The Sandbox: build your own worlds with SAND tokens

“The Sandbox is a blockchain game. In terms of gameplay, it resembles Minecraft, which has been played millions of times. Players can create constructions such as buildings from cube-shaped elements. The game takes place in a three-dimensional world, which is also made of cubes. The game world is based on nature. You can explore it to collect resources and process found raw materials into new items. “SAND” is the native utility token of the Metaverse project and thus central to being able to participate in the game. The game is finding more and more enthusiastic participants in America, England and worldwide.

The Sandbox – invented back in 2012

The Sandbox has been around since 2012, but at that time without blockchain and cryptocurrencies. The rebranding to a blockchain-based game took place in August 2018, when the company Animoca Brands acquired the developer studio Pixowl. This also saw the integration to the Ethereum blockchain as well as the introduction of its own “Non-fungible Tokens” (NFTs) and the SAND token.

What is the function of the SAND token?

SAND is an ERC-20 token based on Ethereum. It is both a utility token and a governance token. It serves as a general means of payment on the Sandbox network and as an in-game currency. It can be used to buy NFTs in the game. It is also needed to participate in voting in the metaverse of The Sanbox. In total, there will be 3,000,000,000 SAND. According to CoinMarketCap, nearly 900,000,000. of them are already in circulation. “We want to show the community what a token is. We explain why they are so important to the game and how they enable value to be created,” The Sand CEO Arthur Madrid told blockchain media

With SAND, players in England and America can buy the following four digital assets:

• Land
• Asset
• Gems and Catalysts
• Avatars

Furthermore, creators of new assets always need SAND to make them available in the marketplace. Then they are available in The Sandbox marketplace. The SAND token can be bought on several crypto exchanges or won in-game according to the Play-2-Earn principle. By participating in contests or completing various tasks in the game, players get the token as a reward. Afterwards, they can do whatever they want with the cryptocurrency. It is also possible to withdraw the token and sell it on an exchange.

What is The Sandbbox all about?

The Sandbox is a “multiplayer open world game”, comparable to Minecraft. It was originally developed for iOS and Android. In the meantime, the metaverse game is also available for Windows. The name refers to so-called “sandbox games”. These are games that have no or few predefined goals and work as follows:

• Players can let off steam according to their own ideas, build their own worlds and develop their own games.
• The game is designed like a big sandbox, where you can do whatever you want.
• The world is populated by other players at the same time. This creates a large metaverse, a digital world with its own game rules and its own markets.
• The entire project is completely decentralized. That means: governance, distribution of land, own marketplace, new content – everything runs via the decentralized blockchain.
• The game is Free-2-Play, but SAND is required for some in-game games. Their creators can decide for themselves whether they want to charge a token fee or not.

How to sign up, how and where to buy SAND tokens? For those who are interested, we have created The Sandbox guide.

The function of Land, Assets and Gems

Land: this is a digital asset that represents land in the world of The Sandbox. Those who own “Land” assets also receive the land that goes with them at the same time. They are NFTs, which are unique tokens with clear ownership. As ERC-721 tokens, they run on the Ethereum blockchain. Several “Lands” can be combined to form an “Estate”. If more than one player owns this land, it is referred to as a “District”. Important: Land is limited to 166,464 NFTs. Players need the digital land to set up assets and make them available to other players.

Assets: An “asset” in the context of video games is any type of character, object, simply an object that players can interact with. Assets can be placed on the “land”. Each player can create their own assets, offer them for trade on the marketplace or monetize them in other ways. They are ERC-1155 tokens. Assets come in different categories:

• Entities: creatures, characters, animals, non-playable characters (NPCs)
• Equipment: equipment, armor, weapons, tools
• Wearables: cosmetic items that change the appearance of the player character
• Type: Decorative items
• Blocks: Items that change the landscape

Assets in The Sandbox consist of so-called “voxels” (grid or pixels. If you want to create your own assets, you will need the developer’s VoxEdit program.

Gems and Catalysts: The “Gems” are ERC-20 utility tokens. You need them to improve the attributes of assets. The more and the better attributes an asset has, the more valuable it is. Gems are burned after they are consumed. You can get them in the marketplace or by staking SAND or land. The “Catalysts” work similarly. They are burned when used. They add more slots to an asset for more Gems. In doing so, they also increase the rarity of the asset.

