AMA Recap with Binance Thailand
An AMA with The Sandbox C — founder and COO was held last 11th August 2020 on Binance local community in Thailand around 9:30 in the evening. Here’s the summary of some Q&As which lasted for over an hour.
The AMA had 4 segments which are the following:
1. Introduction
2. Questions
3. Quiz
4 Lucky Draw
Segment 1
Sebastian Borget: I’m ready to roll 👍
Rit (Binance Angel): @sebastienborget Can you introduce yourself and Sandbox project?
S: 👋 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!
The Sandbox is a virtual world where players can build, own, and monetize their gaming experiences in the Ethereum blockchain using SAND, the platform’s utility token.
SAND holders will be also able to participate in governance of the platform via a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), where they can exercise voting rights on key decisions of The Sandbox ecosystem. As a player, you can create digital assets (Non-Fungible Tokens, aka NFTs), upload them to the marketplace, and drag-and-drop them to create game experiences with The Sandbox Game Maker.
In the coming year, our experienced and dedicated team will build a unique way to play in a virtual world where you can play, create, collect, earn, govern, and own anything in the game.
PLAY. CREATE. OWN. GOVERN. EARN. Welcome to the Metaverse!
Here's a video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDkf1CrkF7Y
Thien: Hi @sebastienborget what is your plan to get Sand mass adoption?
Sebastian Borget: Great question! $SAND adoption will be fostered differently according to the different stages of the project with different techniques for early adopters and loyal players.
Governance will progressively remove the Control from our Company towards the community based on token holding. We will move from a centralized model to a decentralized model progressively from Year 1 in various aspects. The Community of $SAND holders will be able to participate in Governance decisions of the platform, using a DAO structure, where they can exercise voting rights on key elements.
$SAND owners will be allowed to vote themselves or delegate their voting rights to other players of their choice and it is an important point on governance.
In Year 1 (2021), we plan to achieve significant growth during the 1st year post-game launch bringing artists & players into the platform, with no awareness of tokens. We will supply an initial high-level of issuance to early adopters, key partnerships with gaming companies, and renowned brands through the Creators Fund and through staking rewards to token holders.
In Years 2 and 3, we will continue with a high-level of issuance to active players and creators through the Creators Fund, we plan to convert free to play players into active ones.
Then after Years 4 and beyond, we will retain loyal and players and increase the decentralization of $SAND circulation until the Company holds 0% of $SAND in reserve and 100% of the SAND is in the hands of the players.
To bring mainstream adoption of blockchain in gaming, we are working also on different strategies.
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.
Our current community growth strategies include:
- Partnering with content companies to onboard well-known IPs.
- Conducting LAND token sales to promote the generation of user-created content.
- Conducting AMAs to educate the community.
- Constantly engaging with the public on social media channels.
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 are creating an appealing gaming metaverse that aims at attracting all types of people: young & old players, casual & pro gamers, newbie creators & professional artists.
Rit (Binance Angel): Thank you @sebastienborget, What are some achievements of the projects, and what is next on the roadmap?
Sebastien Borget: I want to mention that we have been for 8 years already in the video game industry!
The Sandbox project has been around since 2012 on mobile platforms and has gathered more than 40 million global installs on mobile. We’ve been working since July 2018 (2 years ago) on the new version of the game, 3D, multiplayer, multiplatform, and using blockchain technology to offer a virtual world built on the Ethereum blockchain, where players can build, own, and monetize their gaming experiences.
https://twitter.com/borgetsebastien/status/1292933336592257026?s=20
We’ve raised $4.5M USD from reputable investors on our Seed Round, including from Hashed (#1 crypto funds in Korea, True Global Ventures, and Square Enix the video game company).
We’ve sold for more than $1,250,000 worth of LANDS (ERC-721 NFTs) over 4 presales, 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‘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. We have a large community of over 750,000 members over Discord, Telegram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. And 50 ambassadors actively engaged in supporting our community and promoting our vision — that is really exciting!
Here’s the link to our SOCIALS and our local community for Thailand.
VoxEdit, launched in December 2018 has been downloaded more than 100,000. Hundreds of artists use it to produce thousands of assets published in our marketplace.
