The Comprehensive Guide to Blockchain Gaming, User-Generated Contents and The Sandbox Platform
After eating one’s fill and securing where he/she lives, approximately all of us want to have some fun. It could be making music, creating art, writing a poet, or any activity you think of. And we can add gaming to this list as another option for some of us. When you count any of conventional games such as Hide-and-Seek or just a football game, these are also the results of people’s aim to have fun. But the world didn’t stop changing and transforming into a newer, more developed, and more creative place. So that people’s areas of interest also changing.
Before 15 years from now, it’s almost to think that someone can create a video just by himself/herself. Before 10 years from now, it’s again impossible to imagine individual-created platforms exist. But it’s 2020 and the world changed! Now you must keep in step with it or just become a dinosaur in the pages of dusty ‘’History books’’.
What is Blockchain?
Satoshi Nakamoto, the one/group/entity that created the Bitcoin idea and first published it with humanity in 2008, had directed us to a new, decentralized, more individual-based world with the help of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is not the first movement against centralized authorities but up to now, it’s clear to say that Bitcoin gained an effective role in people’s lives. We can reach any financial asset, tool, or platform with the help of pre-explained blockchain technology and its use cases. Now, it’s the time to revolutionize the existing one according to our priorities.
Blockchain is the main idea behind all existing cryptocurrencies under the leadership of Bitcoin. The main goal of blockchain technology is to make all financial assets, transfers, transactions, exchanges, and all you think open to everyone. So that, humanity will never face such financial crisis or economic dependency on any other 3rd part organizations which constitutes the reasons for the latest global economic collapse that happened before it. It’s estimated to be accessible to any of us, as fast as it can be and the cheapest one ever created on the Earth.
The words I used to explain a brief history of ‘’How and why that innovation to be created?’’ belong only to the monetary parts. But as humankind, we’re not only the ones that are programmed to ‘’earn money, spend money, repeat it’’. We must sustain our lives by having fun, also. So that the gaming industry exists over the centuries. But the 2000s make force the gaming companies to transform themselves in a more attractive, more user-centered way. And the main subject of this article is ‘’How gaming technology transformed itself recently and what’s the role of blockchain technology on it?’’.
What is the Sandbox, briefly?
Sandbox is a platform filled with User-Generated Contents (UGN). It means that the roadmap, the main actions to be taken and the theme of included games are only up to you. You can imagine the whole platform as an empty notebook and also please imagine that you have any kind of artistic material to fill it. Sandbox platform is a kind of digital world. The users are able to fill, clear, transform, or change it. But how is it possible? And where the blockchain technology to be implemented?
Sandbox world consists of 166,464 LANDs, which are limited 1x1 sized parcels. Users are able to purchase LANDs to show their creative works on the Sandbox world. With the sum of all 166,464 LANDs, we call it Sandbox Metaverse. If you imagine the Metaverse as ‘’hotel’’, every single room is a LAND. But here, the difference comes, rooms are not the same. You can design your own room by yourself. You can take any material into it as well as you can throw something out. So each material you have already created and took it into a hotel room to make it yourself is named ASSET on Sandbox Metaverse. ASSETs are the cryptocurrencies created on both ERC-721 and ERC-1155 chain which enables users to create their own products and realizing the multi-asset usage on one single smart contract. And there is one more terminology to be known while diving into Sandbox Metaverse: ESTATEs. If you own more than 1 LAND and make them bigger by adding one to one, it becomes ESTATE. Simply, you can create materials named ASSETs, you can fill your LANDs with ASSETs and you can become an ESTATEowner with holding more LANDs at the same time. Or another point of view: Metaverse is a complete space of Sandbox, anyone can attribute to fill and shape it!
How to own LANDs, ASSETs, and ESTATEs?
