🤔 What is Sandbox?
Sandbox is a decentralized massive multiplayer game(MMO) built on Etherium blockchain. It allows players to:
- Customize their avatar
- Buy in-game items like wearables
- Interact with other players
- Buy land
- Develop purchased land etc.
💡 What role does SAND token play ?
SAND is the native cryptocurrency of Sandbox economy. It plays following role:
- Medium of exchange: All the items on Sandbox marketplace are listed in SAND token.
- Governance: SAND token holders can propose updates and vote on proposals to update Sandbox project.
- Staking: Holders can stake their SAND tokens to receive additional SAND tokens as rewards.
📝 Origin of Sandbox
- 2012: Pixowl launched the first Sandbox game.
- 2016: The team launched second version of their game “The Sandbox Evolution”.
- 2017: Pixowl decides to convert the game to a 3D world on Etherium blockchain.
- 2018: Pixowl got acquired by Animoka, a blockchain gaming company based in Hong kong.
- 2019: Sandbox had its first land sale.
- 2020: The game launched Vox editor and game maker(will be explained subsequently).
- 2021: The game launched SAND(cryptocurrency for Sandbox economy) and Sandbox DAO.
👴🏻 Founders
Arthur Madrid
- Arthur Madrid is the Co-founder and CEO of Pixowl and Sandbox.
- He has built and sold two software companies (Wixi Inc. and 1-Click Media) before starting Pixowl in 2012.
Sébastien Borget
- Sébastien Borget is the Co-founder and COO of Pixowl.
- He holds a Computer Science Engineer Degree from Telecom SudPari, France.
- Prior to co-founding Pixowl, he worked as Chief Operations Officer at Wixi.
- Sebastien also became President of the Blockchain Game Alliance in 2020.
😌 What problems does it solve ?
- Decentralized games like Sandbox do not have to run AI algorithms trying to extract every bit of their users’ attention and sell it to advertisers.
- Most of us live in an environment surrounded by people who force us to behave a certain way. However, people can be whatever they want in the virtual world. Some people will just have fun, others will explore boundaries of their creativity.
- Players spend countless hours playing games, but do not have anything to show for at the end of it. Players on Sandbox have ownership of the assets that they collect in the game and can sell them on marketplaces like Open sea, Rarible, Sandbox marketplace, etc.
🤖How does it work ?
Architecture
- Sandbox team runs a central server, which hosts the Sandbox website and the game. Running a central server allows them to easily scale and provide a better gaming experience to players.
- Assets created by players are stored on decentralized storage solutions like IPFS.
- All the transactions on marketplace and ownership of assets are recorded on the Etherium blockchain.
Running game on a central server does not make Sandbox centralized because:
- Ownership of all the assets is recorded on the blockchain.
- All the other decentralized crypto projects use a similar model, where:
- Frontend of the website is run by the team.
- Backend processes are powered by smart contracts running on the blockchain.
- The users have the option to directly interact with smart contract, if they do not want to use the front end run by the team.
Gameplay
Land
Sandbox has 164,183 pieces of digital real estate called land. Each land is a unique non-fungible ERC-721 token on the Ethereum blockchain.
Sandbox has 3 types of land:
- Land: Basic Sandbox unit on the map. Each Land comprises 96 x 96 meters in the game world.
- Estate: Estate is a combination of more than 1 neighboring land. It gives the owners more space to create larger immersive game experience.
- District: Estate owned by more than 1 player is called District.
Owners can develop their lands to create games, host contests etc or rent out to other developers.
VoxEdit
VoxEdit is a voxel editing tool developed by The Sandbox. It enables creators to make voxel assets for Sandbox.
Each asset is an NFT that can be used in the Sandbox game and traded on the Sandbox marketplace.
Market place
Players can trade assets and land on the Sandbox marketplace. Sellers can list their assets and buyers can explore/buy assets on the marketplace.
Game maker
Players use game maker to build games on their lands. The game maker provides an easy-to-use drag and drop interface. Players can create games without the need for any coding knowledge.
Economy
Sandbox ecosystem consists of landowners, players, asset creators and collectors, who interact with each other using SAND tokens.
🏛️ Governance model
The team plans to decentralize the governance in second quarter of 2022.
SAND holders will govern the platform. They will propose and vote on updates to Sandbox and allotment of funds from Sandbox treasury.
🤑 How much money does the project have for future development ?
- The project has raised more than $95 million from various token and land sales.
- The team has access to 37% of SAND tokens.
- 2.5% of every transaction on Sandbox marketplace goes to the treasury.
👍 Tailwinds
- Access to mobiles and internet has gone up. As a result, people are spending more time online
- More and more players are playing online games.
- VR and AR product market is growing.
- NFTs are becoming popular.
- Sandbox is a very old game(first launched in 2012). It already has a vibrant community of players and experienced developers who have been working on the game for more than a decade.
- Switching cost: Players would not want to migrate to another virtual world even if it is better because:
- They have spent countless hours building stuff they are proud of.
- They have built a community and made friends in Sandbox.
- They have invested a significant amount of money buying land and collectibles.
- Network effects:
- More players would want to join when they find most of their friends are on Sandbox.
- Brands will start using the platform to market once sufficient players are online. More players will join Sandboxd once they find their favorite brand is on the platform. This positive feedback loop has the potential to cause exponential growth.
- Partnerships: Many popular brands are building on Sandbox.
😨 Risks and challenges
- Sandbox game will be played by players of all ages and backgrounds. The game is decentralized and users can create any type of content. The team will have to find a way to moderate inappropriate content like child porn etc.
- There are many crypto projects making decentralized open world games.
💰 Tokenomics
SAND token has max supply of 3 billion tokens. The tokens have been distributed as follows:
Vesting schedule
SAND tokens will be released as follows:
100% of SAND tokens will come into circulation in 2024.
Demand pressure
Token’s price increases due to demand pressure.
Demand pressure on SAND token will come from:
- Marketplace: All items on Sandbox are denominated in SAND tokens. Players will acquire SAND tokens to buy assets on the marketplace.
- Governance: Players will acquire SAND tokens to participate in Sandbox governance.
- Staking: Some users will acquire SAND token and stake them to receive rewards.
- Speculators: They will buy SAND tokens for future price appreciation.
Market cap
Similar virtual world games like Minecraft and second life are worth billions of dollars.
SAND token has tremendous room to grow if it continues to onboard new players.
🧐 Indicators to watch out for
- Their Youtube channel is growing:
- Their Twitter account is growing:
- Number of users is increasing:
Future possibilities
Some possible future scenarios:
- Games like football etc will be organized in Sandbox. Players will organize themselves in teams and compete. There will also be many players who will attend the games as fans to cheer for their favorite team.
- It is possible that Sandbox partners with other blockchain games like Axie Infinity. This will allow players to bring their characters to Sandbox.
- Brands and content creators will open their headquarters and organize events for their fans in Sandbox.
- Sandbox is a nice place to socialize and find others with similar interests. It is even possible to fall in love with someone just by seeing their avatar and talking to them in Sandbox without ever knowing their real identity.
- It is also possible that the future turns out to be quite dystopian where people would rather live in Sandbox than be productive in the real world.
- Sandbox will bring many gamers to the crypto community.
👋Final remarks
My investment advice for those planning to invest in Sandbox:
- Do not try to speculate on land if are not planning to play the game or have a plan to use it.
- SAND token will see a lot of inflation till 2024. It is difficult to say if the demand will outweigh the supply resulting in price appreciation or vice versa.
😊 Do further research
You can continue your research by using following resources:
