First-class warehouse research report: In-depth interpretation of the popular blockchain sandbox game The Sandbox
Original Source: First Class Warehouse
The Sandbox was originally a traditional sandbox game. It began to explore the blockchain version in 2018. The team worked on game development and Extensive experience in marketing operations. From the product design point of view, compared with Decentraland, The Sandbox's gameplay and economic model have been improved and innovated, and the game attributes are stronger. The Sandbox is expected to open in the near future and has great potential for development, so it deserves attention.
Investment Summary
Sandbox games are a category of games that This type of game has a wide audience and strong user stickiness, and is an evergreen tree in the game field. The most popular sandbox games in traditional games are "Minecraft" and "Mini World", which can achieve tens of millions of daily active users. Decentraland was the first project to create a blockchain version of a sandbox game, capturing its first users through a series of campaigns. The Sandbox is a latecomer to sandbox games/blockchain virtual real estate, with development potential and competitiveness.
In addition, The Sandbox belongs to the metaverse sector, which has the advantages of transparent game assets, players' game abilities can be cashed, and players can freely explore and trade. Although The Sandbox and Decentraland belong to the metaverse and sandbox, The Sandbox has stronger game attributes, and Decentraland is currently more inclined to develop in the direction of online parties and meeting places. In the short term, the game direction may be a more achievable field for user data growth.
The Sandbox team has strong development and operation capabilities.
The Sandbox was originally a traditional blockchain game. It has been exploring the blockchain version since 2018. The team has rich experience in game development and operation and marketing. Over the past 2 years, it has been able to deliver the set goals and tasks;
The Sandbox’s holding company, Animoca Brands, has multiple blockchain game subsidiaries/ The team and the holding company can provide support and assistance to the operation of the subsidiary;
From the team operation to the present, the cooperative partners include Atari and other well-known game developers, and Cooperate with many well-known IPs. Co-branding with IP has the opportunity to attract non-blockchain users and achieve the effect of "out of the circle", and the marketing ability is relatively strong;
The user experience of existing products is relatively good friendly.
The economic model design of The Sandbox is relatively reasonable. Compared with the leading Decentraland, The Sandbox has improvements and innovations in the design mechanism.
Anyone can create and sell The Sandbox's NFT assets and games, which increases the profit methods of ordinary users and expands the user base;
NFT assets have added certain attributes and rarity, which need to be pledged with SAND or purchased with SAND, which expands the gameplay of NFT;
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In the future, the foundation's assets will be given back to game users through liquidity mining methods such as Play-to-Earn, which will increase economic incentives and attract potential users.
The Sandbox is still under development. The final virtual world/sandbox world has not yet been released. Many gameplays are still written plans, and the actual effect will be implemented when it is officially implemented. to know the result. Players can currently only use Game Maker and VoxEdit to create NFTs and games, and can also explore the interface in Gamblockquoteaker, but the virtual world entrance has not yet been opened. The team announced in October that the Sandbox Alpha entry point, Mainhub, will be opened soon.
Because The Sandbox is still in the early stage of development, according to the development history of similar products Decentraland, we need to pay attention to the following points:
The common problems of virtual reality platforms are the separation of land ownership and creation rights, and the fact that there is a lot of artificial hype in the NFT market. People who bought a large amount of land may not be willing to spend a lot of energy to build an internal ecology, while those who are willing/capable to create do not have land and cannot enrich the ecology, resulting in most land vacancies inside the virtual reality platform, The Sandbox may also be When this happens, it will affect the user experience and make it difficult to improve the user retention rate.
The economic model of virtual reality is still being explored and has not really developed. As far as the existing sandbox games are concerned, it is difficult to increase the number of users. In addition to the increase in land prices caused by the appreciation of tokens, it is difficult for land holders to obtain additional income, which will also reduce users’ willingness to purchase NFT such as land.
Overall, The Sandbox is worth watching.
Explanation: The [Focus]/[Not Concerned] in the final evaluation of the first-class warehouse is based on the current evaluation of the project according to the first-class warehouse project evaluation framework The result of a comprehensive analysis of fundamentals, rather than a prediction of the future price rise or fall of project tokens. There are many factors that affect the price of tokens, and the fundamentals of the project are not the only factor. Therefore, just because the research report is judged as [not concerned], it cannot be assumed that the price of the project will definitely fall. In addition, the development of blockchain projects is dynamic. If a project that we judge as [not concerned] has a major positive change in its fundamentals, we may adjust it to [concern]. If there is a major vicious change in a project marked as [Follow], we will warn all members and may adjust it to [Not Follow].
Basic Overview
Project Introduction
The Sandbox wants to create a blockchain-based sandbox game/virtual world/game platform. On this platform, players can use tokens to create their own games and earn money from them.
