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Use Case

The Sandbox is a decentralized, community-driven metaverse platform built on Ethereum. It was created by French blockchain game development company Pixowl in collaboration with the blockchain infrastructure provider Animoca Brands. The project was originally launched in 2011, but the Sandbox metaverse was officially announced in 2019. In 2023, Animoca Brands still oversees the development and expansion of The Sandbox (TSB) as it works to become a fully realized metaverse platform and emerge from its pre-release state.

The Sandbox allows users to create, publish, and monetize their own metaverse experiences using The Sandbox's Game Maker and VoxEdit tools. The Sandbox aims to become a leading metaverse platform with virtual land and an internal marketplace where users can buy, sell, and trade virtual real estate, in-game assets, and NFTs using its native currency, SAND. However, the project's overall vision is to create a fully decentralized and open-source virtual world where users can create, explore, and play in unique and immersive gaming experiences. The Sandbox team aims to drive value through a combination of e-commerce and blockchain gaming with the goal of creating a vibrant ecosystem of developers, creators, and players.

Primary Use Case

The Sandbox’s primary use case is to provide a platform that serves as a base foundation for an economically sound, blockchain-based metaverse where users can digitally interact with one another to exchange goods and services, create and use unique gaming experiences, and buy, sell, and develop virtual land on which these experiences are created. The platform uses the Ethereum blockchain as its underlying technological infrastructure, which powers its marketplaces, games, and other mechanics requiring transactions. The use of Ethereum also allows The Sandbox to enable a decentralized metaverse platform that gives all stakeholders the ability to not only own a portion of the platform itself, but also to govern its development, economy, and other socio-economic aspects.

The Sandbox's primary use case is providing a new type of digital ecosystem where users can own and operate their virtual experiences and control the value they create. It empowers creators and developers to monetize their creations through a unique ecosystem of digital assets, enabling them to sell their creations to other users, monetize their assets, and even lease out their virtual land. In addition The Sandbox provides a set of tools to help users create their own gaming experiences, such as Game Maker and VoxEdit. Game Maker is a user-friendly tool that allows users to create 3D games, while VoxEd is a tool that lets users create voxel assets and animations for use within their games. Together, these tools allow users to create unique and immersive gaming experiences within The Sandbox metaverse.

Secondary Use Cases

The Open Metaverse

The Sandbox is a part of the larger Open Metaverse, an identified methodology to developing a metaverse that’s driven by the underlying principles and ethos of crypto and blockchain. This includes maintaining standards of permissionless accessibility, decentralized control, and free creative potential where value is driven by and for the core users of the Open Metaverse. The Open Metaverse, economically, sits at the intersection of two primary technologies: gaming and blockchain.

From these two technologies, it enables Open Metaverse platforms, such as The Sandbox, to benefit from a combination of gaming aspects, social interactions (not all that different from social media), and three-dimensional e-commerce. The Sandbox manages to leverage these properties through its virtual land marketplace and Create-to-Earn model that allows creators and developers to turn virtual land into revenue-generating, monetizable experiences.