The Metaverse is still a new industry that is gaining traction with brands. But the one key ingredient that brands need to launch in the metaverse is access to the best builders and experts. The world's largest metaverse builder community, Sandstorm, launched its beta platform at SXSW in March 2022 – with a handful of top brands, agencies, and innovative NFT projects.
Sandstorm is set to be the first-ever metaverse platform that enables mainstream brands to discover top builders and participate in this fast-growing industry. Building an experience in the metaverse for the largest brands will bring more mainstream adoption and awareness to the industry overall.
An NFT marketplace thats live on both Polygon and Ethereum has been widely supported by the Sandstorm community passing over 1,000 verified metaverse builders in the first 30 days. To make it more accessible with low gas fees and create a user-friendly interface, launching on Polygon was a priority. The beta platform being live on layer 2 technology enables minting of metaverse assets in VOX, GlTF, and VXM file formats for fractions of a penny. While other NFT marketplaces support trading cards, art, and many different NFT categories, Sandstorm focuses exclusively on Metaverse-ready assets and full experiences. Founder and CEO Steve McGarry also mentioned that in addition to brands hiring builders every week now, in the near future full metaverse experiences will be acquired by brands directly from builders on the platform.
In addition to the self serve marketplace, Sandstorm also offers white glove services to aid businesses entering the Metaverse providing them with a turnkey experience.
Since the Metaverse is a brand new industry, there are a lot of current and upcoming technologies that it needs to catch up with. While entrepreneurship is an essential skill that is crucial in the long run, keeping yourself updated with the latest technology and business trends can result in maximum benefits.
However, the gap between the two can be broad and gives birth to many problems for businesses. To bridge this gap, Sandstorm will help enterprises enter the Metaverse and develop a wide range of experiences to reach younger generations.
McGarry also announced $2.5 million in the seed round from all-star investors in March 2022. “There has been an overwhelming demand from the NFT community as we've grown organically to reach over 3 million people each month pre-launch,” McGarry said. That said, we have over 50 brands lined up and over 1,000 builders now verified across two decentralized virtual worlds.