Products: VoxEdit (NFT editor), Marketplace (trading market), Game Maker (land/game editor).
Token Economy: The token is referred to as SAND, which is used for transactions, governance, etc.
Basic Information
Project Details
Team
Background Information
The original developer of The Sandbox is Pixowl, which released the traditional sandbox game The Sandbox in 2012. Sandbox, once selected by Apple as one of the best games in 2012, but the follow-up development is not as good as "My World". In 2018, Pixowl was acquired by Animoca Brands and became its subsidiary, and began to develop the blockchain version of The Sandbox in the Voxel (voxel) style. The Sandbox is still in development by original Pixowl team members.
Animoca Brands was founded by Xiao Yi in Australia in 2014 and headquartered in Hong Kong. It was listed on the Australian Stock Exchange in 2015. The company was delisted from the Australian Stock Exchange for reasons such as currency-related activities, but the company's business activities were normal, and stock transactions were realized through a secondary trading center. Companies that Animoca Brands has invested in or partnered with include: Pixowl (The Sandbox team), TicBits, nWay, iCandy Interactive, Sky Mavis (Axie Infinity team), Dapper Labs (CryptoKitties team), TSB Games, GAMEE, Tribeflame, Stryking Entertainment, Lucid Sight , Quidd, Experimental Group and Skytree. The F1 Delta Time blockchain racing game (token REVV for short) is also one of the games developed by the company.
Pixowl Game Studios has developed games such as Peanuts: Snoopy’s Town Tale, Garfield: Survival of the Fattest and Goosebumps Horror Town. Before the acquisition, The Sandbox had approximately 40 million historical downloads.
To sum up, the original team of The Sandbox already has relatively rich development experience and game operation experience, and after being acquired, they can get support and help from the parent company .
Core Team
The official website shows the core team 29 people, the main team members include management (4 people), game development and game design (21 people), marketing operations (4 people).
Arthur Madrid, co-founder and CEO, founded Pixowl in 2011. Pixowl became a board member of Animoca Brands following the acquisition.
Sebastien Borget, Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer, received a bachelor's degree in Computer Networks and Telecommunications from the National Telecom School of Paris-Sud, and a major in Computer Networks and Telecommunications from the Chinese University of Hong Kong master's degree. From 2004 to 2011, he successively worked in Motorola, Paris Wixi Media and other companies as project technical manager. Joined Pixowl in 2011.
Marcelo Santurio, Chief Financial Officer, graduated from London Business School in 1998, worked as an assistant manager at Bank of Boston, and co-founded Latin America two years later Online payment program Segpink.com. Joined The Sandbox in 2018.
Lucas Shrewsbury, Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Former CTO of Gameloft, a world-renowned multinational company that develops and publishes video games for mobile devices, and has won multiple international awards for its major titles, headquartered in France.
Consultant
Ed Fries, Xbox One of the founders. Xbox is a video game brand created by Microsoft and consists of 5 development divisions. Ed Fries was one of the main heads of Xbox during his tenure at Microsoft. Fries left Microsoft in 2001 and went on to start a company of his own, Fire Ant, which he sold to Sony Interactive Entertainment. Since 2015, he has been a consultant for Ouya (Android-based game development platform) and Animoca.
Alexis Bonte, Stillfron Group Chief Operating Officer and member of the management team, co-founder and CEO of eRepubpk Labs, a game studio within the Stillfron Group. Stillfron is a group of game developers and publishers, with 18 subsidiaries/game studios, the main markets are Germany, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, the Middle East and North Africa.
Yat Siu (Xiao Yi), Co-founder and CEO of Animoca Brands.
Mick Nayeblockquote, Partner at CryptoKitties and Axiom Zen.
Foundation
The foundation supports the development of The Sandbox ecosystem, and the foundation's funds are used as rewards to motivate users/creators/investors to create high-quality content and games on the platform. The first activity released by the Foundation is the Game Creator Fund, which runs from October 2019 to August 2020, hoping to create 100 games within The Sandbox ecosystem through economic incentives. Funded games receive grants ranging from $4,000 to $30,000. As of January 2021, about 20 games have been funded, no details available. According to the disclosure of the team, the address of the foundation is managed by 2/3 multi-signatures of the core members of The Sandbox, and the specific members are not disclosed. According to the information disclosed by the team, the Foundation will transfer to DAO in 2021.
The main source of foundation/DAO funds:
25% of the funds from the land auction;< /p>
50% of the market fee;
Token distribution.
Funding
The main source of funding for the team is token sales.
Note:
On November 2, 2021, according to Reuters news, The Sandbox completed a financing of US$93 million, led by Softbank Vison Fund2.
