Sebastien Borget / The Sandbox

Sebastien Borget on The Sandbox metaverse and NFTs

InterviewMarch 11, 202115:15

In this episode

Ashton Addison interviews Sebastien Borget, the COO of The Sandbox. The Sandbox is a metaverse where players can own Land, create NFT’s, create games, voxels and buy or sell creations on a marketplace using the native SAND Token. Sebastien discusses the future of The Sandbox, NFTs and how to get involved early.

Key takeaways
  • The Sandbox is a user-generated content platform where creators can build 3D assets, games, and NFTs using tools like Voxel Editor and Game Maker.
  • The Sandbox virtual world contains 166,461 total land parcels as NFTs, with approximately 45 percent sold since 2019 to over 5,000 landowners including major brands.
  • Land prices have appreciated from $32 in December 2019 to an average of $500-600 on secondary markets, with rare parcels selling for over $1.2 million.
  • SAND token serves as the platform's medium of exchange for purchasing land and user-generated content assets on the marketplace launching in beta.
  • Major partners including Atari, Binance, Coinmarketcap, and entertainment brands have purchased land to build game experiences and engage with the Sandbox community.

Read the interview

Sandbox co-founder: SAND token to pass fully to users within three to five years

Sebastien Borget, co-founder of The Sandbox and president of the Blockchain Game Alliance, explains how users create, own and sell NFTs and virtual LAND in the platform's blockchain-based world. Recorded in March 2021, the conversation covers LAND sales, the SAND token and the roadmap he described at the time, including a marketplace beta and a play-to-earn season.

A user-built world on the blockchain

Ashton: What is The Sandbox? 00:21

Sebastien Borget: I'm the co-founder of The Sandbox and the president of the Blockchain Game Alliance. The Sandbox is a gaming virtual world on the blockchain where users can make 3D assets as well as game experiences and monetize them using blockchain technology, essentially non-fungible tokens (NFTs), as well as SAND, the utility token of the platform.

Ashton: How do NFTs work inside The Sandbox? 01:05

Sebastien Borget: At its basis, The Sandbox is a user-generated content platform. Anyone can make their own games and their own NFTs. We provide an NFT maker called VoxEdit, a 3D editor where you can upload your 3D models, animate them, publish them on our marketplace and tokenize them as NFTs to sell to other users. They can then use those assets in our Game Maker, a no-code, no-programming tool for creating game experiences. Beyond asset NFTs, we also have LAND. As a virtual world, we have a map of 166,461 LANDs in total, each one a unique NFT at a unique location. Since 2019 we've sold about 45 percent of the map across several pre-sale and public sale rounds. Each LAND lets you publish a game in our virtual world and monetize it as players and creators use it. We have more than 5,000 LAND holders, including partners such as Atari, RollerCoaster Tycoon, Care Bears and the Smurfs. Exchanges including Binance, CoinMarketCap and Coincheck, the number one exchange in Japan, also own LAND and will be building experiences there.

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Transcript

Read the full transcript 2,277 words, auto-generated and lightly edited

sandbox i know your team has been working on it for quite a long time and you have some great recent announcements so if we can just kick it off sebastian with just getting a little bit of background and overview on what is the sandbox absolutely so well i'm the ceo and co-founder of the sunbox as well as the president of the blockchain game alliance

the sandbox it's a gaming virtual world on the if you're on blockchain where users can make 3d assets as well as game experience and monetize them through the use of blockchain technology essentially non-fungible tokens nfts as well as send the menu gt token of the platform that's great and yeah there's nfts have been so hot recently i know your guys's volume

has kicked up as well and it's been you know in forbes and all over the news can you just you know talk a little bit about how do nfts work inside the sandbox and just a little bit of background on that because i know a lot of people are just still getting into it right now absolutely we've seen as well this fantastic growth currently in 2021 we have some amazing

record breaking sales actually which i'll talk about but first to your question the sandbox at the very basis is a user-generated content platform anyone can make their games anyone can make their nfc so we do provide an nft maker called vox edit that is a 3d editor where you can upload your 3d model animate them publish them on our marketplace tokenize them at nfcs and

start selling them to older users for them to use in our game maker which is a no code no programming required tool so you can create game experience and use those nfc besides those asset nfts we also have lens in sandbox so as a virtual world we have a map composed of 166 461 lands in total each one is a unique nft at a unique location

and since 2019 we've sold about 45 percent of the map during different round of pre-sale and public sale each of those land as an ft allows you to publish a game on our virtual world and start monetizing it as older players and creators will use it so as this digital space nft virtual lan nft we are now one of the

leading virtual world building contributing to building the metaverse and we have the largest number of holders more than 5000 users on land in sandbox including as well some of our major partners ips and brown brands that we've brought to the platform which include atari roller coaster tycoon the ship care bears or smurf which and several others that we will be

announcing later this year as well in a term of hollywood ips celebrities musician etc that's quite exciting we also have major exchanges who own land in sandbox binance coin market cap which is the creep leading crypto platform con check the number one exchange in japan among all the landowners who will be

building a game experience and multiplayer experience in our virtual world and use the land as well to interact with our community of users in our gaming platform wow that is so cool sebastian to have all these brand partners in one metaverse i can imagine you know seeing the smurfs and roller coaster tycoon all in the same game that sounds incredible and you mentioned

that there's you know there's game creation and there's voxels so if i understand correctly you know any individual user can you know create games inside of the game or create whatever they want inside the game can you just talk about the importance of user-generated content and is really that the crux of like the metaverse well we think that it's the key in

sandbox like we've as you mentioned the sandbox has been long out there for a long time it's actually an ips that exists now for more than 10 years started on mobile on ios and android where we had more than 40 million in stores since we launched it in 2011 but we have that very specific issue that even though creators were contributing with amazing

