Hi everyone! I’m Aminata, a French national living in Korea and working at VREX LAB as a marketer for the world’s first AR blockchain dApp, Dyverse and its spinoff cryptogame, Dynopoly.
Recently, I attended a blockchain gaming meetup at Hashed, the renowned crypto fund and blockchain accelerator from Korea, where I met the co-founder and COO of The Sandbox, Sebastien Borget.
What caught my eye was how The Sandbox was pioneering the non-fungible token space through its presence in the gaming world. The Sandbox game franchise is a leading user-generated content and gaming platform with over one million monthly active users. It was acquired last year by the Hong Kong based group Animoca to spearhead the group’s initiatives in blockchain gaming. Hashed, along with many other investors, recently invested in The Sandbox in a $2.5MM USD equity round.
The Sandbox, which boasts the ability to allow users to create their own voxel objects via its VoxEdit software(https://www.voxedit.io/), aims to merge easy-to-use gaming with blockchain by applying the non-fungible token concept to its 3D objects. As I was excited by The Sandbox’s potential to engage with users - especially in gamer-heavy Korea - I sat down with Sebastien to discuss The Sandbox’s future plans.
Q: Can you tell us how The Sandbox became more involved with Korea?
Well, let me begin by first introducing The Sandbox within the context of blockchain. The Sandbox has three major components: the Voxel Editor, the marketplace - where you tokenize user-generated content as NFTs - and the game maker itself. Our goal is to disrupt industry leaders such as Minecraft and Roblox to establish Voxel as a new leader in the next ten years. We see The Sandbox as a place where creators can make voxel assets and monetize their game experiences thanks to the blockchain.
Going back to your question about Korea, Korea is a priority for us, as we see Korea as our primary market, consumer-wise. Korea is known for being advanced in the gaming space in multiplayer games so we think that it totally makes sense for use to prioritize Korea for launching our The Sandbox blockchain game and our SAND token as we seek to heighten localization and tailor our services to the Korean market.
Actually, our recent investment from Hashed, the leading Korean crypto fund, was the first step to getting us more exposure in Korea. Until now we have been more of an international project but now we are looking to establish ourselves as a stronger presence in Korea through partnerships and more. Personally, I’m delighted at the prospect of working with Koreans. There is very tight collaboration here in the ecosystem between the blockchain funds, the media, influencers, and consumer adoption. Moreover, I was surprised to see how many people own cryptocurrency wallets supported by Samsung phones. So these are all factors that make us excited about Korea.
Q: What are some Korea specific steps you plan to take concerning Korean business partnerships?
We have a partnership with Klaytn, the blockchain protocol developed by Kakao. Although we are restricted from disclosing specific details, Kakao is working on how to bring mass adoption to NFTs. Klaytn will launch its public mainnet in late June, and in July it will make dApps available inside the Kakao blockchain wallet. We will be providing our game and our services to cater to Korean users via our partnership with Klaytn.
Q: Can you talk more about your SAND token?
Users can monetize their 3D models, animations, and content through our own cryptocurrency called “SAND”. It is a utility token that can be used for multiple purposes. One of them is as a currency for transacting in our marketplace - buying, selling, and collecting assets as well as lands and avatars. It will also be used for governance in The Sandbox community for the next features on our roadmap and prioritize them. Also, crowdfunding to support thriving artists and game makers will be another function. Finally, SAND tokens will also function for user-generated content moderation with staking mechanisms that prevent inappropriate content being uploaded by users.
At the moment we are working with several exchanges, including Korean exchanges, to get SAND listed. I do believe that as more gamers and members join The Sandbox, there will be much more usage and demand for SAND tokens, not to mention a strong growth for NFTs. Concerning the listing of SAND tokens, we will have more announcements to make later this year, especially as we launch our marketplace in September.
Q: Do you have any final message for Korean fans or users?
Ahnnyeonghaseyo Korea! I want to invite you to follow our project and join our discord(https://discordapp.com/invite/vAe4zvY) or telegram(https://t.me/sandboxgame). I believe NFTs hold very strong potential and our user-generated content platform The Sandbox is a unique offering that lets anyone make their own Voxel, 3D blocks. It is like playing with 3D digital LEGOs. It can be a nice way to earn crypto while enjoying the educative gameplay. We would also love to work with Korean creators who want to share how they are creating with VoxEdit to showcase their talent.
I left my meeting with Sebastien wanting to learn more about The Sandbox, and thankfully he reassured me that he would be back in Korea soon to further promote The Sandbox marketplace, SAND tokens, and work with creative Koreans who could build interesting content with Voxel Editor. I sincerely hope that these efforts can come together to advance the world of NFTs more quickly.
