Content Producer — thanks to Tik Tok and Instagram. This has set the new benchmark for how simple and accessible Game Creation should also be, tap or drag and drop and that’s it! Having to learn a scripting language to make games will always be a barrier for some Creators.
It is in The Sandbox franchise core design that you can make things “come to life” with just a tap of a finger for the past 7 years, no programming involved and we will perpetuate this vision with the new 3D version. So no programming knowledge required!
Q2. How could I become a developer and design my own game in your product LAND? What knowledge wpuld be required?
Ans — It will be very easy! Combined to the no code, you just drag and drop assets (NFTs) made with VoxEdit and the Marketplace. Then you can publish your game to your LAND to make it accessible to everyone in the metaverse.
Q3. Does the Sandbox team consider projects such as Enjin and Decentraland as their competitors? What is unique and special about the Sandbox gaming platform that we haven’t seen before?
Ans — Not at all!
We think it is great to have many decentralized virtual worlds and even we share similarities, each one has its own specificities. The Sandbox is more focused on building a gaming virtual world, where players can socialize in lobbies or play adventure/mmo rpg like type of games, with quests, fights, killing enemies, collecting items and rewards etc.
Also, NFTs allow interoperability and users have the ability to use their NFTs across these multiple platforms. This is the beauty of the metaverse
If I may summarize The Sandbox, it would be
- Make NFTs with VoxEdit #Voxels
- Sell and Trade them on our #Marketplace
- Create fun games with our #GameMaker
- Play, Stake & Earn $SAND #Crypto
Q4. As we know, $SAND has 4 stakeholders: Foundation Pool,Staking Pool, Company Treasury, Company Reserve.
Why is all this a must-have $SAND ? Is blockchain gaming with NFTs technology not enough to compete with other projects?
Ans — I see you have well studied our whitepaper 👍
$SAND will enable players to create, play, own, govern, trade and earn within The Sandbox virtual world gaming platform. It is the ERC-20 token that will be used all across The Sandbox metaverse. $SAND is an essential part of The Sandbox platform and we are working on establishing key mechanics that makes it intrinsically tied to the platform and its value.
Here’s a summary diagram of $SAND use-cases on our gaming virtual world.
It will serve for/as
1/ Medium of exchange: Players can potentially collect SAND through gameplay, and subsequently spend $SAND to play games, purchase equipment, or customize Avatar characters. Creators can spend SAND to acquire ASSETS and LAND. Artists can spend SAND to upload ASSETS to the Marketplace and buy GEMs for defining item rarity.
2/ Governance: $SAND allows holders to participate in governance decisions. SAND owners can vote themselves or delegate voting rights to other players of their choice.
3/ Staking: Users can stake $SAND tokens to earn rewards, as well as GEMs and CATALYSTs for ASSETS creation.
https://public.bnbstatic.com/static/research/static/images/projects/sandbox/revenue.png
The Sandbox platform utilizes a fee capture model, where 5% of all transacted value is being collected from marketplace transaction fees. The other 95% of all transacted value is collected from LAND sales, premium NFT sales, and subscription services. A total of 26.50% of all SAND transaction volume goes back into the Foundation. It is calculated as: 5% x 50% + 95% x 25% = 26.50%
Q5. If NFT tokens on the Sandbox platform are of great value, it is logical to assume that they will be on the radar of hackers and other scammers. What is the security mechanism for the Sandbox project to ensure that custom assets and NFT tokens remain secure?
Ans — Because NFTs are on the blockchain, trying to steal them means essentially trying to steal your private key. They are not stored in centralized manner and we are not custodians. Users and Creators truly own their NFTs. Made with The Sandbox platform.
Questions Asked by our BlockTalks Community Members during live Session for the Sébastien Borget, COO, Co-Founder of The Sandbox!
Q1 — How can we own land in Sandbox game? How can one build things if he is not part of Game maker fund?
