We’ve been hosting weekly and bi-weekly metaverse builder contests since September 2021 and today we’re excited to announce contest proposals are officially live on the marketplace. Our builder contests have single-handedly onboarded thousands of builders into the open metaverse and have become a key onramp for educational content. Now on all SandStorm profiles, builders are able to showcase which place their assets won in each contest. This further levels the playing field for the best builders based on their skills.
If you’ve never heard of our builder contests, our team hosts themed contests each month with over $40,000 in prize pools to help builders learn how to create custom assets in our virtual world partners’ environments. Our team comes up with a theme, we vote together as a community on live streams, and builders win rewards for their entries. Now, these contests will fully take place securely on our marketplace to help support builders further invest in maintaining their profile.
Since our launch, we’ve set out to build awesome tools for studios and individual builders everywhere. One key ingredient to level the playing field in the open metaverse has been to focus on 100% skill-based work. We firmly believe the open metaverse will be constructed primarily through gig-based work entirely based on skills, not based on school diplomas or geography. Builders are hired by brands on our marketplace based on their skill set, experience on previous builds, reviews, follower counts on the marketplace, and of course their uploaded work.
Starting today, when builders upload their assets to the marketplace they will have the option to submit their creations to active builder contests. Once the asset is uploaded and included in a contest, VOTING will be done entirely on the marketplace. We’ve used 3rd party voting software for the last year and we’re excited to finally be able to fully support it on the marketplace. Voting and contest organization has been a big issue with builder contests across the entire metaverse industry. With that said we already have a handful of brands waitlisted to launch a builder contest with this feature for their own brands.
Allowing 1 vote per SandStorm account as well as badged access to votes has proven to prevent bots and cheating. This new double-layered security is something we’re really proud of and strengthens the integrity of each contest’s community vote. A builder’s followers on the SandStorm marketplace have immense equity in it and now those followers just got more valuable for voting! Here is how the voting layout:
The next component of our builder contest proposals is THE MOST REQUESTED of all features. Builders are now able to showcase their winning assets on their profile with a sash hung over the top left-hand corner. This showcases builder’s winning assets and ensures brands a builder can follow clear concise instructions on a build proposal. We’ve been really excited about the sach to be released for months and we’re eager to hear builder feedback. These will be retroactively added for ALL BUILDERS who have ever won a contest this week. Be sure to check your profile this week!
Not only will brands be able to hire builders based on their overall work showcased on their profile, but they can now view builders’ WINNING assets directly on the marketplace. Enabling builders who have participated in all our contests to highlight when they’ve won to brands is important.
Lastly from our marketplace homepage builders will now be able to view all active contests they can enter. Different badges will enable builders to view different contests starting today. This has been a highly requested feature given a lot of work goes into the management of these contests and the assets themselves.
The new order of our heavily trafficked marketplace homepage is:
1. FEATURED COLLECTION for our highlighted and most reviewed builders
2. LATEST CONTESTS released today to highlight all our active contests
3. LATEST BUILDS to highlight all our active build proposals for builders to bid on
With this layout, we’re able to separate BUILD proposals where builders bid on the construction job, and CONTEST proposals where builders submit assets to win prizes after a community vote. We will continue to improve the onboarding process for builders of all backgrounds and experience levels. We’ve found that our contests are on the front lines of web2 builder adoption, and we’ll keep improving.
In November 2022, we announced our 5th virtual world partner SPACE focused on virtual commerce. This partnership kicked off with a $5,000 builder contest and we’re excited to share more upcoming partners who will follow this same launch strategy now using content proposals. Our 4 other amazing virtual world partners are ImmersedVR, The Sandbox, Decentraland, and TCG World. There will be a new builder contest fully managed on the marketplace to promote asset creation for all our virtual world partners moving forward.
If you want to participate in $40,000 of monthly builder contest prizes be sure to signup and get level 2 verified ASAP on SandStorm HERE!