So, The Sandbox has raised a total of about $103 million to $113 million. About US$10 million in financing completed before 2021, the team indicated that 45% of the funds will be used for development team and platform infrastructure construction expenditures, 45% will be used for marketing and IP cooperation, 7% will be used for legal affairs and other expenses, and 3% will be used for on general expenses.
Code
Figure 2-1 Number of code submissions
The number of code submissions is about 4 people. From January 2018 to January 2021, the total number of code submissions is about 400 times. Compared with general open source projects, the number of submissions is small. However, we should pay attention to the fact that projects run in the form of a company usually develop within the group and test internally first, and then submit the code once at the end, so the number of code submissions and the number of submitters will be relatively small. What we can conclude is that the team's development work has been ongoing.
Framework
The Sandbox is a decentralized virtual reality platform based on the Ethereum blockchain, similar to traditional The sandbox games "Minecraft" and "Mini World". The virtual world is a world made up of pieces of land. According to the picture below, we can see that the land is the bottom layer of The Sandbox, and a series of gameplay and economic systems are formed based on the land.
Figure 2-2 The Sandbox system
Land Layer
The Sandbox has a total of 166,464 lands, 123,840 lands are available for sale, and 25,920 are distributed as rewards to partners, creators, and players , The Sandbox reserves 16,704 lots for events and games.
Each piece of land is an NFT token based on the ERC-721 standard, and the uniqueness of each piece of land is determined by (x,y) coordinates. Combinations of land become ESTATEs. The most basic use of land is to deploy content on land to influence and change the world. Users who hold land can obtain income by deploying games, collecting tickets for venues, leasing land, etc., and building a land-based economic system (not yet completed).
Figure 2-3 The Sandbox global map
Note: The black part is the unusable part, including the remaining unauctioned part and the public space reserved by the team.
Land auctions in 2021 typically sell for 1,011 SAND for LAND and 1,011 SAND for Prblockquoteium LAND 4,683 SAND, ESTATE will be sold by auction. As of the end of November 2021, more than 60% of The Sandbox has been sold/released, and the remaining land will be sold/released in the next 8 months. Some transaction data was not disclosed.
50% of the funds obtained from the land auction belong to the company's reserve funds, locked for 6 months; 25% belong to the company treasury, locked for 12 months; 25% belong to the foundation. The specific use of the company's reserve funds was not indicated. SAND tokens in the company's vault will be sold after unlocking to pay for the company's operating expenses. Foundation funds are returned to The Sandbox users through liquidity mining and Play-to-Earn (rewards for playing games).
From round 4.2, SAND tokens will be used to participate in the auction, and ETH/DAI will no longer be accepted.
Due to technical reasons, round 4.3 was divided into two auctions. The above is the number of land blocks sold and funds raised in the first auction of round 4.3. All the funds obtained this time transferred to the foundation. Auction 2 of round 4.3 has been completed with 5,518 lots auctioned.
Content Layer
NFT assets need to pass Created by VoxEdit, the game or scene is created by Game Maker, see 2.5 for details.
In The Sandbox's design, the content layer contains NFT assets, games, service subscriptions, advertisements, and more. When building NFT assets, two ERC-20 tokens, Gblockquote and Catalyst, need to be used, both of which need to be purchased with SAND tokens or obtained by staking SAND tokens in the system. Gblockquote tokens determine the rarity of NFT assets, and Catalyst determines the attributes of NFT assets. Gblockquote and Catalyst can only be obtained by staking SAND. NFT assets are based on ERC-721 or ERC-1155, and the content is stored in the IPFS network.
The current team stimulates artists to participate through economic incentives to create NFT assets for The Sandbox. The Foundation has also launched a game creator funding program to increase available games within the ecosystem. The game vendors/game platforms that The Sandbox cooperates with include: Atari, ptra, CryptoKitties, Korea SBS Game Academy, game company Square Enix, etc.
Player Layer
Players have a virtual image in the virtual world, called Avatar. At present, there are 27 avatars created in the system. Users can choose existing avatars or purchase avatars created by others in the market.
Figure 2-4 Avatar
Product
Marketplace
Figure 2-5 Schematic diagram of the trading market
In the market, assets are divided into three categories: NFT assets, land, and ESTATE. NFT assets are further classified according to rarity, category, theme, etc. for users to find. There are 4 levels of rarity: Common, Rare, Epic, and Legendary. Land and Estate are not currently listed on the market. The current market transaction fee is 5%, of which 50% belongs to the foundation, and 50% belongs to the Staking pool, which is fed back to players and SAND holders.