Ans — The Creator Fund and Game Maker Funds are two initiatives to support creators building ahead of our launch.
everyone is invited to apply; please submit good ideas and projects. You can also just download and learn the game maker on your own; then apply afterwards.
there are many strategies ~ To own LAND; it’s easy; participate in our upcoming LAND presale ~
Q2. How will Sandbox bring mainstream attention to its technology? How does Sandbox strive to become a leader in mass adoption of blockchain platforms?
Ans — The Sandbox is a pioneer in the space of blockchain gaming, NFTs and true digital ownership — we have been really pushing forward the industry and awareness in general Let’s talk about Decentralization first :)
$SAND adoption will be fostered differently according to the different stages of the project with different techniques for early adopters and loyal players.
Our goal within the next 5 years is that $SANd will be owned 100% by players, and us as the platform we will continue developing services for the community, while owning 0%. Governance will progressively remove the Control from our Company towards the community based on token holding. We will move from a centralized model to a decentralized model progressively from Year 1 in various aspects. The Community of $SAND holders will be able to participate to Governance decisions of the platform, using a DAO structure, where they can exercise voting rights on key elements
$SAND owners will be allowed to vote themselves or delegate their voting rights to other players of their choice and it is an important point on governance. Then about main-stream adoption
We are creating an appealing gaming metaverse that aims at attracting all types of people: young & old players, casual & pro gamers, newbie creators & professional artists.
Making a game that is fun, visually appealing and has good mechanics so you want to stay and keep playing it for a long time is our priority
Players will not come for the technology, but for the fun and the experience. Then they can benefit from the advantages offered by our decentralized model, collecting tokens, earning rewards and being able to trade game items, their creations, lands etc. Through the brands and their fans, we can reach mainstream gamers and creators through their favorite brands.
Bring leading gaming Brands & IPs and leverage on those key brands building great experiences as well as trust.
Q3. I have a very simple Question, Why and How did you say that NFTs is the FUTURE?
Ans — We do believe that having players own their game assets and be able to create them; trade them and monetise them enables strong possibilities for gaming industry. NFTs is a $1 Trillion Dollars industry. This year alone; there has been over $100M worth of value transacted in NFts.
Q4. Will we be able to walk the map all over the earth or will this process be a pure teleportation system between games? Will Sandbox become an open digital world?
Ans — Great question for sure
Players will arrive directly within worlds through spawn points and portals. They will be able to move to adjacent LANDS and use transportation portals to allow fast-travel between distant LANDs. Portals will allow visitors to easily explore the game experiences in their LAND — similar to the benefit of having a subway station next to your place of business.
Q5. Hi Sebasitan, you sell most LANDs at 4th part of Round 2. Is there any specific reason for that?
Ans — We have sold 30% in total as of today in 4 rounds. The new rounds is adding about 6% of LAND supply in total. This is still reasonable and by our original plan.
Q6. How important is the community to Sandbox? and how can we collaborate or help share token for the development of the project?
Ans — 1000% important!
Buying $SAND tokens is THE best way to become an extended part of The Sandbox team 🧑🤝🧑🧑🤝🧑. #Blockchain games are inherently community-driven, by putting their native tokens and #NFTs into the players hands. Enter a virtual world where you can you build, own and monetize games, next to gaming giants Atari, Square Enix and more!
Claim your part of the Metaverse, join $SAND
Q7. Has Sandbox ever been associated with a foundation and what benefits did users get ? 😁
Ans — Yes! Our Foundation receives over 26.25% of all the SAND transaction volume. And is used to support the growth of our ecosystem through getting high quality content. We expect that the overall valuation of the metaverse will be growing through the valuation of all games funded by the Foundation, creating a virtuous circle that enables funding bigger games. As bigger and higher quality games are produced and published on the platform, more players will come and participate within the economy of The Sandbox Ecosystem.
but we invite you to continue the conversation on our Telegram at http://t.me/sandboxgame.
Here are some important links of The SandBox👇
Website: https://www.sandbox.game/
Telegram: http://t.me/sandboxgame
Telegram ANN: https://t.me/sandboxnews
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheSandboxGame
