DISCLAIMER: THIS IS NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE. ALL CONTENT IN THIS ARTICLE IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. IT IS NOT A RECOMMENDATION TO PURCHASE TOKENS OR ANY OTHER ASSETS. ANY INVESTMENTS MADE IN THE PROJECTS OR ASSETS MENTIONED BELOW ARE DONE SO AT YOUR OWN RISK.
GameFi is the latest form of decentralized applications running on blockchain technology, borrowing aspects from DeFi and NFTs; it is the marriage of gaming and blockchain-powered financialization.
The Metaverse, as we speak, uses blockchain technology to run a virtual world, one to which we will connect using a series of devices that will make us think that we are really inside it, interacting with all its elements. It will be like actually teleporting to a whole new world through virtual reality glasses and other accessories that will allow us to interact within it.
The term “Metaverse” comes from a 1992 novel called “Snow Crash” and is a term that has been settled to describe visions of three-dimensional or virtual workspaces. This Metaverse, therefore, means a virtual world in which we can interact and which has been created to resemble an external reality.
The Sandbox is a Polygon-based multiplayer game where players can create just about anything their minds can conjure. The Sandbox is similar to games like Minecraft or Roblox, but decentralized. Having the game interact with a blockchain changes the nature of the gameplay itself. The decentralization that The Sandbox offers gives economic power to players. The Sandbox it’s a virtual world, a Metaverse!
The Sandbox is a sandbox game built on a layer 2 blockchain, and it is similar to Minecraft. Sandbox games in general, enable players to explore and create freely within a game, use the tools provided in the game to build their own things, and enjoy the game by reaching certain achievements. The game itself does not have the main storyline because it’s an open world.
The difference is that in a normal game, we can get or buy the corresponding equipment and items, but these game items do not belong to us personally, but to the game manufacturer.
In the world of The Sandbox, all of this will be different, as the characters, items, and equipment in the game can be "NFTed" through blockchain technology, and everything created by the player will become their personal "digital assets.” Naturally, since The Sandbox is a game backed by blockchain technology, it has a $SAND token, its own native token for the in-game economy.
The Sandbox was originally on the Ethereum network, however they’ve recently announced that they would be switching to the Layer 2, Polygon. The reasoning behind the move is that the layer 2 is more energy efficient. Plygon has Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism, whereas Ethereum, at least until The Merge, consists of a more energy-hungry Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism.
To get started, the first thing that you should do is to go to the official website. Once there, the next step is to register on the platform. To do this, you must click on "Sign In", and there you will see different options to register. You are given the option to sign up via email, some social media channels, and a cryptocurrency wallet. For the purposes of the walkthrough, we’ll select the cryptocurrency wallet MetaMask from the prompt. Simply select "Connect your wallet - MetaMask" and the connection process will begin, for which you must accept the connection in this browser wallet.
After finishing registration with MetaMask, the last step is to choose a username and indicate an email address to complete the profile. You will have to register and confirm your email address. The system will ask you to enter a password at the end of this process.
Once those steps have been completed, you will have access to the online portal. Here, you will be able to do a myriad of things, such as control your profile settings, customize your avatar, access the NFT marketplace, access the map, buy land, and stake $SAND.
At the time of this writing, The Sandbox is not playable outside Alpha testing events. However, you can still create your account and play around with both the game design software, Game Maker, and The Sandbox’s ASSET creation tool, VoxEdit.
Minimum system Windows system requirements for Game Maker & VoxEdit:
Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
OS: Windows 7
Processor: Dual Core 2GHz
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: 512 MB VRAM
DirectX: Verison 11
Storage: 2GB Storage Space
As of the Alpha 2 season, you do not need to have $SAND in your cryptocurrency wallet to begin playing the game. Moving forward, once The Sandbox is fully released, you will be able to download the client from the portal just like Game Maker and VoxEdit.
Once you download the client to your device, you can begin moving around and exploring the world. You will be able to walk around the initial spawn hub, where there are NFT galleries that directly link you to their OpenSea listings. While you will be able to purchase items from the marketplace, they’ll be in-game stores in which you can also make some transactions.
At some point in your time playing The Sandbox, you’re going to need some $SAND. $SAND is an ERC-20 utility token on the Ethereum blockchain. It is this token that drives the underlying economy of the game. Though there are a few use cases for $SAND, gamers would most likely be using it quite simply as in-game currency. As stated in an earlier task, we mentioned there is no need to buy an access token to play The Sandbox. Once in the game, like many other games, players at some point will need to buy equipment and purchase a customizable Avatar.
As mentioned before, $SAND is the main token driving the economy of The Sandbox ecosystem and is the main medium of exchange within the game. With $SAND, players will be able to purchase ASSETs, Avatar customizations, GEMS, and CATALYSTs. Don’t worry we’ll touch upon these other tokes in the following task.
With a total supply of 3,000,000,000 $SAND, holders of $SAND tokens will also be able to participate in governance, allowing them to vote for things like Foundation grants and grants for creators utilizing a typical DAO structure. Besides governance, owners of LAND can stake $SAND in the land to earn rewards. Amongst them are GEMs and CATALYSTs, secondary ERC-20 tokens are needed for asset crafting and to define tier and scarcity. Creators within The Sandbox will need to pay a small fee in $SAND to list their creations in the marketplace.
Players with more financial savvy will be pleased to know that $SAND can be staked directly in The Sandbox dashboard. Additionally, at the time of writing, there is one liquidity pool available for $SAND, on the Polygon mainnet, pairing $mSAND with $MATIC. The LP token for this liquidity pair can also be staked in the Sandbox dashboard. Before the Polygon pool, the game did have a Uniswap V2 pool paired with $ETH, though it is currently discontinued. Staking is a key element for the long-term viability of the game, by “locking up” tokens, stakers can help increase the value of a token by limiting the supply, all while earning rewards.
It’s worth mentioning that to currently stake $SAND, perspective stakers will need to bridge their sand to $mSAND, a process that can be done from The Sandbox online portal. Once that’s done, stakers will be able to pair their $MATIC and $mSAND for staking.
Paying close attention to figure 2, perspective players can see exactly how $SAND tokens circulate. Revenue from LAND sales, NFTs, transaction fees, and other fees get split into the company’s reserve and treasury, which will go back to market as needed. The other half goes into the Foundation and Staking pools. The foundation allows the game to offer grants to incentivize artists and designers to produce high-quality content for the game. Tokens from the foundation and staking go into staking rewards, rewards from Play-2-Earn opportunities within The Sandbox platform.
With tokenomics out of the way, it's time to actually acquire some $SAND. Currently, as of April 2022, $SAND can be acquired in the following ways:
Buying $SAND on available exchanges:
Binance
Huobi
WazirX
UPbit
Poloniex
Swapping ETH for $SAND on Uniswap
Buying $SAND through SIMPLEX
Airdrops from The Sandbox Ambassador programme
Community Airdrops
Rewards program
We’ve talked about $SAND and how it is the driving force of The Sandbox economy. There are, however, a couple of other tokens and mechanisms that merit further discussion inside The Sandbox, namely LANDs, GEMS, and CATALYSTs. Below we will explore how LANDs help players interact with the game and the economy, providing a fuller and richer Sandbox experience.
One of the basic tokens within The Sandbox is the LAND token, an ERC-721 token that serves to delimit the ownership of an area of land within the game. When players obtain a LAND token, they are acquiring an in-game land lot, which is digitally represented on the Ethereum blockchain. LAND lots are a very scarce commodity in The Sandbox. The total number of LAND lots in The Sandbox is 166,464, which never increases or decreases, making it a precious commodity. 123,840 of them can be sold, 25,920 of them are distributed to partners, creators, and players as rewards, and 16,704 of them are used as venues for events and games.
A LAND token comprises a total of 96×96 meters in-game. They are combinable since a player can join several adjacent 1x1 LAND plots to make an ESTATE. Though LANDSs are combinable, ESTATES also can be bought pre-assembled. Typical sizes range from small (3x3) to X-Large (24x24).
There are many types of LAND in The Sandbox metaverse, some are even divided into different ecosystems, such as forest land seen below.
Possession of LAND tokens in The Sandbox allows players to access games within the metaverse and create unique spaces that other players can use. For example, if you familiarise yourself with Game Maker and you own a LAND, you can create anything inside it. If other users want to access your creation, they can do so for a small access fee. The last option clearly shows the potential of monetizing LANDs, because it will allow their owners to create spaces that can be rented to other users, or to simply sell their tokens when prices rise.
If you’re a LAND owner, you can monetize your ownership by renting out your LAND to creators so they can create games using Game Maker or Assets using VoxEdit. Inversely, if you are a creator, whether it be games or ASSETs, you can rent somebody’s LAND to build on. Any ASSET you build will be 100% yours. Though the games built on any LAND are the property of the creators, LAND owners can charge $SAND to let users visit their land and play said games.
Not all LAND tokens are equal, some LAND plots will be worth more than others. Much like in real estate in real life, price depends on location. There are Premium plots of LAND. These lots have the benefit of surrounding major social hubs, which means more traffic and more opportunities for monetization.
Owning LAND also has the added benefit of governance. LAND owners will be able to vote on important topics such as fund allocation and the overall development of the platform. A $SAND/LAND staking pair will also soon be available, giving LAND owners yet another means of monetization.
The land buying process is simple. To do so, first, you will need to make sure that you have the necessary amount of funds in $SAND to make the transaction. Second, head to The Sandbox’s online portal. Like real-life real estate, the amount of funds you will need is based on location. Of course, this is not the only way to do this. If you feel more comfortable, you can buy LANDs from OpenSea as that is where you will find LAND from resellers. There is even an option in The Sandbox Metaverse Map that allows you to filter which LANDs are listed on OpenSea. As long as you purchase from the same wallet you use The Sandbox with, the LAND will be registered to your account.
If you decide you want to sell your LAND for profit, you can easily list it on The Sandbox Marketplace, however, when selling through the marketplace, there will be a small fee that goes directly to the Foundation fund for creators, helping the overall ecosystem and the long term viability of the platform. You can always sell on OpenSea, but there are gas fees and third-party fees to consider.
$SAND is not the only ERC-20 token within The Sandbox, in fact, there are two more. GEMs are actually rewards for staking either $SAND on LAND. Stakers can then go and sell these GEMs to other players in the marketplace.
There are five different types of GEMs, each with its own attribute such as power, defense, magic, etc. The types and number of attributes define an ASSET's stats. Just like in any game, the higher the stats of an item, the more valuable and useful it will be in the game.
CATALYSTs are the other ERC-20 token. Methods for getting these tokens are still under development. These tokens will increase the available spots on an ASSET so more GEMs can be used, thereby defining an ASSET’s tier from Common to Legendary tiers - depending on the number of GEMs added. This mechanism also determines the ASSETs' scarcity and the number of attributes allotted. Both GEMs and CATALYST are burned upon usage.
These two tokens are useful for creators so that they can monetize and get more value out of their VoxEdit creations.
The Sandbox metaverse is often compared to Minecraft because of its user-generated content and blocky pixel-like aesthetic. The game allows creatives to capitalise on creations in a way they couldn’t before. It’s no secret that many players of sandbox-type gamers love these games for their unrestrained possibilities. Players have been known to spend days, months, and even years building in Minecraft. There is more than one way for these creative-type gamers to monetize their creations with The Sandbox. In this task, we will hone in on how VoxEdit (creation editor), GameMarker (game creation), and Marketplace (trading marketplace) are essential components of The Sandbox ecosystem.
Pixowl, the development team responsible for The Sandbox, created VoxEdit, a separate 3D voxel modelling suite for NFT creation. Each item is tokenized into an NFT using ERC-1155, a new standard for representing items on the Ethereum blockchain. This removes any barriers to making and minting non-fungible ASSETs on the blockchain and allows multiple copies of an asset, leaving creators with more control over their creations.
The above image indicates that ASSETs are simple items and animals. However, creations typically fall into one of the following categories:
Entities - These populate The Sandbox metaverse as non-playable characters to enhance the experience. These can range from animals such as the horse in Figure 1 to soldiers and healers.
Equipment and Wearables - Equipment such as shields, swords, and armor are considered equipment, and wearables are the cosmetic items players can decorate their avatars with.
Art - It’s back to square one when it comes to NFTs in The Sandbox. Players can actually create art inside The Sandbox metaverse to decorate and enrich the platform.
Since everything built with VoxEdit is an NFT that can be listed in the marketplace for a profit, all ASSETs sold on the marketplace are paid for in $SAND tokens.
Another fascinating feature for creators and builders is that The Sandbox developed a tool that allows for game design. A good comparison would be a game that lets users customise levels in games and allows other players to play those user-generated levels, such as in Super Mario Maker or Infamous 2. Make sure to download the client from the online portal. Once you have a model, you can build scenarios and game rules through Game Maker without the need for any programming. Thorough the tool is free to download, free to use, and creation of content is free, creators will need to either buy or rent LAND to publish the game onto.
As of this writing, The Sandbox has not introduced the ability to play games, but once introduced, the choice to charge admission to games is left up to the game designers themselves. Game designers can either choose to make their games free to play or charge an admission of $SAND to play.
The Sandbox development team understands that to fully enrich this new world, it is going to take collaboration from both the team and its users. That is why they have a couple of funds built into their tokenomics.
The Game Maker fund rewards people who have proven their game design and digital world skills. The Creator fund is not too dissimilar from the Game Maker fund in that it incentivizes creators to create quality voxel art ASSETs that can be published on the Ethereum blockchain. For anyone interested, in both cases, have a portfolio ready and write up a good proposal.
The Sandbox is but one of the games aiming to make a Metaverse. While the idea of a Metaverse is rudimentary, many games, blockchain projects and even traditional companies like Facebook/META are trying to make what “Snow Crash” foresaw many years ago into reality - literally. The Sandbox Metaverse is still in its early stages but with both VoxEdit and Game Maker tools, it shows exactly why the platform is named the way it is. These tools not only allow players to contribute and create fantastic games, skins, characters, and weapons but also allows them to monetize their hard work. This platform is great for those Minecraft veterans who are looking to experience what blockchain has to offer and are ready to venture out into the metaverse.
We can’t talk about The Sandbox without including the OG himself