VoxEdit
VoxEdit is an NFT editor that uses 3D voxel modeling. The so-called voxels are squares one by one, and the graphics you want are built by combining the squares. Users can use this package to create 3D NFTs. VoxEdit supports a skeletal system. Users can build the skeleton of the object first, and then build the animation layer to make the created skeleton rotate and scale, etc., into animation. VoxEdit exports artwork in (.vxm and .vxr) as well as standard formats (.obj, .dae, .gltf). Currently, Windows and Mac OS desktop versions are released, supporting 4 languages: Chinese, English, Japanese, and Korean. The building part of the skeleton is relatively easy, but the animation part is a bit more difficult.
Figure 2-6 VoxEdit diagram
Game Maker
Game Maker is a scene editor/game editor published Window and Mac desktop versions are available. The editor contains low-level templates, and users can start building from 0 or start building based on low-level templates. For novices, it takes a certain amount of time to explore the usage.
Figure 2-7 Game Maker
The game world as a whole has not yet been officially opened to the public.
Ecology
Social Media< br>
Facebook has a lot of followers, including the community before the transition to blockchain accumulation. At present, there is basically no interaction in publishing blog posts, and the number of views of videos is between 500 and 1,000. The average interaction volume of a Twitter blog post is around 50 people. The Discord forum is quite active. The official blog posts on Twitter, Discord, Facebook and medium are pushed more frequently. There are many operational activities, and the content is the latest progress of the project party.
Partner
The Sandbox’s main partners include some game developers and joint brands, including games The giant Atari, the board game website BGA, etc., and the co-branded brands include Shaun the Lamb, The Smurfs, etc. In addition, The Sandbox and Polygon Network have reached a cooperation, and the market transaction uses its second-layer network. The above picture also includes some NFT trading markets or information aggregation websites, including Nonfungible, Dapp Review, etc. There are many partners and the correlation is high.
Summary:
1) The development ability of the team is relatively strong. ① The team members of The Sandbox originally developed traditional sandbox games and have relatively mature experience in game development and operation; ② The holding company of The Sandbox has multiple blockchain games under its umbrella, which can provide certain support and assistance to its subsidiaries; ③ The team's core product can release the desktop client in a relatively short period of time. Compared with similar games, the development progress is relatively fast, and the product experience is good.
2) The marketing and operation capabilities of the team are good. ① The Sandbox project team often organizes content creation and game creation incentive activities to encourage the community to participate in design and users to participate in the ecology; ② The team's partners are relatively well-known game companies or IPs with relatively strong operational capabilities.
3) The foundation will gradually turn to DAO governance in 2021, and the funds will be given back to the community through various activities, which can play a role in drainage and attract more Multiple people join The Sandbox. The team's revenue information is relatively transparent, but specific information on expenditures is not disclosed. Since a large part of the tokens obtained from the land auction belong to the company and will be sold to the market later, it may cause a certain selling pressure.
Development
History< /b>
Table 3-1 The historical events of The Sandbox
Status quo
In the fourth quarter of 2021, the main progress of the project includes:
< p>Completed US$93 million Series B financing;
Completed a series of cooperation and marketing activities, partners include: My Crypto Profile, Metaverse Travel Agency, Isla Obscura, deadmau5, Pororo the pttle Penguin, etc. Marketing activities include NFT making contests and Halloween events and more.
The team announced on October 1st that the entry point of The Sandbox Alpha is the Main Hub, which will open soon.
Future
Technology: multi-platform availability, support for mobile phones and Tablet and other devices; realize multi-player mode;
Foundation: Gradually transfer to DAO, so that SAND holders can participate in decision-making to obtain benefits;
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Operation: continue to sell land regularly; organize a series of incentive activities to attract content creators and improve the internal ecology, hoping to reach 1 million users within 2 years;
Partners: Reach cooperation with more games, build The Sandbox as a game platform, and strive to have 5,000 games available inside The Sandbox in 2023.
Summary: The team wants to develop The Sandbox into a well-structured sandbox platform, where users can design, deploy, and participate in games, and obtain income. Judging from the team's development route and planning, the team's planning is relatively clear, the goals are clear, and the overall design is relatively complete. The development of the team in the past two years can basically be completed according to the roadmap, and the development goals for the next three years have been determined. Technically, the team is capable of completing it, but it is relatively difficult to reach the target number of users, which is a common problem in the entire blockchain sandbox game.
Economic Model
Token Distribution
Initial distribution of tokens
The total initial issuance is 3 billion, and the distribution of tokens is as follows :
Figure 4-1 Token Release Time
The total number of tokens in The Sandbox is 3 billion, and about 900 million have been in circulation, including Binance IEO tokens, company Part of the tokens in the reserve, the foundation holds the tokens. The specific token release time is not detailed in the team white paper, it may be a linear release, and 100% release will be achieved in 2025.