Rit (Binance Angel): Thank you @sebastienborget, What is the utility of $SAND tokens? What can I do on the platform with $SAND?
Sebastien Borget: $SAND will enable players to create, play, own, govern, trade, and earn within The Sandbox virtual world gaming platform. It is the ERC-20 token that will be used all across The Sandbox metaverse.
$SAND is an essential part of The Sandbox platform and we are working on establishing key mechanics that makes it intrinsically tied to the platform and its value.
It will serve as:
- Medium of exchange: 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.
- Governance: $SAND allows holders to participate in governance decisions. SAND owners can vote themselves or delegate voting rights to other players of their choice.
- Staking: Users can stake $SAND tokens to earn rewards, as well as GEMs and CATALYSTs for ASSETS creation.
Also, our fee capture model is important, as a total of 26.5% of all SAND transaction volume goes back into the Foundation.
The role of the Foundation is to support the ecosystem of The Sandbox, offering grants to incentivize the production of high-quality content and games on the platform. To date, the Foundation has already funded over 15 game projects and granted 100 artists to produce NFTs that will be available at the Public Launch in December 2020.
Rit (Binance Angel): Thank you @sebastienborget, What is play-to-earn? How can I monetize my time and activities with $SAND as a player?
Sebastien Borget: Great question! This is a very exciting new business model for video games.
The play-to-earn in The Sandbox is supported by a blockchain-powered circular economy. At its core is the idea that everything and everybody involved in the community of The Sandbox is being rewarded for their participation. The Sandbox endeavors to build an ecosystem where interests are aligned between all the users — players, creators, LAND owners, curators, $SAND investors, etc. — who contribute to it.
There are some aspects of DeFi in The Sandbox. The tokens collected by the players are ERC-20 and can be exchanged as valuable resources between the different types of users (hence a circular economy). We hope to create liquidity pools and DEX like Uniswap for these ERC-20 resources, like GEMS and Catalysts for example
There are many ways in which users can monetize their time on the platform while keeping 95% of $SAND as revenue share, by:
- Selling ASSETS: Users can create and sell ASSETS as NFTs on the marketplace.
- Owning a LAND: Buy a LAND in one of the LAND sales. Players can then either rent them or populate them with content to increase the LAND’s value.
- Building Games on the Game Maker: Creators can build and monetize games using the Game Maker on the LANDs that are owned by players.
- Playing and participating in the game: In the Game, not only can creators profit from their creations, players can play-to-earn by collecting resources, rewards, and tokens.
Rit (Binance Angel): Alright, Thank you @sebastienborget. And now, we give all of you the chance to ask questions to the SAND Team! Let’s start in Segment 2. In this segment, you can ask SAND Team your questions about SAND.
Segment 2
Community Questions:
Q1. Blockchain has many Disadvantages as well, how does Sandbox plan to merge Blockchain as well as existing Technology to make it more Secure?
Sebastien Borget: We are using Blockchain technology essentially to enable true digital ownership by the users, so they can exchange, trade, sell their games, creations and game items they collect within our virtual world.
Here is an explanatory diagram of the main benefits of NFTs and $SAND
Q2. Do developers need code writing skills to integrate cryptocurrencies into their games and applications? What tools does the sandbox platform offer to new game developers?
Sebastien Borget: 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.
Q3. Why would any gamers play Sandbox Pixel when there are Ultra HD Graphic games? Why would u create games on the blockchain? Are there problems with non-blockchain games?
Sebastien Borget: You can make games with no-code / no programming knowledge, everything just drags and drop, and behaviors re already made.
You can see this video for example
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDkf1CrkF7Y
Q4. Speed is one of the important factors in an engine design based on the gaming industry. And we see that on blockchain Ethereum it requires a very high fee now, how will the sandbox solve this scaling platform?
Sebastien Borget: About scalability, Ethereum blockchain is used 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, the 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
Q5. SAND is Launching its Tokens Sale on Binance Launchpad. But what is the role of SAND Tokens in The SandBox Platform? Can we use SAND Tokens for Buying or selling in-Games Assets like Lands, Characters, etc?
