# What is $SAND used for? $SAND can be used for several exciting things: ## Medium of exchange $SAND is the medium of exchange in The Sandbox's ecosystem. It will be necessary for making purchases from The Sandbox's marketplace. It will be required to purchase: * LAND * ASSETs * GEMs and CATALYSTs * Avatar customizations ## Contests Some game designers may choose to give $SAND away as a reward in contests hosted on their LAND. ## Selling your ASSETs Voxel artists will need $SAND in order to upload their voxel creations to The Sandbox's marketplace to sell in order to monetize them. ## Staking $SAND is also used for staking onto LAND. In return, stakers will earn rewards, such as highly coveted GEMs. $SAND can also be staked into a liquidity mining pool for rewards too. ## Playing (some) games Some games on The Sandbox's platform will be free to play (F2P). But not all of them. The game designer may choose at their own discretion to charge players a small amount of $SAND in order to play their games ## Foundation Fund & Staking Pool From all $SAND transactions, a 5% transaction fee is applied. 50% of this fee is allocated to the Foundation Fund and the other 50% is allocated to the Staking Pool. [The Foundation Fund](broken://pages/-MOb0mfr-Bw4VIYduZpG) supports the ecosystem and allows us to offer grants to incentivise artists and designers to produce high quality games and ASSETs.\ The Staking Pool contains the rewards for token holders who choose to stake. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://blockchainspace.gitbook.io/blockchainspace/bspc-community/blockchainspace-sandbox-academy/preface/faqs/what-is-usdsand-used-for.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.