Financial giant DBS is partnering with crypto game The Sandbox to create a metaverse to promote a more sustainable world. Through this collaboration, Singapore's largest bank aims to offer institutional and high-net-worth individuals access to new opportunities in the crypto space.
The DBS Bank’s technologists will develop a 3×3 plot of LAND with immersive elements to explore new ways of interacting with clients. LAND is a portion of digital real estate in the Sandbox metaverse, represented by a nonfungible token (NFT), which players can customize with assets and immersive experiences.
DBS preparing for the future of banking
According to the CEO of DBS Hong Kong, the partnership will help create a “compelling” use case for Sandbox while at the same time preparing a new generation of technologically-savvy staff to lead future endeavors. The co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca brands, of which Sandbox is a subsidiary, also emphasized that he is “thrilled” to create an open metaverse through the partnership with DBS.
Further Sandbox enables users to profit from their own creations using VoxEdit, the Sandbox marketplace and Game Maker. VoxEdit allows users to create and animate 3-D objects, which can be exported to the Sandbox marketplace, where they appear as NFT game assets. NFTs are uploaded onto the Interplanetary File System, a decentralized storage facility. After that, the NFTs are registered on the blockchain to verify ownership. The Game Maker enables anyone to create 3-D games and experiences without any software coding experience.
Authorities faced with balancing act
DBS is Singapore’s largest bank, with $686 billion in assets as of Dec. 2021. According to DBS CEO Piyush Gupta, learn-by-doing is the best approach in a rapidly-shifting digital landscape. Gupta is a proponent of established institutions offering cryptocurrency products as opposed to startups since institutional players often have “guardrails” that could paint the crypto industry in a better light.
"Our partnership with The Sandbox and Animoca Brands marks the start of an exciting collaboration as we push the boundaries of what is possible in the metaverse. We also look forward to harnessing it as an additional innovative platform to spread the word on important ESG issues and to shine a spotlight on communities and partners doing good work to address them." - Piyush Gupta, DBS CEO
His perspective comes as Singapore’s regulators tussle with how to promote innovation while protecting investors. This balancing act has come into sharper focus, after at least three major crypto companies with ties to Singapore, are either undergoing liquidation or have requested protection from creditors, including defunct hedge fund Three Arrows Capital. In response, authorities have put regulations governing the marketing of crypto products to retail investors, issuing guidelines limiting the public advertisement of certain crypto services in public places like shopping malls or on social media sites.
