AMA Recap with Binance Filipino
The AMA started last August 12th at 6 PM, GMT+8 timezone. It was participated by Sébastien Borget, COO, co-founder of The Sandbox.
Introduction
Miko: Hi everyone and welcome to The Sandbox AMA on Binance Filipino!
We’re honored to host an ask-me-anything session with our newest Binance Launchpad token sale project: The Sandbox.
We introduce you to Sébastien Borget, COO, co-founder of The Sandbox (@sebastienborget)
Sébastien Borget: Hello, I am Sébastien Borget, COO, co-founder of The Sandbox, which is a decentralized gaming platform. I am also the president of the Blockchain Game Alliance and an advocate for #NFTs & blockchain in games. Nice to meet you all!
Miko: We’re glad to see it as well! This leads me to my first question:
How does The Sandbox game platform work? When will players be able to enter the platform?
Sébastien Borget: In a nutshell, with The Sandbox, you can enjoy
- Video game NFTs: own & sell your game creations
- Staking & Governance: Rewards
- DeFi & Play2earn
We just opened our Filipino community here.
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. They can explore the lands, use the transport system to travel quickly between lands, or move from one land to an adjacent one using the edges. We are preparing an 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 a video showing the 3 products in action — teasing you the experience in-game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDkf1CrkF7Y
Miko: Looks like a well-thought rollout plan and ecosystem there! And the most important thing is that the game looks awesome!
I’ll open the floor for the community’s questions :)
Community Questions
Round 1
Q1: What’s the difference between Minecraft and Sandbox, they almost look the same?
S: There is a fundamental difference, which is related to the ownership of the content you create or earn in the game. We are disrupting the 2 established user-generated content games that are Minecraft and Roblox through the use of NFTs and $SAND. This is how:
The Sandbox is a decentralized platform where everything you create or collect in-game is yours, you are owning it in your wallet and you can trade it with other players, transfer it or sell it even on other marketplaces, without us controlling it
This enables a new basis for developing a virtual world economy, based on a digital asset class that is represented by the NFTs
We combine user-generated content (what you create) with NFTs, thus empowering creators
Q2: Is there any open tournament for doing Game items or 3D models or is it “do your own and sell to open market”?
S: Yes, we have regular contests on our forums for example
https://forum.sandbox.game/forum/11-contests-giveaways/
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.
Q3: In your metaverse, all land plots are 408 × 408, but I have not seen vertical restrictions anywhere if they are not there, do you see a threat in this?
S: Each land is 96x96 block x … 100 at the moment. It’s an interesting question — the first time we got it. So there is no threat in the verticality, the metaverse map remains 2D
Q4: Do we need to hold SAND tokens to play?
S: Not at all. The experience should be free to play with some games available totally free, some other payings, it’s up to the creators.
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.
Q5: Is there any way to earn $SAND token in playing your game The Sandbox? What is the main use case of $SAND token?
S: Yes, it’s an important part — players who spend time should benefit from their playtime and be able to collect rewards and tokens, that can be exchanged for $SAND tokens. This creates a virtuous circle called “circular economy” and is the basis of our “play-to-earn” model
Q6: Speed is one of the important factors in the gaming industry. And we see that on blockchain like Ethereum, requires a very high fee now, how will the sandbox solve this scaling platform?
S: About scalability, The Sandbox uses Ethereum blockchain use to prove the ownership of the games and assets, but when you are in the game, you are not interacting with the blockchain. While there is no direct relationship between the number of games, a number of players, and the number of blockchain transactions, we have already prepared for the scalability through a partnership with Matic Network, who is a layer-2 solution that can help scale further.
https://medium.com/sandbox-game/partnership-announcement-the-sandbox-ft-matic-eaa2ebd05f9f
We’ve sold for more than $1,250,000 worth of LANDS (ERC-721 NFTs) over 4 presales = 30,000 LANDS tokens! 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 have seen no issue with scalability or gas fees impacting us.
Q7: Where do you see the E-Gaming in 5 years from now?
S: Very excited! We are one of the true pioneering games in the NFTs space. We are aiming to become one of the leading established key players in the space of virtual worlds with blockchain-based digital LANDS, reaching over 1,000,000 MAUs over the next five years.
