The SolSand Mint, a Ticket to SolanaVerse

One of the exciting elements of NFTs is the ability to get in on the ground floor of an innovative project that could be useful in our future digital lives. Recently, the idea of buying plots of digital land in the metaverse has been one of the hottest NFT concepts with projects popping up across different blockchains. 

On Ethereum, The Sandbox is one of the biggest projects with a small plot of land costing $15,000 as I'm writing. And that's for one of just 166,464 plots of LANDS. The idea with The Sandbox is to be able to host contests, events, and even sell assets on your digital plot of land and the team is building that reality. 

Solana has a few metaverse projects popping up, but they're generally small, like Solana Town and Enviro (both NFTs I own), which have a lot of potential but are very early in development today. An even more ambitious project is the SolanaVerse, which is minting SolSand NFTs this weekend to help fund future developments. This is a very early stage project, but for NFT owners it's potentially an asymmetric bet and worth considering if you're willing to hold on for what might be a multi-year ride. 

What you need to know

Let's start with some of the project's stats and where you can find more information. 

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/SolSand_io

  • 11,000 followers

• Discord: discord.gg/solanaverse

  • 20,609 members

• Website: https://solsand.io

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/solsand_io/

• Telegram: https://t.me/solsand

Here you can follow developments before the mint, including the mint site. 

The team also recently did an AMA on Discord, which was recorded and posted here. Feel free to listen as you read the rest of this article because this teases out a lot of the group's vision. 

I'll get to the vision for the SolanaVerse in a minute, but first we need to talk about the mint itself. 

The mint

There will be 2,500 SolSand NFTs minted on Saturday. These aren't plots of land yet, but they are digital grains of sand that are intended to represent sand in SolanaVerse. The land in SolanaVerse will some in Q3 2022 and will be airdropped to SolSand holders, which I'll cover in the roadmap. 

Private list sale

• When: January 15, 2021 at 5:00 p.m. ET and lasting 24 hours

• Price: 1 SOL

• Max of 1 per "white list" spot

  • 1,112 on this list per Discord

• Max of 2 per Super Solarian

  • 101 on this list per Discord

• Website: check Discord just before mint

There will be a second first come, first served presale for the regular "white list". 

• When: January 16, 2021 at 5:00 p.m. ET

• Price: 1 SOL

• Max of 3 for WL

• Max of 6 per Super Solarian

Public sale

If there's anything left, this is what the public sale looks 

• When: January 16, 2021 at 7:00 p.m. ET

• Price: 1.5 SOL

• No max per wallet

• Website: check Discord just before mint

The SolanaVerse world

I mentioned that this project is early in its development and the SolSand mint will only be a ticket to get SolanaVerse land in the future. And this metaverse land vision isn't going to be available for many months, so right now holders are essentially buying tickets and potentially earning tokens. 

We are starting to see images of the metaverse vision come to life and they're impressive. Here are a couple of images the team has shared. 

What's a little challenging from an analysis perspective is that these sneak peaks are like ideas on a napkin. The world will be much, much bigger if it can be built as planned and that's still in concept phase. 

The roadmap for this project is long, but it's worth showing here in full because it lays out just how early this project is in its development. We are currently in Phase 2 and the team is in the process of building a foundation like partnerships and building out a team. 

It's a hugely ambitious project to build a metaverse for Solana, especially with the sheer cost involved. It could take millions of dollars and a team of dozens of people to build this world, but you can see that the roadmap outlines logical steps like early funding from NFT sales and investors as well as steps along the way like land and token drops. 

The team has indicated that it's already talking to investors and SolSand holders will likely earn some $VERSE token even before land is available, but some of those details are yet to be worked out. 

These are the building blocks of such a big project and this NFT mint could be an early investment in the project. That makes it high risk, but potentially high reward. 

Partners are coming

Another key to watch after the mint is the team growing partnerships. The team alerted me to an upcoming partnership with TipsyVerse, a metaverse gaming vision with its own token and NFTs. I'll dive into that project in a later post because it's another early metaverse project. 

They also talked about incorporating 3D character NFTs on Solana, which could be announced soon. I think we will see NFTs be used as characters more commonly on Solana, giving value to both the character NFT projects and the metaverse projects. 

Other partnerships were also teased, although we don't know what that means. 

Building in public

There's no perfect way to vet an NFT team today but the SolSand team is doing more than most teams out there. They have public bios and pictures on Discord. I would like this to link to public profiles like LinkedIn (which it does for two people on the team), but this is FAR better than most projects. 

KYCastle also did a know your customer (KYC) analysis of the team and gave an "Owner Identity Verified" badge. I'll note that a project that did a similar audit process rugged on Solana earlier this week, so these verifications aren't perfect. 

The team is also already verified on Solana NFT marketplaces SolSea, Alpha Art, Solanart, and more with FTX and Magic Eden awaiting verification. 

On a personal level, the team responded to my questions and answered anything I asked. They also brought up the Day of the Dead NFT project some of the team worked on that both hasn't fully minted and will be somehow incorporated into this project. For them to highlight a project that didn't go as well as expected is admirable, especially when that information could be swept under the rug. 

What I think of the mint and SolanaVerse

To be clear on the bear case, I think this is a project that has the possibility of going to zero. I don't think a rug is likely, but this is an extremely ambitious project and the team as it currently stands won't be able to build everything. They will likely need to raise more money, hire staff, and build out a lot of assets and technology. And they could slip up along that 2-3 year path. 

The bull case is that this becomes one of the best metaverse projects on Solana and the entry price is 1/100th of the cost of a plot of land in The Sandbox. This could be like betting on a startup when it's just an idea on a napkin. If it hits, this NFT could be a huge winner with years of ongoing value. 

I do like the idea of this project and will likely try to mint or buy on the secondary market. I'll note that many Solana metaverse projects haven't traded higher immediately, with the exception of Portals. But Solana Town and Enviro lagged for weeks before popping as features were added and NFT buyers started to see the value being built. The Neighborhood, which is a new project, still isn't trading above the mint price and has yet to "prove it" to buyers. If the team "proves it" this could be a winner. 

What I'll be watching closely is progress on building out this long-term vision. In coming weeks and months we need to see partnerships, more asset development, outside investment, a more mature concept and roadmap, and much more. If the team continues to update the community and builds in public this is a project that could rise over time in anticipation of a real 3D metaverse launch. 

It's a high risk bet, but it's one where the reward could out-weigh the risks at a price of 1.5 SOL. 

Disclaimer: Travis Hoium may invest in this project, but has not been compensated for this post. The NFT Project DOES NOT provide financial advice. All content is for informational purposes only. The NFT Project is not a registered investment, legal, or tax advisor or a broker/dealer. Trading any crypto-related asset is extremely risky and could result in significant capital losses. DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH