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Co-founder of The Sandbox, Sébastien Borget shares his journey from gaming to collecting, and how digital worlds are reshaping art. From the origins of The Sandbox to the creation of Artverse in Paris, he explores what connects artists and collectors today — and why digital art is becoming the new cultural frontier.
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Ten thousand NFTs. A 300-square-metre gallery in Le Marais. A co-founder who met his partner at the Chinese University of Hong Kong while building mobile games that reached 40 million downloads. Sebastien Borget didn't arrive at digital art collecting through the usual routes - he arrived through conviction, and his collection shows it.
Sebastien Borget is the co-founder and COO of The Sandbox, the blockchain-based virtual world platform with a SAND token that has ranked in the top 100 cryptocurrencies. He studied at Telecom Sud Paris and met his co-founder at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where they were already building mobile games - Garfield and Snoopy titles that ultimately reached 40 million downloads before they pivoted to blockchain in 2018. He collects more than 10,000 NFTs, including works by Beeple, XCopy, and ThankyouX, and opened Artverse gallery in June 2024 - a three-floor, 300-square-metre space in Le Marais, Paris, committed to digital art exhibition.
Building a platform for digital worlds and building a personal collection of digital art are not the same activity - but for Sebastien Borget, they are expressions of the same conviction. He cannot credibly advocate for a digital art ecosystem without being a collector himself, without having his own relationships with the work and with the artists who make it. This conversation explores what that means in practice: how The Sandbox's position shapes his collecting, what Artverse Paris is trying to prove about digital art in physical space, and which artists he is watching most carefully as the ecosystem evolves.
The platform founder as collector
Borget's argument is direct: you cannot be a platform in the Web3 space and not own NFTs yourself. Credibility requires participation - not as a performance but as a genuine commitment to the ecosystem you're building for.
Artverse Paris and physical exhibition
Opening a 300-square-metre gallery in Le Marais is a significant commitment to the proposition that digital art belongs in physical space - that screen-based work can create genuine gallery experiences rather than requiring virtual environments to be appreciated. Artverse is the proof of concept.
A collection of 10,000+
The scale of Borget's collection - including landmark works by Beeple, XCopy, and ThankyouX - reflects years of active engagement with the digital art market. It gives him a collector's perspective on value, quality, and the relationship between work and market that platform thinking alone doesn't provide.
Artists watching: Genesis Kai, Leo Caillard, Jeff Davis
The artists Borget is currently focused on - Genesis Kai's AI and digital work from Hong Kong/Korea, Leo Caillard's marble sculptures alongside Bitcoin ordinals, Jeff Davis's ArtBlocks generative art - reflect a collector's eye for work at the edges of established categories.
"You cannot be a platform in web-free and not own NFT yourself. You cannot just be launching a collection of NFTs and not start to collect from other creators in the space."
Sebastien Borget occupies a rare position: major platform founder, active collector, gallery operator. His account of how those roles reinforce each other - and what each one demands - is directly relevant to anyone thinking about the relationship between participation and credibility in the digital art ecosystem. Press play if you want to understand how the most serious players think about their commitments.
Unlocked is the podcast by 100 collectors - the global network for digital art collectors. Each episode, we speak with artists, curators, collectors, and builders shaping the digital art world. No market speculation. No hype. Just honest, substantive conversations about art, practice, and what it means to collect today. New episodes release throughout the year. Find Unlocked on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. 100 collectors is a membership network. [Explore membership →]
