The Sandbox 2020 Year in Review: Building Gaming Virtual Worlds

“Happy New Year 2021 everyone! We wanted to thank our AMAZING community for being part of this journey. Over the past 3 years we’ve built the ground to establish the Players & Creators 100% Ownership Economy with #NFTs #LANDS $SAND and provided powerful creation tools. The revolution has started, let’s create jobs and change the way people live, create, play, govern and earn in the virtual world! 2021 will be the Year of the Metaverse and will bring The Sandbox to life!”

Sebastien BORGET, COO & Co-Founder of The Sandbox

https://youtu.be/0Jquhzr4d4k

TL;DR

• 2020 has been a great year for The Sandbox.
• Over 84,000 user accounts are registered on our Dashboard.
• Our community is one of the most active with 200,000+ users across Twitter, Telegram and Discord.
• Our Metaverse map value has increased 5x from $5M to $25M.
• We sold more than $20M $SAND and $2.5M USD worth of virtual LANDS, representing 40% of the total map supply. New LAND sales will continue in 2021.
• We’ve launched in beta all the main tools to create content and games as NFTs.
• The Sandbox Metaverse’s first public alpha version is coming in Q1 2021 to give players first-hand experience with our Play-to-Earn system, paving the way for season 1 and future seasons. It will represent everything our project is about, providing you as a player, creator, LAND owner, or $SAND holder a first taste of the ultimate blockchain Sandbox experience in our virtual gaming world. Pre-register now at https://sandbox.game/en/whitelist/experiences/

In The Sandbox, we are busy developing a new MMO/MMORPG gaming world that enriches both the gaming experience and players. We developed a new token economy, brought some of the most popular brands in digital entertainment to our virtual lands, and built a new transportation system to teleport gamers across tens of thousands of gaming lands.

The next steps are up to you. You, the players, are building up our virtual world 3D pixel by 3D pixel. In this tokenized world, whatever digital asset you build, can be converted into a non-fungible token (NFT). With NFTs, gamers obtain irrefutable ownership of their game experience and assets to play with and monetize them across any virtual land.

Gamers extract more value from gaming experiences and digital assets across our Play-to-Earn gaming system where players can be rewarded for their time and creative energy. The incentive to create becomes a more powerful force. Authenticity, originality, and rarity become verifiable value drivers. We are already seeing the emergence of unmatched virtual gaming experiences.

But before we look ahead, a look back provides some perspective on the innovations we will experience in gaming in 2021. Next year, the Nintendo 64, the console on which some of the most popular games of all time were released will celebrate its 25th birthday. Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda became blockbusters because the Nintendo 64 introduced an enhanced visual experience with a new level of graphics.

In 2021, 3D virtual worlds will bring another monumental upgrade to the user experience. Where virtual reality worlds converge, a limitless gaming experience is introduced in terms of visual experience, immersion, monetization, and more. Following is a review of pivotal developments in The Sandbox helping usher in this unparalleled gaming experience.

LAND Sales and the First Virtual LAND NFT-based Charity Auction

With your help, we developed a thriving token economy. The Sandbox users build, own, and monetize their gaming experiences using LAND NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and $SAND, the main utility token of The Sandbox metaverse.

The Sandbox held three sold-out pre-sales of the LAND ERC-721 token in 2020, following on a successful debut sale in 2019. In each sale, the LAND token sold out in hours, if not minutes. The latest LAND Presale 4 featured Premium LANDS and Premium ASSETS from the Smurfs™. The LAND token continues to see high demand in the secondary market. LAND consistently ranks in the top 10 traded NFTs by volume.

Following four successful sold-out LAND sales, Animoca Brands closed out the year with an oversold virtual LAND NFT charity auction. All proceeds will go to support UNICEF. The auction on OpenSea sold 144 LANDS on a 12 x 12 ESTATE.

This prime real estate is situated at the center of The Sandbox metaverse. The proceeds will support the UNICEF Crypto Fund, which supports open-source technology benefiting children and young people. The charity NFT auction shows how actions in the virtual world can have a positive impact in the real world.

$SAND Token Offering

The $SAND token offering took place in August. The total offering, 12 percent of 3 billion $SAND tokens, sold in seven days on the Binance Launchpad. Holders of the $SAND ERC-20 token use it for all transactions within the ecosystem and to participate in the platform governance.

