Animoca Brands, a developer of gamification, blockchain, and artificial intelligence technologies recently announced that it has executed a term sheet for collaboration and an exchange of value with Exposition Park Holdings SEZC, the company overseeing the Worldwide Asset eXchange (WAX), the global e-commerce platform for the trade and exchange of virtual items.
WAX was created by the founders of OPSkins, the largest virtual item marketplace, which has facilitated over 150 million purchases of digital collectibles. WAX provides a full suite of blockchain-based tools that allows anyone to trade digital items instantly and securely, to anyone, anywhere. Since its launch in July 2018, WAX has become the biggest blockchain in the world by transaction volume, with more than 5 million peer-to-peer trades of digital collectibles every day.
Collaboration
The company is collaborating with WAX to drive mass-market adoption of blockchain-based collectible virtual items, to use WAX’s millions of daily transactions to expand the reach of subsidiary Pixowl’s The Sandbox into the gamer community, and to further increase the utility of both companies’ respective platforms.
The Sandbox is a decentralized, community-driven platform where creators will be able to monetize voxel assets and gaming experiences on the blockchain. It is developed by Pixowl, the game studio recently acquired by Animoca Brands. The Sandbox is already a successful mobile franchise (with 40 million installs, 70 million worlds created, and 1.2 million monthly active players) and the blockchain version for mobile, PC and Mac is launching later in 2019.
Animoca Brands will allow player-made non-fungible tokens (NFTs) generated in The Sandboxblockchain game creation platform to be bought, traded and sold on the WAX Marketplace, providing additional visibility and liquidity to their creators (NFTs will still be sold on The Sandbox’s own Marketplace).
The company expects that the option to sell and trade digital assets on WAX will boost The Sandbox users’ loyalty and incentivize them to generate more content, enriching the entire community and ecosystem. Animoca Brands will collect a share of the revenue generated by every transaction on WAX that involves assets for The Sandbox.
Mutual exchange of value
Under the Agreement, WAX and Animoca Brands are initiating a mutual exchange of value totaling USD $250,000, whereby Animoca Brands will exchange common shares of its stock for the equivalent value in WAX tokens. The swapped shares and tokens will be subject to a 24-month escrow period.
The number of Animoca Brands shares to be issued will be calculated as USD $250,000 converted into Australian dollars and divided by a deemed issue price based on the 21-day volume weighted average price of the company’s shares (listed on the ASX) as of January 11th, 2018. The company intends to issue the shares utilizing its existing placement capacity under ASX Listing Rule 7.1.
William Quigley, the CEO of WAX, said: “We designed the WAX platform for global digital commerce. WAX processes more e-commerce transactions on a blockchain than any other company. By combining strengths with Animoca Brands, we can ensure that all players have a positive experience when they buy, sell and trade The Sandbox in-game virtual items to anyone in the world.”
Arthur Madrid, the CEO of Pixowl, commented: “We are entering a user-generated creative renaissance in blockchain gaming, in which players will increasingly make and control their content. At Pixowl and Animoca Brands, we are focused on making The Sandbox a truly player-centric gaming ecosystem that lets you create, own and trade virtual goods in the form of non-fungible tokens such as avatars, buildings, or weapons. Thanks to our partnership with WAX, these non-fungible tokens created by The Sandbox community can be made available for trade on one of the world’s most significant digital assets marketplaces.”
Yat Siu, the co-founder and chairman of Animoca Brands, said: “The relationship with WAX that we announced today expands the Animoca Brands network and boosts opportunities for synergy, enabling improved monetization of our and our partners’ NFTs and other digital assets on a well-established e-commerce platform that is also the most transacted blockchain globally.”