2021 Scale-up
Some exciting news. And a glimpse of what will happen to the project in 2021.
Some background story
When we launched the Sandblock Project back in 2017, we believed the blockchain technology would bring a much needed layer of trust, communication and exchange of value between merchants and customers.
After a successful Token Generation Event in 2018, we began expanding or network of partners and initiated many Proof of Concept (POC) works with corporations, groups and retailers.
The conclusion of those POCs was that everyone was definitely interested in the potential of the technology we were building, but no one was ready to be the first mover.
We were facing a classic chicken and egg strategy problem.
This is why we decided to launch Surprise in 2019, a mobile application and a browser plugin to access online offers from retailers, using Sandblock’s blockchain protocol. With the main purpose of enabling thousands of retailers to use this decentralized technology without even thinking about it (thus breaking the chicken and egg dilemma).
And we did things properly!
As Surprise’s was never intended to be a one-stop-shop to access Sandblock’s protocol, and in order for the protocol to remain independent, we created a dedicated company (French SAS) which raised capital funds independently from the Sandblock project to develop this use case.
The next logical step was to enable retailers to provide in-store offers using Surprise.
In March 2020, we began the onboarding of physical stores when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, and forced us, like many, to rethink every single steps of our strategy. Our choice was to go back to our roots and focus on developing the key technological pieces that we needed to expand online and come back to the physical space once things would be back to normal.
Surprise acquired by Skeepers group
Official announcement here (French).
At the end of 2019, Net Reviews, a leading group in Customer Reviews Management for retailers, raised 32 million euros in funds from the Providence Strategic Growth fund (PSG), part of Providence Equity (more than $40 billion assets). It gave birth to SKEEPERS, a leader in Customer Experience and Engagement.
In mid-2020, Skeepers’ CEO approached us with the vision of integrating the blockchain technology at the core of their business in order to provided a trustworthy reward layer between retailers and their customers.
This was one of those moments when you believe something is too perfect to be true. But after a couple meetings, things were pretty clear for both parties, Surprise’s services were what Skeepers needed and Sandblock’s technology the right layer for their use case.
Of one the key aspects of this operation, as mentioned in the first part of this article, it that Skeepers did not acquire the Sandblock project, but the company behind the Surprise services.
Sandblock’s technology will therefore remain independent and provide the decentralized components for the ecosystem of tens of thousands of retailers brought by Skeepers.
Surprise is now, more than ever, full-filling its initial role of enabler for Sandblock’s decentralized technology. And we can’t hide how excited we are about the future of the project!
What will happen next
The following is provided to give a glimpse of what we are currently working on. It is considered “work in progress” and is therefore subject to change due to many factors such as regulations, structural requirements or strategic choices.
Surprise, now operating under the Skeepers banner, will soon bring millions of transactions per month to the Sandblock Chain.
This massive scale up cannot be anything but good news for the Sandblock project. But it also means the project must evolve in order to properly process, manage and govern such a large ecosystem.
Governance structure
This new ecosystem requires us to rethink Sandblock’s governance mechanisms in order to provide a stronger and more sustainable ground for the project’s future.
We are already working toward creating a non profit organisation, likely to be a Foundation, to host the core blockchain technology and crypto-assets. The current structure being too limited in terms of governance and evolution options.
Blockchain protocol & crypto-assets
The coming evolutions of Sandblock’s protocol will require us to proceed to major changes to its core settings and therefore to the underlying crypto-asset currently known as the Sandblock Coin (SBC).
The new legal organisation will first proceed to a hard fork of the current Sandblock Chain, thus enabling it to bootstrap this new ecosystem using the existing infrastructure.
Current SBC holders and users will of course be guided throughout this process and regular communication will be provided as soon as dates and details are made public.
We will be releasing major upgrades and new tools in the coming weeks, including the new Branding, explorer, wallet etc…
Conclusion
We are extremely excited to announce this huge step for the Sandblock project and more generally for decentralized technologies and crypto-assets.
Special thanks to all our community and more generally to all the people who helped making this happen. This is only one of the many steps we must accomplish, but an important one indeed.
As it is said: soon, moon,
The Sandblock Team