You can access the project Roadmap here: https://www.sandbox.game/en/roadmap/
Round 2
Q1: What is your plan if the world leaders in the gaming industry start working on blockchain games of this type and become competitors?
S: The Sandbox is a pioneer in the space of blockchain gaming, NFTs, and true digital ownership, and we are thrilled to have Atari, Square Enix, and more major IPs to be announced soon, who will collaborate and publish games on our platform. 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.
We have already Atari and Square Enix as Investor and Partner and will soon announce more gaming studios — stay tuned!
Additionally, as the president of the blockchain game alliance, I am working to bring even more big game companies to learn and use blockchain. We think it will be beneficial for the market to grow and attract more players. You can see Ubisoft is one of the founders of the BGA.
Q2: Revenue and Adoption are the top priority of all projects, can you tell us how does Sandbox generate revenue from its technology/platform, and how are you planning on getting your platform adopted?
S: Yes, we main revenue from taking a 5% transaction on all the SAND transactions on the platform, which we reinject after in the Staking Pool and the Foundation. We are also selling LANDS (sold for $1.25M already and expected total value of $22M+) and IP branded NFTs. Our growth is related to offering more services to players and creators who are building and owning the content of the platform.
Q3: Hi @sebastienborget, I want to know if The Sandbox team has a plan to support Browser (just like Decentraland) as one of the platforms to able to play the Sandbox game?
S: We are first available on desktops = PC and Mac, then in 2021 we will enable play experiences on mobile as well. We do not think that browser-based offers the level of performance and quality yet comparable to pc games
Q4: Got confused. What is the difference between SAND token on Binance IEO and LAND on the Sandbox gaming Platform which you had your private sale?
S: $SAND is a fungible (ERC-20) utility token that serves as the basis for all transactions within The Sandbox, plus governance and staking as mentioned right before. We are introducing it via the Binance IEO Launchpad platform, for the first time and to the Binance community first. LANDS are part of our virtual world map, the metaverse, which from now on will be available in SAND. They were introduced with discounts on presales. The whole economy of The Sandbox is now moving into $SAND
Q5: What games are there in Sandbox? Is there only one game, can you explain a little. I’m really new to Sandbox.
S: Games are currently being produced, supported by our Game Makers Fund http://gamefund.sandbox.game
There are 15 projects from independent creators that we will soon present on a website, and also the partners (50 partners) games like Atari or Rollercoaster Tycoon or Shaun the Sheep. Some of these partners will recreate games from their renowned IPs such as ATARI with their games Roller Coaster Tycoon, Asteroids and Pong that will populate several ESTATEs across the metaverse they will also create a theme-park like a universe based on a variety of their game titles. Shaun the Sheep with a new version of their Mossy Bottom Farm as well faithful renditions of the Cryptokitties identity.
Q6: Will your project focus on MMO-RPG games or MOBA?
S: That’s a good gamer question! The main mechanics offered at the moment are more MMO-RPG oriented = create an avatar, equip it, level him up, socialize with players in lobbies, chat, interact, kill enemies, collect items, complete quests. But as we develop new updates over the next 5 years, I am certain more mechanics will be made available and offer an even broader type of gameplays, including emergent gameplay.
Q7: Does Sandbox have insurance, Are Sandbox is financially capable to do that just in case of emergency? Like, If there’s an unnecessary incident that you need to refund the users of this platform. @sebastienborget
S: 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 are now raising an additional $3M via our $SAND IEO. We have gone through the most strict due diligence also by Binance as an investor. Our team has over 10 years of experience in making video games and the UGC / Sandbox game. The Sandbox franchise has had over 40M installs on mobile since 2012 on the first 2 versions. We have the team, the expertise, the know-how, and funding to accomplish our vision.
Closing Remarks
Miko: And this concludes the AMA rounds! Lots of great questions and even greater answers being given, thanks so much!
Once again, we’d like to thank @sebastienborget from The Sandbox for spending some time with us on this AMA. Any closing remarks?
Sébastien Borget: Thank you for all the questions, it’s been a pleasure
Buying $SAND tokens are 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.
Claim your stake via Binance IEO https://launchpad.binance.com/en/lottery/86b5e596bc5f407a8e5a63d32da4f748
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