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Partnerships
The Sandbox has no shortage of partnerships, boasting some of the biggest names in gaming and entertainment, including Atari, Animoca Brands, Adidas, Snoop Dogg, and more. Recently, in February 2023, The Sandbox announced a collaboration with Minto, Inc. and TOEI ANIMATION based in Japan. The partnership aims to create virtual experiences based on TOEI ANIMATION's intellectual properties (IPs) in The Sandbox Metaverse. TOEI ANIMATION is a renowned animation production company that’s produced some of Japan's biggest and most popular animation franchises, such as "DRAGON BALL," "SAILORMOON," and "ONE PIECE." This partnership represents The Sandbox's commitment to working with top-tier Japanese animation production brands to bring their unique creative visions to life within the metaverse. The Sandbox's LAND will provide an immersive environment for users to experience TOEI ANIMATION's unique worldview.
Alpha Season Events
The Sandbox has been gaining attention with each successful Alpha Season over the years. Alpha Passes are obtained through various methods, such as holding LAND, participating in social contests, or purchasing on OpenSea. Alpha Pass holders are able to play-and-earn while the game gets opened up to the public over time. Alpha Season 1 began in November 2021 after four years of development, coinciding with Facebook's rebranding to Meta. The game's popularity increased rapidly during the 22-day season, with LAND cap and holder numbers increasing by ~45% and ~10%, respectively, and daily average volumes reaching 830 ETH.
By Alpha Season 2’s arrival, SAND's value and market cap had decreased, while The Sandbox's LAND cap had hit an all-time high of ~380,000 ETH. Alpha Season 3 was the most successful season to date, with ~350,000 unique users across ~100 new experiences. The event lasted for 68 days during a crypto winter, but still achieved positive numbers in terms of Unique Active Wallets and trading volume, showing the game's focus on interoperability.
The metaverse had nearly 17 million visits, which is three times more than the previous season. In the top-10, several brand experiences had over 500,000 visits, and over 360,000 users worldwide enjoyed playing and socializing in experiences. In terms of creation, a wide range of experiences drove engagement, resulting in a record 2.4 million hours played in total, twice that of Season 2, with an average session length of 20 minutes. Across the 98 experiences, there were 85.7 million quests achieved, and the season's most popular experiences included Avenged Sevenfold: Deathbats Club (470,000 visits), The Walking Dead: A Day in Alexandria (400,000 visits), WMG Land (330,000 visits), and Ledger School of Block (330,000 visits).
Wallet Integrations
Crypto wallets lack the advanced features that gamers are accustomed to in analog applications, such as discovery, identity, and community features. A social component is critical to the success of multiplayer gaming, but traditional crypto wallets don't integrate with crypto gaming through traditional channels due to pushback from the traditional gaming industry. Gaming-specific crypto wallets, such as Cartridge, are being developed to bridge this gap and provide these missing features to blockchain gamers. Cartridge aims to be the "Steam" of crypto gaming, offering users curated games, rewards, and social features.
Staking
One major achievement for The Sandbox in 2022 was migrating contracts to Polygon to increase transaction speed and decrease gas prices. In addition, it launched two new staking pools, resulting in over 30 million SAND being distributed in rewards. LAND was deployed on Polygon with 40,000 LANDs bridged. To enhance user experience, Sandbox provided a program that allowed every user for ten free transactions per month, resulting in 670,000+ transactions over the year.