$SAND currently has a market capitalization of $27.9 million and a circulating supply of 621.8M tokens. The strong early demand and finite supply of 3 billion tokens is anticipated to support token price appreciation. Investors can also earn $SAND by staking it through the liquidity mining program for SAND/ETH on Uniswap. Liquidity providers can earn a share of 1,500,000 $SAND in monthly rewards. Additionally, LAND holders receive a yield multiplier. This has enabled $SAND to enter in DeFi space by combining NFT and staking incentives!

Holders of LAND and $SAND can use their tokens to build and play in gaming lands on our first public alpha version of The Sandbox. The alpha Pre-Season 0 opens in Q1 2021. You can discover and start earning on our Play-to-Earn system by participating in over 40 exclusive experiences. Pre-register now to win $SAND and NFT assets.

Binance Listing

If you missed out at auction, $SAND is now listed on numerous exchanges, including Binance, Huobi, and Poloniex, and we continue to list on new exchanges. Another popular way to earn $SAND and LAND NFT rewards is through The Sandbox Liquidity Mining Program.

Among the prime LANDs sold at auction were those adjacent to the Binance estates in The Sandbox metaverse. In addition, exclusive Atari, Smurfs, and Binance NFTs were sold and may become collectors’ items. LAND owners can own, create, and publish game experiences on their LAND. Binance is sponsoring a contest that rewards creators who develop the most compelling games using The Sandbox Game Maker, one of many opportunities for game makers and players to win rewards.

Now, $SAND is listed on more than 16 exchanges, including 4 out of 5 the largest exchanges: Binance, Upbit, Huobi, Bithumb

VoxEdit Update

It’s been 2 years since The Sandbox introduced VoxEdit, our popular 3D modeling, and animation program, to create animated digital assets. This year, gamers will own and monetize each 3D pixel created through NFTs. In November, The Sandbox released its newest version of the VoxEdit with improved features to improve the game-making process and visual experience.

The VoxEdit is where the gaming experience begins. After building your assets, you can automatically tokenize them by converting them into NFTs. They are then ready for games or to be sold or traded in the Marketplace.

With new and updated features, VoxEdit remains one of the most advanced and intuitive builders for voxel game assets. 3D voxel gaming assets will populate thousands of virtual worlds in 2021. This year, Minecraft hit 200 million in-game sales. Grand Theft Auto, in comparison, has sold 120 million games. Remember, game assets you make in VoxEdit can be exported to Minecraft and other virtual gaming worlds. Start building your game experience at voxedit.io!

The Sandbox Game Maker Alpha V0.4 Is Here!

Alpha V0.4, our most ambitious update to Game Maker, is jam-packed with new features and improvements. We drew on skilled game creators and talented voxel artists from our metaverse and Game Makers Fund with one overarching goal — to develop the most feature-rich, intuitive platform to build high quality, immersive, and interactive 3D MMO/MMORPG gaming experiences.

Anyone can build 3D games for free! No coding experience is required. Bring your imagination alive in your own 3D games, add your games to the Game Maker library, participate in Game Jams, and share your games and digital game items across lands and metaverses.

That’s the beauty of The Sandbox interoperable blockchain. The games and game assets you create with Game Maker can be used, sold, and traded in other gaming metaverses. This is possible because The Sandbox metaverse interoperates with your other favorite game brands. Start building your games today!

Launch of The Sandbox Transportation System

Virtual worlds require new infrastructure. Toward this end, we recently introduced the transportation system for our metaverse. In The Sandbox metaverse, gamers can enjoy gaming experiences across 166,464 LANDs (408*408). The transportation system makes unlimited gaming possible.

Through spawn points and portals, you can visit adjacent lands, visit social hubs, and transport to distant gaming lands in a flash. My, how the gaming world has changed since you needed a Nintendo 64 to play Mario and a Sony PlayStation to access Gran Turismo.

The Sandbox Partners With Over 60 Major IPs in Gaming

The Sandbox has formed IP partnerships with over 60 major brands in digital entertainment, showing that top brands want to follow players into the metaverse. They include The Smurfs, Care Bears, Atari, CryptoKitties, Shaun the Sheep, and many other popular brands. These brands have created voxelized versions of their own worlds and popular characters on Sandbox lands.

The Sandbox has acquired the rights to produce and distribute collectible in-game assets based on these popular entertainment franchises. Each asset is represented by a non-fungible token (NFT). Gamers use these assets in games and theme parks.

