We’re excited to announce that we’ve partnered with Sappy Seals and the Pudgy Penguins to bring the Arctic Alliance into the SandStorm social hub long-term.  The magic of web3 is that there are incredible tech innovations happening behind the scenes of fun and playful NFT projects like Sappy Seals and Pudgy Penguins. If you are a newcomer to the web3 space it’s very important to know there is deep innovation happening in the background behind the playful branding. Not all projects are building heavy tech behind the scenes but we want to be sure to partner with the ones that are.

In the NFT space community is king and one powerful way to emphasize unity is through creating a simple “chant.” In the case of Sappy Seals, it’s ARF ARF! and when you join their Discord you’ll see how special the chant is. Joining a community as a way to meet like-minded people from around the world and exchange ideas is vital to web3 innovation. The most effective and proven way to spark a community has been through self-expression via “profile picture” NFTs. Users get to express themselves through the different attributes of the NFTs and become friends with each other all based on merit. Once you have a powerful community of holders moving from 2D NFTs, launching 3D avatars for holders to utilize in the metaverse has become the new standard.

We hosted both Sappy Seals and Pudgy Penguins on the SandStorm stream and learned about the innovative ideas they’re working on. Ever since the interview with Sappy Seals multiple SandStorm team members have become “ride or die” seals themselves making this an even more exciting partnership.

Full stream with Sappy Seals and Pudgy Penguins:

Sappy Seals has grown their community of seals to now over 3,500 holders. With such a strong community the team has begun their ambitious roadmap towards the pixelverse, staking, $PIXL token, and much more. The first big shift that excited the NFT community was when they rolled out $PIXL enabling all seal owners to stake their NFTs and earn utility tokens (DEXtools listing). The smart tokenomics behind this functionality is that it provides an incentive for holders to contract the supply of NFTs available for sale on the open market. The limiting of sell pressure through staking NFTs, hodlers earning cash flow, and a 3D PIXSEAL’s utility towards metaverse expansion offers a powerful value to the seals.

Projects like our other partners CyberKongz pioneered the utility token NFT staking concept with $Banana as discussed on our stream with Sappy Seals. Watching projects continue to move the needle with their own take on staking should be inspiring to everyone reading this.

As you can see there are 3D PIXSEALS planned for release along with the PIXL Marketplace, PIXEL PETS, and charity events on the roadmap all leading to Metaverse expansion. In the web3 space, it’s extremely important to follow projects who are building consistently and Sappy Seals is a prime example of a project to follow closely.

Now, the other exciting half of the arctic alliance coming to the social hub is Pudgy Penguins. With a total supply of 8,888 penguins and over 4,300 owners, Pudgy Penguins have an incredible community-driven vibe. The overall community refers to itself as the HUDDLE all with the vision of innovating to drive mainstream adoption.

It’s exciting to see powerful community partnerships like the arctic alliance form because you have like-minded communities coming together to build.

In addition to the original Pudgy Penguin collection, they released the 22,222 LIL PUDGYS that are free to claim for holders. Creating secondary collections like these is an extremely powerful reward to the community. This companion collection drop is similar to how Bored Ape Club released their Kennel Club and Gutter Cat Gang released their Gutter Dogs, Rats, and Pigeons. A brilliant way to reward the community of holders. On top of their robust roadmap penguin fans have started to speculate the project is hinting at the launch of a metaverse. Time will tell….

Over the coming weeks, we’ll release updates on our immersive Arctic Alliance built inside our social hub. It’ll be an immersive experience for newcomers to learn about the Sappy Seals and Pudgy Penguins accessible 24/7. Education is key and we’re excited to help bring both their communities into The Sandbox’s metaverse.

If you’re new to NFTs be sure to read our beginner guides on what NFTs are and how to create them.

Also, tune into our streams 5 times per week from inside the metaverse here also if you want to join the Arctic Alliance check out their Twitter or Discord