AMA Recap with Koinfox
Here’s a Recap of the AMA Powerchat with Sebastien Borget, COO (Sandbox) last August 12th at 9:30 PM (IST) or 4:00 PM (UTC) on their Official Telegram Group.
Introduction
Opinder Preet Singh: We are officially starting now.
Sebastian Borget: Hello everyone, nice to meet you! I’m ready to start when you want.
Vaibhav Gupta: Hello @sebastienborget glad to have you here.
Sebastian Borget: I’m ready to roll 👍
Sebastien Borget: Here’s a teaser about The Sandbox https://youtu.be/oi1mis3DGZE
Sebastian 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! 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. 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. 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.
Vaibhav Gupta: Can’t wait to try it out!
Opinder Preet Singh: Ok this sounds interesting
Sebastien Borget: Yes indeed
Opinder Preet Singh: So what is the core utility of Sand tokens? Is it just to use in the marketplace of games or any other interesting utility we can perform?
Sebastien Borget: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDkf1CrkF7Y
And you can join our community on Telegram: http://sandbox.game
In a snap, The Sandbox combines
- Video game NFTs: own & sell your game creations
- Staking & Governance: Rewards
- DeFi & Play2earn
Let me talk also about some achievements of The Sandbox
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.
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’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 have secured over 50 partnerships with award-winning game companies such as Atari, top decentralized games such as Crypto Kitties, major brands such as Shaun the Sheep to build a fun, creative “play-to-earn” Gaming platform, owned and made by players.
One more video showcasing some in-game experience
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDkf1CrkF7Y
Opinder Preet Singh: So you are more of an infrastructure platform to build the gaming experience which these gaming companies will be using. And also I saw you talking about play to earn. What’s it and how can I monetize my time and activities with $sand as a player?
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. 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. We are bringing some aspects of DeFi within 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.
So yes, by 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.
We had published and talked publicly for several months about these mechanics coming in the platform
Opinder Preet Singh: Okay. This is the last question from my side, then I will open the floor for users to ask the questions. What is your plan to achieve full decentralization and mainstream adoption?
Sebastien Borget: I would say that $SAND adoption will be fostered differently according to the different stages of the project with different techniques for early adopters and loyal players.
Our goal is to reach full decentralization within 5 years. 100% of the $SAND will be in the players' hands. 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 such as $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.
Now, talking about main-stream adoption. 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.
Opinder Preet Singh: So you are planning to convert it to a governance token.
Sebastien Borget: Yes, it’s part of the 3 main utilities. Some of our community growth strategies of The Sandbox 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. That’s our strategy.
Community Questions
Q1: BUILD & HODL — Are the two words that run in the blockchain and crypto market.
That is how hard you BUILD is. How Hard we HODL
So can you please share how much have you build and how much do you wish to build?
Sebastien Borget: I like this story! Our team has a track record and senior experience in the video gaming industry. We have delivered VoxEdit which is being used by hundreds of creators on a daily basis — 100,000 downloads. We have run 4 round of presales, selling in minutes or hours part of our metaverse. We have a large community on Discord, Telegram, and Social channels. We have released the Alpha of our Game Maker, and have dozens of creators creating with it, supported by the game maker’s fund. 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
So we can open the public beta of the platform in December 2020
Q2: Why did you choose ERC-20 to support $SAND actually this Network has so high gas fee for transactions, doesn’t it a limitation for Sandbox? Are there plans to develop your own network? Thank you!
Why did you choose Binance for IEO? After that what will be the Marker pairs available for trading on the platform?
Sebastien Borget: Having Binance as a partner will help The Sandbox to bridge the gap and help to onboard the Roblox and Fortnite generation to a new gaming experience where they can own, earn and trade everything in the game.
They have a global presence, are one of the largest exchanges with liquidity, and will help grow our existing community with their strong community of crypto users, who can also participate in creating assets in the lands, assets, participate in contests, etc. This is a strategic partnership. That goes beyond just the IEO on the Launchpad.
Q3: SandBox is based on Ethereum Blockchain which nowadays very Unscalable and slow. So, Explain to us, which solution is used by SandBox for improving Scalability?
Sebastien Borget: The Sandbox uses the Ethereum blockchain 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, number of players and 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
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, number of players and 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: The Sandbox already showed its capacity to ATTRACT USERS OUTSIDE OF THE CRYPTO SPACE. Can you share with us: What are your secrets of attracting this kind of users even they didn't know about Blockchain or Crypto?
Sebastien Borget: Thanks. We have been bringing Artists, Gamers, and Land Owners to participate in our gaming metaverse. We think our value proposition is attracting to bridge new users into crypto. Also our strategy of partnerships and involving mainstream IPs and Brands
Q6: If we see about security, then how much secure SandBox platform is for securing Copyright Ownership? Also, is all of my Details kept private when I apply online in SandBox?
Sebastien Borget: All our smart contracts are audited by Certik.
Q7: When will users stop being afraid to use blockchain platforms? But how will Sandbox draw attention to the widespread use of this technology? How does Sandbox aspire to be a leader in the mass distribution of blockchain platforms?
Sebastien Borget: I think we should build great, fun, and engaging games at the very first point — not mentioning blockchain as the key argument. As you saw, The Sandbox looks great and fun to play.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaihWTEHb_E
Here’s one more video showcasing in-game footage. Or here, one that has been published today on our YouTube channel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCy0C-fZEkU
Showcasing the recent feature additions, fighting enemies, killing them, collecting items, rewards, quests, timers, and more. You come for the gameplay and stay as an engaged user, learning about blockchain as you explore the possibility of trading your items
Closing
Opinder Preet Singh: Thanks a lot @sebastienborget and @CMTushar. This was really an amazing experience learning about your project.
PS: I am participating in Binance IEO.
Sebastien 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 player's hands.
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