As I mentioned above, the Sandbox Metaverse is a complete digital space to be fulfilled in the future. And that space is sliced into 166,464 same pieces called as LAND. Again I mentioned above, these cryptocurrencies are created on the Ethereum chain via using different smart contracts. So the users or believers of blockchain technology can have some LANDs. The Sandbox team made 4 different rounds of LAND sale with decreasing discounts on LAND price and new opportunities to participate in the Sandbox Metaverse. You can check the website or follow official social media accounts to keep updated about the upcoming LAND pre-sale. It’s only ‘’give ETH get LAND’’, basically. Also in some of the LAND pre-sales, it’s available for users to have bigger LANDs to make into ESTATEs. But ASSETownership is somewhat different than exchanging from/to ETH.
ASSETs are not only previously created cryptocurrencies/NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) on Ethereum blockchain. Everyone has the ability to create and publish their own ASSET. So, this is a more dynamic portion of the Sandbox ecosystem. Anyone interested in blockchain, innovation, or just gaming can create new ASSETs, upload them into the Sandbox platform and reach more audiences for their hard work. The Sandbox platform has introduced one of their 3 main products, VOXEDIT, to give an opportunity to anyone who wants to contribute to Metaverse development. Here’s an explanatory video about how to use it.
What’re the Remaining 2 Main Products of the Sandbox?
As I mentioned above, VOXEDIT is the main tool for participants to create new ASSETs and bring more value to Sandbox Metaverse. But it’s limited to create and expand it. Now it’s time for marketing, PR, and communication with others. So one of the remaining 2 products is named as MarketPlace. Here is the main bazaar of the Sandbox platform. Users are able to find different ASSETs, to purchase them, or to sell their own products. There are 4 different types of ASSETs according to their Catalysts: Common — Rare — Epic — Legendary. And also every single ASSET can be equipped with 5 different Gems. All of these give them another piece of singularity, also making them more and more unique.
The last product of the Sandbox platform is GameMaker. It’s designed to bring different skilled content generators into the same place and create 3D games for the community, itself. Bringing more games into the platform will make it more user-friendly and decentralized as it brings fun into blockchain…
What’s $SAND Token and How to Utilize It?
SAND is the main utility token for the Sandbox platform. It has total of 3 billion token supply in total. If anyone is interested in purchasing any of the ASSETs available on the MarketPlace or any other services available on the Sandbox platform, he/she must have $SAND tokens to realize it. In other platforms, it’s mandatory to hold minimal amounts of ETH, the main cryptocurrency of the chain which SAND created, but on Sandbox Metaverse it’s not mandatory. The platform consumes ERC-1776 so there’re no additional fees to be covered by users. All fees are generated to reach any kind of service feeless. In other words, if the users hold enough $SAND on the wallet, it’s ok to maintain the process.
The total amount of 3,000,000,000 SAND tokens will be distributed as follows.
NFT Meets DeFi
I mentioned ASSETs as NFT, but I must say that all the tokens created for utilization of the Sandbox platform are an example of NFT with the only exception of the main token, $SAND.
NFT or Non-Fungible Tokens are unique cryptocurrencies all over the world. Normally, all of ETH, SAND, or BTC tokens are the same. There’s no difference between Bitcoin mined in 2010 or 2020. But NFTs’s totally different. I mentioned that anyone has the ability to create its own ASSET via VOXEDIT. So all of these ASSETs are NFT. Also, these NFTs are not limited tokens to one platform. In other words, you can transfer NFTs both intraplatform and interplatform ways.
DeFi (Decentralized Finance) is the latest product developed by the crypto community to bring more transparency to it. Users can reach almost all financial tools via using DeFi platforms such as Uniswap or SushiSwap. Basically, there’s a pool filled with cryptos, you come here, take whatever you want, and bring another type of cryptocurrency. So the pool saves the primary status but users complete transactions.
With the latest announcement of SAND Liquidity Mining, NFT idea and DeFi becomes together. There are 2 different phases of mining. For the first phase, 1,500,000 SAND is allocated for reward distribution. And for the second phase, the rewards will be multiplied according to NFT holding which can be achieved by creating/having more ASSETs.