Top100 address token concentration
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Figure 4-2 Token Concentration
According to Nansen and Etherscan data, as of November 20212 Today, there are a total of 34,120 currency-holding addresses on the chain. Currently, 9.75% of the addresses hold 80% of the tokens. Among them, the four addresses of the foundation, company reserves, consultants, and teams hold nearly 70% of the tokens, and the exchanges hold about 9 %, so from the address on the chain, the distribution of tokens is not concentrated. Since the release of tokens in August 2020, the number of token holding addresses on the chain has grown steadily.
Function
Figure 4-3 SAND token usage
The above picture shows the SAND economic model built by the team. From the design point of view, SAND tokens have more uses . Since the virtual world is not yet open, the main role of SAND is only land auctions, transactions of other NFT assets, participation in liquidity mining, etc., and the demand is limited. After the product is fully launched, the use of SAND will expand.
Summary: The Sandbox is still in the early stage of the project, and there is no token destruction mechanism. The main demand comes from participating in land auctions and NFT transactions, and the demand is relatively small. Overall, the distribution of tokens is relatively concentrated. Teams, companies, and foundations hold most of the tokens. Companies may sell tokens as needed, and funds will also issue tokens through activities. Starting in the second half of 2021, tokens for teams, companies, and advisors will begin to be unlocked .
Competition
Track Overview
h4>
The track of The Sandbox is: NFT, games, subdivided into sandbox games/virtual reality games/metaverse.
Gaming
In 2020, there will be more than 2 billion gamers.
All gamers can be divided into the following types:
Achievement players: Players will set themselves some game-related goals and complete them. This means that in order to complete the goal, you need to accumulate a lot of resources and experience;
Exploring players: This type of player needs a higher degree of freedom and will try the game The experience that can be had in the game, and collect game equipment and so on. Collecting enthusiasts are also this type of game players;
Social players: enjoy interacting with other players during the game, and like to use guild or team mechanisms to strengthen Their own social presence;
Killer players: hope to use the tools provided in the game to destroy (including PK with NPC/ other players), or use weapons to help others.
Therefore, a highly competitive game needs to meet the following requirements: 1) It can meet the needs of one or more types of players and has strong playability; 2) First-class style of painting; 3) Can create income for game players, etc. As far as the current blockchain industry is concerned, being able to generate revenue is an additional item for traditional games, but it is a must for blockchain games.
There are two themes in sandbox games. The first theme is that the virtual world in the game can be changed, influenced and created. The core is to delegate the right of creation to the players , with a high degree of freedom, which greatly enhances the playability of the game and reduces the dependence on game operators. Another theme is socialization, which is smaller in sandbox games and tends to happen between acquaintances.
MineCraft was one of the first sandbox games to emerge, with over 100 million monthly active users. The blockchain version of the sandbox game can use "Minecraft" as a reference template. The most prominent competitiveness of "Minecraft" is that it can meet the needs of various types of players and has high playability. Due to the high degree of freedom of the sandbox, and the redstone and other gameplays created by the game, it has attracted a large number of high-level players, and can recreate the ecology, forming a good cycle that can attract the above four types of players at the same time.
"Minecraft" supports stand-alone games and multiplayer servers, users can experience different game modes in different servers, including exploration/creation mode and survival adventure model. The creative mode provides unlimited resources, and both beginners and advanced players can create. Survival mode is more difficult than creative mode, needs to be free from NPC damage, and can attract killer players. Multiplayer servers usually have forums and guilds, which can create small social interactions in sandbox games. Nested games exist within the virtual space, created in part by advanced players. Player-created content can be freely priced, distributed and sold, so players have the opportunity to monetize game resources.
However, NetEase did not succeed as an agent of the Chinese version of "Minecraft". The main reasons include:
The Netease team has occupied the copyright of the content created by the community, and the content deployer has changed from the community to the official team, and the user profit channel has been cut off by the team;
Community members need to be approved by the team and sign a contract with the team, resulting in reduced freedom and loss of users.
It can be seen from this that the creativity of users is also one of the key factors for the sustainable development of sandbox games.
NFT
NFT types are mainly divided into digital collectibles, game equipment, and practical applications .
According to the NFT market report released by Nonfungible in the middle of the year, there were nearly 80,000 active NFT addresses in the first half of 2020, with a transaction volume of about 230 million US dollars.
Collectibles
Types include: digital artwork (Art), cards, pictures, etc., which have no practical use.
Arts and antiques are the main types of collectibles in the traditional market, followed by some other collectibles, including stamps, luxury limited edition products , signed souvenirs, and more.
The value of the collection is mainly reflected in:
Historical value, first of all the items contained in the Time value cannot be copied, and secondly, items with historical value have certain research significance and contain historical culture;
Celebrity effect;
Aesthetic value, the author’s talent is affirmed by the public, the value of the work will increase and reach a corresponding balance, so there is room for the value of excellent works that are not well-known;
< p>Rarity, according to supply and demand, the rarer the higher the price.