Staking Land and SAND

Both tokens can be staked. However, this feature is not yet available. The Sandbox ecosystem is still under development. By staking Land and SAND, users will receive Gems and Catalysts. They can then use these themselves. Or they can sell the tokens on the marketplace.

The SAND tokens can already be staked on separate mining pools. The decentralized exchange Uniswap V2 offers this feature. However, you only do liquidity mining here. You provide the token as liquidity for trading on the DEX (decentralized exchanges) and receive more tokens as returns over time. Liquidity mining can be lucrative, but it also carries risks.

The Sandbox’s marketplace

In the marketplace, creators can offer their own assets for sale. Only through the sale are the voxel graphics converted into non-fungible tokens. The means of payment on the marketplace is SAND. The marketplace first went online on March 30, 2021. There is a 5 percent fee in SAND for each trade. So is the game about raking in big profits? The Sand CEO Arthur Madrid had this to say about it in blockchain media, “This is not about altcoin speculation. But I think players understand the value of cryptocurrencies like this better than other applications on the blockchain.”

Play-2-Earn: The Sandbox Alpha Launch

The Alpha Launch is a special event for selected players. Only those who own an Alpha Pass can participate in the Alpha Launch. Land owners have a chance to get their hands on an Alpha Pass through a sweepstakes. The sweepstakes will run until November 28, 2021, with the actual event running from November 29 to December 20. The Alpha Launch will allow players to participate in Play-2-Earn gameplay elements and try out the social hubs. Accordingly, they can win SAND by trying out the games in the Alpha Launch. This announcement was partly responsible for making the price of the SAND token skyrocket.

Another way to get the Alpha Pass is by participating in socia media contests. These are announced on the Twitter account or the Discord channel of “The Sandbox”. Furthermore, tickets can also be traded on the NFT marketplace OpenSea. Even during the event, new participants can join.

What are the disadvantages of The Sandbox?

• Economic limitations: The SAND token only connects the Sandbox ecosystem and enables gaming. That is, it has only a slightly higher value than the in-game token of an MMO.

• Small target audience: the rights and capabilities of SAND holders are limited to the creation and use of game content. Therefore, the token is only of interest to gamers and game developers.

• Decentralization: developers have used pre-mining. So how does the SAND transaction processing work on the platform? There is no information about the authentication algorithm so far. It seems that the recording of transfers on the blockchain is done centrally.

It remains to be seen how popular Sandbox will be with gamers, novice developers, and game designers. Full implementation is planned for 2023.

The developers behind The Sandbox

CEO of The Sandbox is Arthur Madrid, an entrepreneur in the field of gamings, blockchain, peer-to-peer and smartphone games. He studied economics at the Université Paris Dauphine. Animoca Brands acquired his company Pixowl in 2018, and with it the blockchain game, for $4,875. Anima Brands is based in Hong Kong and is involved in several blockchain projects, including Sky Mavis (Axie Infinity), Dapper Labs and OpenSea.

Latest information on the game

Social channels such as Twitter constantly feature the latest information about the 3D game in the sandbox metaverse.

SAND price history: be careful when investing
As an investor, you should exercise caution when investing in SAND. First and foremost, The Sandbox is meant to be a game multiverse and not a monetary investment. That being said, NFTs are still very vulnerable to overvaluation and hyperinflation - there are risks to losing your money. SAND's initial coin offering (ICO) took place in August 2020. At that time, one token sold for $0.00833. A total of 12 percent of available tokens sold in the ICO, which was actually an IEO (Initial Exchange Offering) on Binance's exchange. Subsequently, the cryptocurrency traded at $0.03 into 2021. Since February, the price has risen steadily. The SAND price recorded a rocketing price increase in November - driven, among other things, by Facebook's Metaverse ambitions. The price reached a medium-term all-time high on Nov. 24, 2021, when it climbed to $6.605.

What is the ERC-1155 token standard?
An ERC-1155 token is one of many Ethereum token standards. It was developed using the Enjin blockchain software. Tokens with the ERC-1155 standard can be both: non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and fungible tokens (i.e. regular cryptocurrencies). This should make them easier and more efficient to trade.

FAQ – Frequently Asked Questions