How the Sky Race Competition Works

The competition is exclusively open to G-SHOCK DROID Avatar owners. To enter, players must load into The Sandbox using their G-SHOCK DROID Avatar, race through the Sky Race experience, and screenshot their result screen showing both the avatar and their race time. They then fill out an official entry form and post their screenshot on X while tagging both The Sandbox and the Virtual G-SHOCK account.

The deadline to complete a qualifying run is April 22. Only verified times will count toward the leaderboard.

Prize Breakdown

The top 10 fastest verified times each receive 100 $SAND. The remaining prizes are distributed in the form of G-SHOCK DROID Avatars: 46 NFTs in total, split across three rarity tiers. Twenty-five Common Avatars go to eligible participants, alongside 15 Uncommon and 6 Rare Avatars. The rarer the avatar prize, the more exclusive the reward pool it opens access to within The Sandbox ecosystem.

The G-SHOCK DROID Avatar Collection

The G-SHOCK DROID Collection launched in The Sandbox on September 3, 2025, ahead of the full Virtual G-SHOCK experience going live on September 24, 2025. The collection is built around five of Casio's most iconic G-SHOCK watch models: the DW-5600, DW-6900, GA-110, GA-2100, and the oversized GA-V01. Each avatar takes the watch's design language and translates it into a robot-style playable NFT, reflecting the brand's bold aesthetic and signature toughness in voxel form.

The collection spans five rarity tiers: Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, and Legendary, with mint prices ranging from 19 $SAND for Common to 399 $SAND for Legendary. Each avatar grants a one-time bonus of 150 Ethos Points (EP) on unlock. In ongoing Alpha Seasons, holders earn a weekly passive EP boost tied to avatar rarity, making the collection a functional earning asset inside the platform rather than purely a cosmetic item.

All G-SHOCK DROID Avatars are randomly generated with unique trait combinations, with a separate set of exclusive 1:1 hand-crafted avatars also included in the collection.

G-SHOCK City and the Sandbox Partnership

At the center of the Virtual G-SHOCK collaboration is G-SHOCK City, a dedicated virtual world inside The Sandbox metaverse. The experience lets players explore Casio's G-SHOCK history through adventure-style gameplay and take part in shock-resistance-inspired survival races, a nod to the real-world durability testing G-SHOCK watches undergo in production. Limited-edition NFTs and wearable items featuring G-SHOCK motifs are available alongside the avatar collection.

The Sky Race competition draws directly on that survival race concept, turning the timed format into a competitive leaderboard event. Prizes are issued in $SAND and avatar NFTs, keeping the incentive structure fully onchain.

About The Sandbox and $SAND

The Sandbox is a voxel-based metaverse platform built on the Polygon blockchain, owned and operated by Animoca Brands. Over 400 brand partners have collaborated on the platform, including Warner Music Group, Ubisoft, Gucci, Snoop Dogg, Attack on Titan, The Walking Dead, and now Casio G-SHOCK. The platform's native token, $SAND, functions as the currency for purchasing LAND, avatars, NFT assets, and earning rewards during Alpha Seasons.

In 2025, The Sandbox hosted two Alpha Seasons in a single year, with over 144,000 players participating globally, completing more than 7.9 million quests and collecting over 200,000 NFTs. Alpha Season 6, featuring Cirque du Soleil, ran from September 24, 2025, and included G-SHOCK as a brand partner, marking the first Alpha Season in which G-SHOCK DROID Avatars were active in the ecosystem.

The platform is also developing SANDchain, a Layer 2 network built on zkSync technology, designed to make transactions faster and cheaper for creators and players. The SANDchain testnet launched in October 2025, with a mainnet launch scheduled for 2026. The Sandbox NEXT, a separate mobile shooter title built on Unreal Engine 5 targeting up to 20 players per instance, began stress testing on April 1, 2026, signaling continued expansion beyond the existing voxel-based platform.

The Broader Web3 Brand Activation Strategy

The G-SHOCK x Sandbox collaboration represents Casio America's first dedicated web3 product, announced formally on August 6, 2025. It was built around the idea of bridging watch enthusiasts, gamers, and NFT collectors in a single interactive space. Beyond the avatar collection, the partnership layered in G-SHOCK City gameplay, limited-edition NFT drops, wearable items, and now competitive race events tied directly to avatar ownership.

The Sky Race competition continues that approach, using a timed racing format to reward the most engaged avatar holders with additional NFTs and $SAND, deepening the hold of existing collectors while creating a new on-ramp for players who win avatars through the prize distribution.

For G-SHOCK DROID Avatar owners, the entry window closes April 22.