The Sandbox is Launching Soon! Apply Now Or Send Us Your Feedback

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Dear NEAR Community,

Today we would like to introduce the ‘Sandbox Launch Plan’ that is a follow up to the soft launch of the Sandbox back in Q3 of 2020.

The basic idea is this:

The Sandbox is going to be launching soon on NEAR as a Digital Hub for contributors, future guilds, and different projects in the ecosystem to collaborate with one another across projects, activities, and networks. But in order to get to that point, we first need to get as many existing projects, guilds and contributors involved.

To do that, we would like to get ‘buy-in’ from as many projects, guilds, collaborators, and NEAR Team members within the ecosystem to make the Sandbox a true hub for NEAR Communities going forward. This opportunity will make building on NEAR easy, quick, and inclusive for all of our contributors and projects.

Note: The home for the Sandbox right now is on discord and can be joined right here (https://discord.gg/SjyJbpnUfh).

As a project on NEAR you will be able to use the Sandbox to source talent to help you better develop your platform. Some initial things that Sandbox contributors will be rewarded for include:

  • Telegram/ Discord Moderation

  • Creative and design

  • Social media

  • Content writing and translation

  • Videos

  • Events

  • Tech support and development

From this position, our goal is to streamline project and guild development on NEAR by connecting contributors to opportunities that the Ecosystem might need.

How Do You Get Involved?

For Projects and Guilds:

As a project, Guild, or Team Member, the Sandbox is a home for you to source new additions to your teams, or for temporary (and maybe even non-so-temporary) tasks relating to your project.

Concretely:

  • Share with us a list of tasks that your project would be interested in having contributors in the Sandbox help out with.

  • Share with us any special incentives or ‘contributions’ to the sandbox that your project or Guild might be able to put forward.

  • Engage the users of the sandbox, and help improve networks across the Ecosystem so that everyone can benefit from protocol development and increasing network effects.

For Contributors and Future Guild Leaders:

As a contributor, potential guild leader, or potential guild member, the Sandbox is the easiest way of getting introduced to the NEAR Ecosystem and the many projects therein.

By joining the Sandbox, you will have the opportunity to improve a skill you might have, meet founders and guild leaders, identify new opportunities within the protocol, and earn rewards for your contribution to different projects in the ecosystem.

Concretely:

  • Introduce yourself and the different interests / areas of the Sandbox that you would like to explore.

  • Collaborate with projects or guilds or other contributors to learn, build a network, and earn rewards.

  • Stick around for as long as you like, or join a project full time, or request to launch your own guild!

We Are All In This Together - So Your Feedback is Important!

Right now the NEAR Ecosystem is at a pivotal point in its development. The Sandbox is a way for new members on NEAR to get started, create value, and build larger network effects. What that means more directly is that anyone interested in the future of NEAR should also be interested in making sure that the Sandbox is a roaring success.

If you would like to get started on the Sandbox, Jump into Discord,(https://discord.gg/SjyJbpnUfh) Comment Below or reach out to Shreyas and Eunice! All thoughts from project leaders, Guild leads, and NEAR Team Members are also welcome as we move to launch in the NEAR Future!

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Super looking forward to the re-launch of Sandbox! Thanks for the detailed introduction @Ozymandius

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Cool initiative!

If I was to boil it down, sounds like a NEAR specific gig economy hub? If that’s the case, why not host tasks on any of the existing gig economy sites? The upside of existing platforms is the built in audience. Reaching people who haven’t heard of NEAR means more chances of getting contributors AND advertises the protocol. Another thought is to spin up an open source, self hosted classifieds like Yclas.

In it’s current form, why host the Sandbox separately from the main NEAR discord? The NEAR community seems small enough that the risk of fragmentation outweighs the risk of information overload. DesignBuddies is a good case study for how to run a discord community for 14,000 members.

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Hey Starpause,

Thanks for the response.

It’s interesting because a lot of the design that went into the Sandbox is to try to avoid creating people who are only looking for ‘quick’ ‘one-time’ tasks that is characteristic of a lot of the gig economy today.

We are trying to do 2 things with the sandbox:

— Create a funnel for new contributors to find guilds and larger projects that they are passionate about and that they want to help out with for the long haul.

— Create a hub (almost like a Digital City) for all of the different projects in the ecosystem – NEAR Team, Existing Guilds, Projects in the Ecosystem, and of course contributors and community members - to be able to converse, share their project needs, updates, and goals and hopefully maximize engagement across the board.

If that’s the case, why not host tasks on any of the existing gig economy sites? The upside of existing platforms is the built in audience. Reaching people who haven’t heard of NEAR means more chances of getting contributors AND advertises the protocol.

Posting might be worthwhile, but its likely that the reward structure is not going to mirror what you might find on those sites: For one rewards will be in NEAR or a native currency of a project. Second, rewards will most likely compile with collaboration among different contributors / groups of people. In the last analysis, its going to be up to the participants in the Sandbox itself who need services.

In it’s current form, why host the Sandbox separately from the main NEAR discord? The NEAR community seems small enough that the risk of fragmentation outweighs the risk of information overload.

When we took to designing the Sandbox, we realized that we needed a space that did more than just offered ‘gigs’ to contributors. We wanted to create an open-space for adding value to the ecosystem, but to also learn about what exists in the ecosystem – share ideas with other people – and tap into existing projects that groups of other contributors might be working on. In that sense, we think that a new discord server that can integrate all of these things in one place – without siloing conversation between channels or ‘non-sandbox’ updates is the best long term strategy for growing this type of digital city.

At the end of the day, it is going to be a decent amount of a process that I think of as “Execute and Iterate”. We’ll need really quality people committed to the long term. But if in the next 6 months we can get Guilds, DAOs, Projects within the Ecosystem, and a number of passionate contributors bouncing around, we will be in good shape to grow in the years to come.

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Here is the recap video from the first call:

This should help provide a short intro to the idea behind the sandbox (its about 15 min before questions)

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