The Open Web Sandbox Has Launched! Rolling Opportunities, Spotlight and MOAR

On March 24th, the Open Web Sandbox launched in the NEAR Ecosystem. This event is important for the NEAR community for a number of reasons: 

– We have our first outlines of a future digital city of contributors, projects, and teams on NEAR that can network, collaborate, and work on different initiatives across the ecosystem for rewards in $NEAR. 

– We have created an open-source community for anyone and everyone to learn about and involve themselves in the NEAR Ecosystem.

– We have created an outline for increasing ecosystem productivity, engagement, and connection between many of the different moving pieces. 

– We have created infrastructure for coordinating ecosystem wide campaigns and services between and across projects. 

If you have not heard of the Open Web Sandbox, but would like to get started, jump into the Discord Channel Here.

The Open Web Sandbox: How It Works

In simple terms, the Sandbox has been built to encourage participation and collaboration on different activities in the NEAR Ecosystem. It’s pretty raw and organic. You hop into the server – fill out your profile if you want to make yourself known for future engagements, and then have a look around at the different opportunities. Rewards are divided between acts and series. An act is something you can do on your own – a series is something you will probably need to do in collaboration with a team. Just like those early 2000 MMORPG Games we want you to openly promote your needs and work with others to fulfill different opportunities.  These rewards will change on the monthly and fluctuate according to previous months demand and engagement levels. 

At the end of the month, you fill out a form claiming the reward for each of the activities you worked on. This is evaluated by the Sandbox council and sent to the NEAR address you provided within the first week of the next month. So in simple terms: Build cool stuff – design cool stuff – make cool stuff – and you can earn $NEAR for it. Work together and you can earn even more. 

What is Spotlight? 

Spotlight is our mechanism for coordinating and directing emphasis on certain events in the NEAR ecosystem. Anyone and everyone can request a spotlight! Here is how it works. You as a person with something in the Ecosystem that you would like to spread attention to can contact a moderator or submit a spotlight request to a submission form. 

Once you have submitted, then a moderator will post your spotlight with the built in reward percentage bonus, the duration, and the specific focus area. Then it’s live! 

In context, Spotlight will help mobilize activity in the NEAR Ecosystem towards certain events that require more attention or support. While the Sandbox is young and only starting it’s long journey – the Spotlight function has the capacity to create huge waves of intentional support in the long-term from everyone in the Ecosystem. 

What is the Long Term Vision for the Open Web Sandbox? 

V1 of the Open Web Sandbox is a lot like the early computer games we all used to play. The graphics are going to be terrible and it might lag at some points. But over time as we iterate it, we are going to try to refine it to make it more efficient, and engaging – for everyone. 

The next steps (in no particular order and still without a fixed chronology) will be to:

– DAOify the Sandbox so that rewards are paid out directly from a DAO. 

– Further gamify the UX / UI of the Sandbox so that it is more engaging to interact with and utilize. 

– Eventually move to making the Sandbox into a 3D-Online Space where your character can move around the town and interact with different buildings and vendors (projects and Guilds). 

– Build in areas for Hackathon Support, Events, and more direct guild onboarding. 

All of these things are only beginning. NEAR is young, the Sandbox is young, the Open Web is young. But the future that we believe in – one where our data is ours, our money is ours, and our identity is ours – is what makes this worth the time and effort. Let’s Build! Jump into the Discord Channel Here.