Collaborating With Third Parties

Important considerations for safely collaborating with creators or studios offering creative or metaverse services.

The Sandbox, besides many other things, creates opportunities for creative people and studios to offer their services to others within the metaverse. This might be NFT creation, Avatar design, game design, world building, LAND terraforming, LAND acquisition, marketing, social media management, and so on.

Do Your Own Research (DYOR)

Before enlisting the help of a creator or studio, you should research them first. Take a look at their website and portfolio. See if they have any reviews on third-party websites (reviews posted on their own websites could be fake or manipulated).

Scammers Posing As A Creator Or Client

One thing to be wary of, as shared on the Staying Safe on Discord page, are scammers posing as a creator, a studio, or a client. They may ask for things from you, such as NFT samples, funds, account passwords, and wallet addresses. People who do this should be considered a potential scammer and reported to The Sandbox.

Contracts

Contracts are legally-binding documents that are signed by both the creator/studio and the client. They protect both parties from damages. No work should be carried out, invoiced for, or paid for until both parties have agreed to and signed a fully-completed contract between them.

If you have not signed a contract and end up having an issue, you are not protected against any harm, loss, or liability. The Sandbox will also not get involved in any disputes that may arise between creators/studios and clients (the exception being investigating reports of possible scams). You can find many contract templates for creative work on search engines, such as Google.

Milestone Payments

Work should never, under any circumstances, be paid up-front. At the same time, creators/studios cannot go unpaid. The simple solution to this is milestone payments, which will be organised in your signed contract.

Milestone payments mean that the client pays the creator/studio based on them reaching certain milestones of their work. For example, when the creator/studio is able to show the client evidence that the requested work has been provided (ie, a video of their NFTs being made, or allowing them to visit a work-in-progress game design), the client will then pay a certain pre-agreed percentage of the quoted fee for the work. Then the rest of the fee will be paid in the next milestones, leading up to the final completion of the work.

Example

• Milestone 1: The creator provides proof of in-progress work, client pays a pre-agreed sum of the quoted cost.

• Milestone 2: The creator shows samples of the completed or in-progress work, client again pays a pre-agreed sum of the quoted cost.

• Milestone 3: Any corrections or changes requested by the client are proven by the creator, client pays a pre-agreed sum of the quoted cost.

• Milestone 4: Creator finishes the work, client pays the remaining quoted cost and receives the finished product.