In 2019, about 550,000 works of art were auctioned in the traditional art market, with an amount of about US$13.3 billion. The average person in the top 100 auctions around 20 works of art globally, and people with a lot of money are the main players in the auction market. The total transaction volume of SuperRare, Known Origin, and Makers Place artwork NFT secondary markets in the first quarter of 2020 was approximately US$4 million, with approximately 100,000 transactions and approximately 5,000 active addresses participating in the transaction. From this data, it can be seen that, like the traditional market, only a few people participate in the NFT transaction of digital art collections. Collections that conform to the market or form a value consensus are called "soft gold" and have high liquidity.
Although some items are rare in number, they have less value support and can only be circulated in a small area without a large-scale value consensus. It is difficult to increase liquidity. In order to increase the value of collectible NFTs, the development trend of collectible NFTs is to add celebrity effects to NFTs, start to cooperate with well-known brands or large institutions, and release joint limited edition NFTs, including Binance anniversary NFTs and so on.
Individual motivations for purchasing collectibles can be classified into 3 categories: 1) hobbies; 2) appreciation expectations; 3) preservation of value.
However, the current collection NFT is facing the problem that no value consensus has been formed. Although there is a certain aesthetic value, artificial speculation occupies a large part and has a high speculative. Appreciation expectation is the main reason for blockchain users to buy NFT digital collectibles. Most users who buy such NFTs hope that such NFTs will appreciate in value due to celebrity effects, aesthetic value, etc., and make profits from it.
Game Equipment
Representative: card games such as Gods Unchained, virtual reality games such as Decentraland, and other types of games.
Game equipment NFT refers to NFT that can be applied to game scenes. The biggest feature of this type of NFT is to enable game users to obtain real ownership of game assets, which is different from the characteristics of centralized management of game assets issued by centralized service providers.
On the centralized game platform, the service provider has the right to manage all game assets, and can delete or copy game assets without reason. Once the centralized server data is lost, it will bring losses to user assets. In 2019, the global game market revenue is about 150 billion U.S. dollars, and game equipment is the main source of game revenue, so game equipment is a market with huge potential.
The largest NFT asset in virtual reality games is virtual real estate (LAND). People who buy land/land can deploy some content on the land, or rent it out, etc. way of earning income. Game playability is the basis for attracting game players, forming a consensus on the value of game assets, and sustainable development of games. Only by attracting enough players can game equipment have high liquidity.
Actual Application Type
Represents: Ethereum domain name, service or asset ownership NFT.
Ethereum domain name: users can use the Ethereum domain name as the receiving address, etc.;
Paper tickets or electronic tickets adopt the NFT model: holders can trade with each other; project parties can use NFT to reduce scalper speculation, etc.;
DeFi has appeared in the market The trend of combining with NFT, including NFT mortgage loan, insurance policy NFTization and other products;
NFT mortgage loan: It is difficult to evaluate the value of NFT, and the value of NFT will not only be affected by The impact of the token price will also be affected by the community's consensus on the value of the NFT, which requires higher anti-risk capabilities of the lending system and requires a more complete mechanism to deal with risks.
NFTization of insurance policies: The main opportunity for the emergence is the KYC restrictions of the insurance platform, which has caused some people to be unable to purchase insurance even if they have insurance needs. As a result, third-party institutions sold the policy twice in the form of NFT. In other words, some specific services can be sold in the form of NFT, but not all services are suitable. The nature of the house rental NFT of the virtual reality platform is similar to that of the NFT insurance policy, but the premise of both is an asset on the chain. However, the NFTization of off-chain assets or off-chain services still requires a more complete infrastructure construction.
Competing project
Decentraland
Decentraland It is a virtual reality platform based on Ethereum. It was established in 2015 and officially opened to the public in February 2020. Decentraland has been using economic incentives to attract content creators during the pre-opening stage of the virtual world and after the official opening. Decentraland has currently achieved decentralized autonomous management (DAO). Although the team still indicates that it will continue to develop, the promised goal has been delayed and the development efficiency has become lower.
Due to the long development time, Decentraland is currently the leader of such blockchain games. At present, the advantage of Decentraland is that it has a relatively long development time, has a first-mover advantage, and has seized a certain market. But the problems are also obvious, including low user retention rate, large blank land, and poor user experience. We can see potential problems with this track from the development of the Decentraland project.
Cryptovoxels
Cryptovoxels is a virtual platform built on Ethereum using voxel style. The land in Cryptovoxels is represented by 6 numbers (x1, y1, z1, x2, y2, z2). There are currently 3,000 land on the map, and the land auction will be gradually developed according to the growth of users. Users can buy land using Ethereum. Cryptovoxels has only one developer, but the development progress is relatively fast. The current functions include adding audio, images, text, GIF pictures, etc.
