Introduction
Sandbox is a blockchain-based gaming platform featuring virtual worlds where players can build, own and monetize their experiences.
The sandbox runs on the Ethereum blockchain and includes a metaverse where players are free to create their own virtual worlds, using their creativity and imagination to customize as they wish while collaborating with others.
Interestingly, the team behind the project already launched a non-blockchain version of the game (also known as the "sandbox") in 2012, which has over 40 million downloads and an active user base of 1 million players at the same time.
In the simplest terms, imagine a sandbox, voxel graphics game like Minecraft, where you can create your own server, join other people's servers, and unleash your creativity in the game, building and interacting with the game Element interaction.
However, unlike traditional gaming solutions, Sandbox allows you to have everything you create in-game.
Every in-game asset on Sandbox is automatically converted into Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), unique, rare, and non-fungible digital assets on the blockchain that allow users to verify authenticity and ownership easily.
Tokenomics
Sand
Based on Ethereum's ERC-20 standard, SAND is the native token of the Sandbox platform. Like the elements we introduced in the previous section, SAND plays a key role in the blockchain gaming ecosystem.
SAND implements the following use cases on the platform:
- Access: Unless creators offer their games for free, players must use SAND to buy them and gain access to the virtual world metaverse.
- Medium of Exchange: Creators, players, and artists use SAND to buy and lease land and to buy and sell assets on the marketplace.
- Staking: SAND can be used to generate passive income and can earn additional rewards by owning LAND. As mentioned, this is the only way to get Catalyst catalysts and Gems to create valuable assets.
- Governance: SAND also functions as a governance token, meaning holders can use their coins to vote or delegate voting power to other players to decide essential matters about the sandbox ecosystem. According to the creators, the sandbox will operate in the future as a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), in which users will be responsible for developing and maintaining the project.
- Foundation: The foundation is a pool in the sandbox ecosystem, and 50% of transaction fees (5% in total, with the other 50% going to the staking pool) are automatically distributed. The primary role of the foundation is to provide grants to creators and artists to fill the blockchain gaming metaspace with high-quality content and games.
Land
As the name suggests, LAND represents digital real estate in the sandbox meta domain in the form of unforgeable ERC-721 tokens on Ethereum.
The Sandbox has a map where you can find all the LAND, which the project team gradually sells to users at the price of SAND.
Once you buy a LAND for yourself, you have full ownership and control over everything on it. Thus you can freely design and run your own games on your land, with precise game mechanics that you can populate with in-game assets.
In addition, you can invite other players to help "cultivate" your land or rent it out to game creators for a profit. In other words, a LAND represents a server where the owner can decide what game to run, what game mechanics to implement, what assets to use, and whether players can join (and whether they have to buy the game or play it for free).
The Sandbox metaverse consists of 166,464 LANDs that can be pieced together to form ESTATES. In the future, the developers of this blockchain game will also launch DISTRICTS, which represent ESTATES owned by multiple players.
ASSETS (Assets)
ASSETs are ERC-1155 tokens created by users that they can use to fill their LANDs.
After creating their ASSETs, players own them, which they can freely customize and use in-game, move to other worlds, or trade with users on the platform.
Since players can buy "ASSETs" on the market, they don't necessarily have to create their own game items to play Sandbox.
Catalyst
Catalysts are ERC-20 tokens that are burnt at the time of use, which you can leverage to define the rank and scarcity of your ASSET.
By adding catalysts to props, NFTs will gain an empty pocket that can be filled with gems (more on that later). The better your catalyst, the more pockets the item has. For this reason, you can put more gems in it. In other words, the most powerful assets in the Sandbox metaverse are the items with the highest level and lowest scarcity. According to the creators, the only way to get a catalyst is by staking Sandbox’s SAND tokens.
Gem
Like Catalyst, Gems are also ERC-20 tokens that are destroyed when used, which players can use to customize their ASSETs. Put Gems in ASSET's pocket to define their stats and primary stats (e.g., 25 Strength and 50 Magic). For this reason, how useful your props depend on the gems you populate. Like Catalyst, you can earn Gems by staking SAND.
Ecosystems
The Sandbox is made up of three products:
VoxEdit: A free 3D voxel modeling package that allows users to easily design and create assets and export them to the marketplace for profit or to game makers for use in the games themselves.
Exchange Market: A web-based marketplace is a venue where users can publish and sell their ASSETS after the first time uploading them to the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS).
Game Maker: lets users build and test their unique 3D games within the Sandbox metaverse. It’s a simple program that doesn’t require any coding knowledge to use
Conclusion
With a unique concept, integrated blockchain, and creative freedom, Sandbox allows players and developers to unleash their creativity to build and populate virtual worlds while having true ownership of their in-game assets.
References
[1] The Sandbox, Play, Create, Own, Govern, Earn - Welcome to the Metaverse, The sandbox white paper, accessed 10th, April 2022.
[2] What Is The Sandbox? The Sandbox Medium, accessed 10th, April 2022.