content to the platform and hence contributing to the success of the game itself we have no way to reward them in a fair way because of the platform we were running on to and all the limitations with blockchain as soon as we saw at the end of 2017 cryptokitties and crypto punks appearing we saw immediately the potential to using nft and applying to user generated content

and allowing anyone turning in any player into a creator that could own their creation finally own their asset and be able to exchange them with other users use them in as many games and platform our game maker but potentially others thanks to his interoperability of nfts and monetize that creation by sending it either on the sandbox marketplace

or as well due to the decentralized nature and commissioned a permissionless manner on other marketplaces secondary marketplaces like open c for example that's really what we wanted to do and power creator and power players the use of nfcs and i'm really excited that today in our community strong of 200 users members we are already of one of the largest creators community

whether they are voxel artists or game creators too that's great and you mentioned there's nfts and there's also the land now there's a lot of investors that you know they really can't afford real real estate in the real world because it's becoming so expensive i know that the virtual land inside of the sandbox has also appreciated as well can you just talk about the land sales

how much has happened how much is it worth the appreciation and is it easy for everyday individuals to get involved with purchasing land so of course so when we design the virtual world of sandbox that compose of a little bit more than 166 hours on land we also designed it to be large since we have the highest number of lands in comparison to existing

decentralized travel and as accessible as possible to any creator our land each of our land one by one is also pretty big so you don't need many land awesome experience but if you do you'll get benefits as well the and so when we started the first pre-sale back in december 2019 there was a 40 discount on the price so land were as low as 30 the equivalent of 32 dollars back then

which is a very little amount for accessing game creation and being able to by essentially have your presence in the metaverse now lambda value has started to increase in price but is still reasonably very accessible so the average land price on the secondary marketplace is around 500 600 depending on the days and weeks

but as we continue to supply new lands on the primary sales during what we call public public sales waves which we run two already last month we are continuing to supply new lands and hence new opportunities for creators landowners artists etc to acquire them at a fixed price essentially so the smallest land are

about a thousand sun which is as of today the equivalent of 200 300 depending on the filtration of sand which is still very reasonable compared to all the other decentralized virtual world however we also have run auctions for the users who wanted to have the largest most rare parcel so up to 24 by 24. and last month we've sold one 24 by 24 for more than 300 000

or 1.2 million sun token on an open sea auction which is one of the record and i was mentioning before in february we sold in total for more than 7.9 million sun which is three million dollar word for flam which is more than what we sold in more than a year over a year before so that's just that just that shows the acceleration of nfts and the adoption for virtual land as a

digital asset of value wow sebastian that's incredible and yeah these nfts are really exploding right now and you mentioned that all these people are buying it with sand token and i just want to talk a little bit more about san token can you just talk about the other functionalities of the sand token within the metaverse and does it create a sustainable ecosystem

for sand and the users in the in the metaverse absolutely so we first of all we designed sand to build a utility token that will support as a medium of exchange the platform so enabling users to buy land to buy assets made by other creators so user-generated content on our marketplace and actually the marketplace will be launching in beta this month so that's one of the exciting

news coming up this month and we're happy to announce on this channel today ashton and we also waited a long time to introduce sun we only introduced sun last august who through binance launchpad because we wanted to show the world that we can build they can access the tool they can play with the content creation and everything was already ready usable

before the token arrives then sun will also be a way to participate in the governance of our decentralized virtual world we are planning that over the next three to five years sun token will be available 100 in the ends of the users so us as the company will no longer earn anything and as such by participating in the dow they'll be able to take all

the main decision that drives our roadmap and the governance of the sand roadmap as well as how the foundation should be supported to keep funding artists and creators to build more content as well as other parameters like the transaction fees on the marketplace etc finally send token is also a way to access defy gaming combining

nfcs and d5 so you can stake your sun token to earn some rewards in guilds you mentioned the three to five year vision for the sandbox i know that you are talking about the marketplace coming out right now this month which seems like an important stepping stone towards the growth of the platform can you just talk about maybe the six month to one year

vision of what's to come with the sandbox right now yes so well we are finally opening our marketplace in beta where selected artists and creators will be selling their creation and start earning sand tokens that we are going to progressively open it to more and more users so anyone in the future will be able to mint and sell their creation

for other creators to use inside their game creation and participate in the circular economy in sandbox where players and creators are both rewarded for participating in the platform we are also working on the launch of what we call what we call for now pre-season zero there will be a new name once we unveil it that

will essentially introduce play to earn in sandbox where a first group of users will be allowed to access in the public alpha to play this season with event season which consists in a 15 days long series of games and levels that can be played by by them and once they reach a certain progression level they'll be able to claim

specific rewards including sun token and nfts and hence have the possibility either to keep those nfts for collection or to turn those sell them trade them on the marketplaces and monetize turn their time into a revenue stream down the line after we are planning to add more and more packages of feature in our game maker that will provide more diversity in the

type of game experiences available in the virtual world we're also going to introduce live events with artists and celebrities that's one of the very cool things we're working on and well multi-platform as i mentioned sandbox is going to be a multi-platform 3d virtual world so producingly progressively introduce the sandbox to

mobile as well as hopefully consoles in the future well they can join our discord channel on telegram channel the link is link tree sandbox to have access all the different social channels we have an amazing community of creators artists players landowners who are here to assist you on board you to become

Addict of the metaverse to understand what we are building to train you to create your own nft to create your own game with the game maker and then we hope to see you in the metaverse very soon with the sandbox and to learn more about nfgs as well great thank you so much sebastian all the best with sandbox moving forward and let's follow up in the near future

thank you ashton and see you soon bye you

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