Competition analysis
Code situation
Figure 5-1 Virtual real estate/sandbox game project code submission
The code submission subjects of The Sandbox, Decentraland, and Cryptovoxels are different, so the presented data is different. Decentraland was originally in the form of a team, but all individuals submit codes, so the number of code submissions is relatively large. The Sandbox is developed in the form of a company, and code submissions are made by several people, while the core development of Cryptovoxels has only one person, so the code submissions of the two are similar, and The Sandbox code submissions are slightly more than Cryptovoxels. All 3 projects are under continuous development.
Product Comparison
User and transaction data
Figure 5-2 Decentraland users and historical transaction data
Figure 5-3 The Sandbox users and historical transaction data< p>
Figure 5-4 Cryptovoxels users and historical transaction data (no transaction amount data)
Note:
1) The picture only shows the data changes in the past month;
2) Each item counts all relevant smart contract address;
3) A user may have multiple addresses;
4) The number of transactions represents the number of transactions between the user address and the number of smart contract addresses.
Although the smart contract addresses related to each project are counted, from the data point of view, token transactions may not be included, and only NFT related transactions are included. Since The Sandbox has not yet been fully opened, the above is only the data of participating in NFT transactions, and the data on December 11 is the land auction. At present, The Sandbox and Cryptovoxels are still in the early stage of development, so the data is relatively early, and it is not very meaningful to compare with Decentraland, which has been developing for a long time. But in the same period of projects, The Sandbox's data is more prominent.
User Retention
User retention is the number of new users who still use the app after N weeks. Usually, apps with better quality have higher retention rates, and games with higher playability have higher retention rates.
Figure 5-5 Decentraland user retention
Figure 5-6 Cryptovoxels user retention
The Sandbox is not open for virtual world tour yet, Therefore, the actual number of player users and retention rate cannot be obtained. However, judging from the retention rate of the old Decentraland and the newer project Cryptovoxels, it can be seen that virtual reality games have a low retention rate. The main reason is the low level of participation of people other than landowners and the poor user experience in the virtual world. If The Sandbox can make breakthroughs in user experience and participation, it can further improve user retention.
Economic Model / Gameplay
< p>Tokens
Decentraland: Mainly used to purchase NFT, internal game currency in the virtual world, and DAO voting governance.
The Sandbox: The use of SAND tokens is basically the same as that of Decentraland MANA tokens, but compared with Decentraland, SAND holders can obtain tokens by staking Rewards increase the way to profit.
Cryptovoxels: There are tokens used to purchase color voxels in the virtual world, which are props in the ecology.
Land
Decentraland: The land has been mostly auctioned and different communities have proposed different development model. Land transactions are mainly on the Decentraland market or secondary trading markets. But currently a large part of the land is not being built.
The Sandbox: Only 31% of the land has been auctioned so far, and there is still a lot of land to be auctioned. in the early stages of development.
Cryptovoxels: If the number of users in the world continues to increase, then there will be more auction land, which is mainly decided by the founder. There is still a lot of land up for auction and in the early stages of development.
Content Layer
Decentraland:
Land construction: Landholders need to create their own, or buy the game through the game developer. The development of community land mainly relies on community organizations. If the community is passive and slack, it is very likely that a large amount of land will be abandoned. The communities with more active communities have richer content, including Las Vegas City and other communities.
NFT: Mainly land and wearable NFT. At present, the creation rights of NFT are delegated to the community, but only individual teams have the creation rights. Users can also integrate NFTs from Decentraland partners into the world.
The Sandbox:
Land Construction: Any user can create their own through Game Maker Scenario, if conditions permit, the created game can be traded in the market. Increased options for landowners. The team reserves nearly 25% of the land for itself and its partners, which can guarantee that this part of the land will not be vacant. 75% of the land is auctioned to individuals, and this part needs to rely on individuals to create or buy built content from the market. Since you don't have to create it yourself and there are more options, the difficulty of deployment is lower than that of Decentraland.
NFT: Any user can create NFT assets including avatars, and they can be traded in the market. The attributes and rarity of NFT are determined by other game props, increasing playability. Cryptovoxels: Only landowners have the right to create, which is relatively limited. NFT is mainly through the integration of its own existing NFT collections.
Players
Decentraland: Players are mainly divided into 2 categories, landholders and browsers By.