Sebastien Borget: Yes absolutely, $SAND will be the medium of exchange on the platform, so players, creators, and users can use it to buy or make game items, play games, etc.
Q6. Sandbox is very similar to Decentraland where we can Buy Lands, In-Games Assets like Characters, Objects. So, what’s special in SandBox compared to Decentraland??
Sebastien Borget: We are both working towards creating decentralized virtual worlds, however, The Sandbox has its own unique characteristics, essentially the fact that we are focused on gaming. In our virtual world, we are providing you the tools and mechanics to create MMO RPG with quests, enemies, fights, items to collect, etc.
Q7. How are you planning on onboarding your existing gamer base from previous creations (example The Sandbox Evolution) with the blockchain gaming? Is in the immediate plans of the project to attract people outside the crypto ecosystem by providing an easy and user-friendly to play without needing prior experience with the blockchain? Thank you!
Sebastien Borget: We do have a progressive 5 years adoption plan, as I mentioned some details above. We will be leveraging our team strength, expertise, and know-how in video gaming and user-generated content to attract new non-crypto users. We have one of the largest and strongest communities already, outside of crypto, who know our franchise for many years and is already collaborating on working with us on the new version, creating assets and games.
Q8. Could you explain in detail that what are the requirements for listing my Asset on SandBox? And also, How many Assets I can submit on SandBox? are there any limitations on submitting assets?
Sebastien Borget: There are no limitations on submitting your creations to The Sandbox and start turning them in NFTs.
Q9. I see a lot of big companies like Atari Games, Enimoca, Square Enix are SandBox partners. This is really great! But my question: What are the next major partnerships and announcements we can expect from the SandBox project?
Sebastien Borget: Stay tuned as we will be announcing even bigger partnerships!
Q10. What targets will the SAND team achieve in 2020?
Sebastien Borget: These are our targets for 2020:
Our next major milestones after raising on the Binance launchpad are:
- Game Public Beta — Public Beta Launch of the Games Platform, with dozens of games available to play (supported by the Foundation)
- Events — Launch of the First Season event with play-to-earn mechanisms
- Multiplayer — Socialize, Chat and Interact with friends in The Sandbox hubs
- LAND Public sale — Regular LAND sales and Support for Game Maker
- VoxEdit — Official Release 1.0
Q11. I saw many people said that NFTs are the next ‘Trend’. I also saw some use-cases of NFTs in crypto space. How do you think about the evolution of NFTs in crypto space and the real world?
Sebastien Borget: We are one of the leading projects in the NFTs space and the most expected blockchain game with NFTs of 2020. We have sold for over $1,250,000 of NFTs in our presale and our platform allows users to mint their own NFTs, using the ERC-1155 standard that we have co-authored with Enjin and Horizon Games.
Alright, one last question
Q12. The future value of the project is always better than the current price of the token, so with modern technology, what contribution has Sandbox made to the community?
Sebastien Borget: We are contributing to the Ethereum ecosystem through ERC-1155 standard, meta transactions standard (our lead blockchain architect has won several prizes at hackathon and recognition by Metamask for his work on the topic)
We can continue the conversation on https://t.me/sandboxgamethailand
Rit (Binance Angel): Thank you @sebastienborget. That has been a very informative Q&A session. Thank you very much SAND Team for your time! If you have things to announce, please let us know here.
Sebastien Borget: Thank you so much for having me, really excited to see so many questions on the project!
In the coming year, our experienced and dedicated team will build a unique way to play in a virtual world where you can play, create, collect, earn, govern, and own anything in the game.
PLAY. CREATE. OWN. GOVERN. EARN. Welcome to the Metaverse!
Join us now, take a part of the metaverse.
https://launchpad.binance.com/en/lottery/86b5e596bc5f407a8e5a63d32da4f748
Rit (Binance Angel): Thank you SAND Team for gracing our AMA. But we’re not done yet! Whether you were able to present your questions to SAND and get answers from SAND Team or not, you still have a chance to win SAND tokens!
Join the community of more than 10,000 gamers, creators, and supporters of The Sandbox metaverse and hear news before anyone else while enjoying upcoming special contests and giveaways.
