Zombie apocalypse TV show “The Walking Dead” has entered The Sandbox, a non-fungible token (NFT) metaverse.
The Sandbox, a Hong Kong-based virtual world that allows users to monetize assets and game experiences through blockchains, NFTs and its native SAND token, is forming a partnership with “The Walking Dead” creator Skybound Entertainment, according to an announcement on Thursday.
Gamers will be able create a horde of assets to combine with their favorite “Walking Dead” characters. The idea is for users to recreate comic book storylines or to forge their own original adventures, the companies said.
Virtual reality platforms such as The Sandbox and Decentraland have seen adoption skyrocket with NFTs. The Sandbox co-founder Sebastien Borget said the advent of digital cats on the Ethereum blockchain – CryptoKitties, the NFT sector’s first smash hit in 2017 – signaled a paradigm shift.
Borget said:
“We immediately saw the potential to apply that technology, not just to create virtual cats, but to enable anyone to make their own NFTs, exchange them with other users, monetize them on the marketplace, and use them to build games and be rewarded for the time they spend on the platform.”
In addition to providing no-coder game creation tools, The Sandbox has a map of parcels of virtual land for sale. The platform has 166,464 plots of digital land in total, each one an individual NFT, and there will never be more, Borget explained.
“Unlike Decentraland, which sold its entire map at the beginning, we are selling progressively,” Borget said. “Today we have sold 52% and we should have land for sale until about the end of 2021.”
“The Walking Dead” joins over 160 existing partners in The Sandbox, including Canadian music producer Deadmau5, musician and DJ Richie Hawtin, “The Smurfs,” Atari and CryptoKitties. The Sandbox is scheduled to go live this summer.