Landholders can buy games created by game developers and deploy them on their land, but at a higher cost and with fewer options, or create content themselves. You can also rent out your own land, etc. The degree of participation is relatively high, and there is an opportunity to profit from the land. Browsers refer to users who do not own land. Such users can only browse the interior of the virtual world, and can play internally deployed games, gambling machines, etc. It is difficult to obtain benefits by participating in the ecology. Some communities have proposed a leasing plan to lease out land/storefronts, but the effect is not very good.
The Sandbox: Player types can be divided into 3 categories, including 1) landholders; 2) browsers; 3) NFT/game creators. Landholders and browsers participate in a similar way to their counterparts in Decentraland. But unlike Decentraland, anyone can create NFT assets and games in The Sandbox and sell them in the market. General users have increased the way to earn income and can attract more people to participate.
Cryptovoxels: It is still in the development stage of personal construction scenes, and there are no other ways of using land. Viewers can enter to browse, there is no other way to participate, and the degree of participation is relatively low.
Summary: Compared with traditional virtual reality/sandbox games, the main problem of the current blockchain sandbox games is: the blockchain sandbox games The land is owned by individuals/communities, and content deployment rights are limited to individuals/communities, which leads to the separation of creative ability and creative rights.
On the one hand, the number of land holders is limited, and it is difficult to maintain the development of the game only by relying on land holders. Although users without land can also explore, the sense of participation is relatively low. And the game experience depends on the quality of the content created on the land, that is, the creative ability of the land holder. If the quality of the content is not high, it will be difficult to attract user engagement.
On the other hand, users are the foundation of the game, and if the retention rate of users does not increase, it is difficult for land holders to obtain additional benefits other than land appreciation, which leads to wanting to Fewer people buy land, forming a vicious circle that may cause a lack of liquidity for NFT assets such as land.
The Sandbox is currently actively releasing incentives, which will help promote user accumulation and ecological development. Compared with Decentraland, the leading project on this track, The Sandbox is still at a very early stage, with innovations and improvements in gameplay and economic model. In terms of team planning and efficiency, The Sandbox is superior, so there is potential for growth.
From the perspective of the metaverse, blockchain projects such as The Sandbox and Decentraland have transparent game assets, players can cash out their game abilities, and players can freely explore and trade, etc. Advantage. But The Sandbox has stronger game attributes, while Decentraland and Cryptovoxels are currently more inclined to develop in the direction of online parties and meeting places. In the short term, the game direction may be a more achievable field for user data growth.
Risk Warning
Industry Risk
h4>
Currently, blockchain sandbox games have the problems of low user participation, poor experience, and limited user groups. Most of the people who participate in the auction of land are relatively speculative, and few people are willing to spend energy on creating content, resulting in blank land, which makes the user experience of other game participants worse. If the quality of the content is not high, it will be difficult to attract more user participation. Users are the foundation of the game, and if the user retention rate does not increase, the willingness to purchase game NFT assets will decrease, which will devalue game assets and lead to a vicious circle.
Industry competition
The game development time is relatively long, The Sandbox has not yet opened the virtual world, which is the most For core products, users may lose patience while waiting. And Decentraland is already a leader in this field, with a higher degree of completion, and being able to enter the internal exploration, users will have a stronger sense of participation. In addition to this, more sandbox games including Cryptovoxels and Somnium Space are rising and developing, and the competition is fiercer.
Investment Analysis
Investment is risky. The price data for opening positions provided below is based on the author’s own recognition of the project The investment decisions made by knowledge and understanding are only for demonstration reference, not as the basis for users' investment decisions. Users need to make investment decisions based on their own understanding and cognition of the project. Responsible.
Sandbox is a sandbox game platform with basically the same functions as Decentraland. The project team is relatively high-quality, and the parent company has rich resources in the game field. However, the main network has not yet been launched, and the core sandbox function is not yet available. SAND tokens have been on the market for a short period of time and have a low circulation rate of 20.7%, but the overall market value is relatively high, which is close to that of MANA. Therefore, it is not recommended to open a position at present.
No matter what kind of extreme market, don't stud easily, keep part of the car, part of the state of the car, will help you maintain a good investment attitude .
We need to emphasize again that the above content is only for user investment reference, not as user decision-making basis, please make investment decisions based on your own understanding and understanding of the project, first class Cang and the author of the article are not responsible for the profits and losses generated by the user's own investment decisions.
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References
The Sandbox white paper,
https://installers.sandbox.game/The_Sandbox_Whitepaper_2020.pdf
"Richard Battelle's Player Classification Theory"
http://wiki.tanyu.mobi/doku.php/%E7% 8E%A9%E5%AE%B6%E5%88%86%E7%B1%BB
Binance The Sandbox Research Report,
https://research.binance.com/en/projects/the-sandbox -sandbox
The Sandbox home page,
https://www.sandbox.game/
Decentraland White Paper,
https://decentraland.org/whitepaper-cn.pdf
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