We Raised $93M To Grow The Sandbox Open NFT Metaverse

We share our progress and how this investment will boost our open, UGC gaming metaverse and creators’ economy.

Today, we’re announcing a new milestone for The Sandbox with a $93M investment round led by Softbank Vision Fund 2.

We’re extremely excited about this investment that will help us grow The Sandbox open NFT metaverse. It’s also great news for you, our community, as the this funding will help us accelerate the growth of our creators’ economy — as we’ll explain in this article.

TL;DR:

• The Sandbox virtual gaming world has raised $93M to accelerate the development of our metaverse.
• The investment will allow us to support more creators, artists, and talents, to add more brands and IPs as we move toward our full launch.
• Our ecosystem is expanding rapidly, with over 50 first-party projects, six development studios, thousands of creators, and brand-new jobs being created through our play-to-earn model.
• Our vision to turn players into creators in a player-owned economy is expanding to develop more digital opportunities in a complete ecosystem.

For anyone new, The Sandbox is a virtual gaming world where anyone can play, build, own, and monetize their experiences on a virtual LAND they own using NFTs and $SAND, our utility token. $SAND enables players to play, own, govern, trade, and earn by playing and gathering resources through our play-to-earn model.

All content is made using our three free content creation tools:

1. The VoxEdit NFT builder for building 3D voxel-based game ASSETS
2. The NFT Marketplace for buying, sharing, and selling ASSETS
3. The Game Maker tool for building complete game experiences without needing to write any code

These tools feed into a decentralized, player-driven ecosystem with a creators’ economy that will allow people to make a living while having fun creating. New jobs will emerge from the creators’ economy, from virtual architects to fashion designers, from concert promoters to event planners. This will accelerate as we enter our upcoming launch phase.

With our play-to-earn model, players as well as creators can earn revenues from their activity into the metaverse. For example, our Season Pass NFT mechanic brings opportunities to earn SAND and NFTs through gameplay.

But not only creators can have a job in The Sandbox. Players can turn their entertainment time into a revenue generating activity. Your hobby can become your job!

What Have We Achieved So Far?

A global community supporting virtual artists and creators is already emerging in The Sandbox. Our ecosystem continues to expand rapidly:

• This year, our user base has grown 500%, reaching 500K wallets.
• Over 50 first-party projects are in progress.
• Our Creators Fund is supporting six game development studios building new experiences.
• We have over 30,000 monthly active users with 50% of them spending more than 1 hour per day.
• Hundreds of creators are busy creating ASSETS and experiences using VoxEdit and Game Maker.
• Over 100 experiences are shared per week in the Game Maker Gallery.
• Over 100 artists have sold user-created NFTs for 2.2M $SAND on the Marketplace.
• We’ve paid over 2.5M $SAND to 30,000 creators and game makers, and have 281M SAND in our Foundation (equivalent to $200M+ as of October 2021).

As new players keep joining the metaverse between now and launch (and beyond), new jobs will be created as our play-to-earn model fully comes to life. Here are some additional stats on The Sandbox growth in 2021:

Where Are We Now?

Following four years of development in conjunction with our community, The Sandbox is launching in phased stages. This started with the release of beta tools for creators and is now approaching a public alpha for players starting in November. This will introduce our first play-to-earn season, where selected players can be rewarded for their time spent playing and gathering resources that can be sold or traded.

The Alpha will grant access to The Sandbox Main Hub and a few experiences to all players. The Hub is a central meeting place that introduces you to the factions that you can explore through further adventures via an NFT Season Pass that’s limited to just 5,000 users through a lottery & giveaway system. We’ll open up the experiences to a wider audience following the alpha, so everyone will get their chance to play them!

Over the past year, The Sandbox has become the primary metaverse destination for NFTs and virtual landowners. With over 12,000 unique LAND owners, The Sandbox is the top virtual real estate company today and this has been supported by countless brands, celebrities, and crypto/NFT communities.
We have partnered with over 165 brands, IPs and artists including Snoop Dogg, DeadMau5, Avenged Sevenfold, The Walking Dead, Smurfs, Manchester City, Square Enix, Atari, and others reaching an audience of over 1 billion fans.

Our LAND sales are unique as they introduce a key partner with new NFT content — like Snoop Dogg’s virtual mansion and NFT collection — and sell LANDS near the partner so that fans can own a LAND near their favorite brand, artist, or celebrity.

The Sandbox has established a very dynamic community of creators who are using VoxEdit and the #nocode (no need to know code) Game Maker to launch their own NFTs and participate in game challenges with play-to-earn prizes in $SAND.

You can already find a Creator’s Hall of Fame and recommended Metaverse Builder Studios for hire with teams of professional who can build fantastic experiences for LAND owners.
Through the 5 previous Game Jams already launched and our sponsoring of the Global Game Jam, The Sandbox creation tools have proven they are accessible to anyone, even if they had no game making experience before. They are also powerful, pushing the limits of creativity with innovative gameplay. Hundreds of community members have found a new vocation in the metaverse through attending the various live streams or the Bootcamp programs launched by The Sandbox and our partners.

What’s Coming Next

Here’s a look at some developments planned for the near future in The Sandbox:

• November 2021 — The Alpha: The Hub opens for everyone, as well as first play-to-earn season goes live.
• Q1 2022 — Gradual Rollout: Progressive opening of the metaverse to LAND owners who have built high-quality experiences.
• Q1-Q2 2022 — Virtual Entertainment Destination: Launch of the first virtual concerts (Snoop Dogg, Deadmau5) and The Walking Dead game.
• Q2 2022 — Player-Driven Governance: Launch of the DAO with staking and voting mechanisms for SAND, LAND, and AVATAR holders. This is a key goal that will make The Sandbox even more decentralized as more control over the metaverse is put into the hands of players and creators.
• Q4 2022 — Platform Expansion: Expand The Sandbox player base through launch of a mobile version.
• Q4 2022 — Community Tokens: Launch community tokens.

Our long-term vision for the next five to ten years is to become one of the leading open metaverses. We want to be on par with the notorious centralized ones while offering a better value proposition for creators and players through thousands of experiences available made by creators or IP/brands, by launching their own NFTs and play-to-earn seasons, and by engaging their communities through various activities and events.

Welcome to Our Metaverse

NFTs are changing the way we live, work, create, play, and earn in virtual worlds, empowering players, creating value — and new jobs — in the metaverse. In this era of new possibilities, The Sandbox is emerging as a new NFT-based, open metaverse, where all the content, the economy and even the governance of our virtual world will be in the hands of the players, creators, and users like you who contribute to this world. We can’t wait to welcome you to our metaverse!

If you want to join the adventure into a new metaverse, visit us at https://www.sandbox.game to find out more. Please also make sure to join our community, so you don’t miss out on exciting news, announcements and opportunities:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheSandboxGame

Discord: https://discordapp.com/invite/vAe4zvY

Telegram: https://t.me/sandboxgame