Some of these NFTs are already appreciating in value as collectors’ items. Like traded baseball cards or CryptoKitties, some NFTs will be more highly valued based on IP brand, originality, rarity, and other unique attributes. Exclusive Smurf collectibles, for example, are selling as Premium assets. Thus, our growing partnerships with leading IP brands are another way we help Sandbox users create more value from their gaming assets.

CoinMarketCap Learn & Earn

If you want to learn more about how to create and monetize your game experience and assets in The Sandbox, take part in “The First NFT Gaming Campaign” on CMC Earn. CoinMarketCap users are learning about non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and their value and growing role in gaming ecosystems. While learning, you will have an opportunity to share in a $400,000 $SAND reward pool.

After a crazy busy year in The Sandbox, we close out the year with a vibrant token economy in $SAND and LAND, and superior game making and voxel tools to start terraforming and populating the land with gaming experiences and digital assets. The Sandbox provides limitless opportunities to monetize what you create and acquire. Instantly turn game assets into marketable NFTs, sell and trade-in The Sandbox Marketplace, the most popular NFT market on OpenSea, and soon other gaming metaverses.

Over 160,000 virtual gaming lands to visit with limitless opportunities to create and Play-to-Earn should be enough to keep any gamer happy.

By why stop there? True to the open-source ethos, The Sandbox will be the first gaming world to provide full cross-chain interoperability with other major gaming brands. Through our partnership with Ultra Games, for example, you can port your gaming experiences and assets to other metaverses, including Atari, Ubisoft, and AMD.

You Are About to Enter the Open Gaming Metaverse

As we close out 2020 and approach gaming in the open metaverse in the coming year, let’s reflect on our key achievements The Sandbox over the past three years.

From Build to Open Metaverses

• 2018: With your active input, we started to build The Sandbox metaverse.
• 2019: Japanese video game maker Square Enix and blockchain venture fund Hashed invested in The Sandbox. We launched the first beta of VoxEdit.
• 2020: Three LAND Pre-sales and the launch of our utility token $SAND on the Binance Launchpad sold out! Expert and newbie game developers are developing games on the first beta of GameMaker. Gamers are currently learning how to tokenize and monetize their game on the first Learn & Earn NFT gaming campaign on CoinMarketCap.

Gaming in The Sandbox in 2021

• The first public alpha of The Sandbox is coming in Q1 2021.
• Gaming starts with over 40 events in which you can earn NFTs and $SAND in Pre-Season 0.
• Get familiar with the Play-to-Earn system, and prepare for Season 1 and future Seasons.

Over 84K users are already registered with an account to play in The Sandbox metaverse, of which 156,000 are $SAND holders and 4,305 are LAND holders building unique tokenized NFT gaming experiences (tokenize = monetize). More than 44,000 wallets are linked to sell, buy, and trade NFTs.

We’re on our way to disrupt how players earn, play, and govern in the virtual world.

All these key achievements were possible thanks to the loyal members of our community, many of whom have been with us since The Sandbox video game launched in 2012. Now you own your game.

#NFTs & $SAND give players + creators 💯 ownership.

Projects supported by the SAND Foundation

Both the Game Makers Fund and Creators Fund are managed by the Foundation, used to support the ecosystem by offering grants to incentivize high quality content and game production in The Sandbox.

As of today the Foundation has distributed more than 22,800,000 SAND tokens to support the community through the following activities:

• Funding over 17 game projects, some of which have been unveiled to the public at https://medium.com/sandbox-game/game-makers-fund/home
• Distributing grants to 100 artists to produce NFTs, most of which can be seen at http://www.sandbox.game/shop
• Supporting local community managers to grow awareness around the globe about The Sandbox, NFTs and blockchain gaming via our Community Rewards and Ambassadors program https://medium.com/sandbox-game/the-sandbox-ambassador-program-4f00bb5c9c24
• Sponsoring prizes to the various contests organized by The Sandbox team (VoxEdit Contests and Game Jams) to stimulate the creativity of users around the world and get them to engage with the tools of our platform
• Supporting marketing activities contributing to the growth of awareness about NFTs, Metaverse and $SAND adoption, including co-marketing with Exchanges, Influencers etc such as WazirX SAND Giveaway or SAND Exclusive Campaign or Bitmart Halloween Trick or Treat

In January, your entire gaming experience will be tokenized so you can Play-to-Earn more across an expanding open metaverse.

Not yet familiar with The Sandbox? Learn about it all in one place:
https://sandboxgame.gitbook.io/the-sandbox/

Thank you for being part of our journey.

Welcome to The Sandbox Open Metaverse and limitless gaming lands!