Animoca Brands and The Sandbox have jointly launched Creative Minds Jam #1, a four-week competition based in Hong Kong that puts $10,000 in prize money on the table for creators, students, and developers building with agentic AI. Registration opens July 28, 2026, with an in-person kick-off event at Animoca Brands' Hong Kong headquarters two days later on July 30.
The competition centers on Minds by Animoca Brands, a persistent, always-on AI agent platform that lets users deploy and manage sovereign AI agents without needing to run their own servers or handle complex infrastructure. Here's the thing: the barrier to entry is intentionally low. No prior AI experience is required to participate.
What participants are actually being asked to build
The theme is "Build What Creators Need Next", which narrows the field toward practical problems: content discoverability, audience engagement, and workflow efficiency. Entries need to put Minds agents at the center of whatever gets built, but participants are free to use any other development tools they choose.
Judging will weigh creativity, technical execution, user experience, and the originality of how agentic AI gets applied. Submissions close August 28, with winners announced at a showcase event in early September.
What most players miss about competitions like this is the secondary prize. Winners will also be considered for the Minds Investment Programme, which carries an aggregate allocation of up to $10 million, subject to investment committee approval. That changes the calculus significantly for serious builders.
Community infrastructure behind the jam
Open Campus, a community-led decentralised autonomous organisation focused on blockchain-based education, is the official community partner. Weekly workshops, mentoring sessions, open office hours, and a dedicated community hub are all included throughout the four weeks.
The competition has pulled in support from several Hong Kong academic institutions: the Hong Kong Institute of Information Technology, Hong Kong Design Institute, Index Academy, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University School of Design, and the Hong Kong Designers Association. That's a meaningful signal about who the organizers want in the room.
What Borget and Siu said about the direction
The Sandbox co-founder and ambassador Sébastien Borget framed the competition as a practical opportunity for creators regardless of technical background, specifically calling out how agentic AI can transform digital experiences. Yat Siu, Animoca Brands co-founder and executive chairman, positioned AI agents as a shift away from technically demanding tools toward adaptable digital collaborators, with the creator economy as the primary beneficiary.
The key here is that both statements point toward the same goal: making AI-driven creation accessible enough that more people can turn ideas into experiences and businesses without needing an engineering background to do it.
Key competition dates at a glance
Pre-registration is live now through the Creative Minds page on DoraHacks. If you want to get a head start on building before submissions open, our guide on how to use The Sandbox equipment to create games covers the Game Maker toolset in detail, which is directly relevant to anyone thinking about building creator-facing experiences within The Sandbox ecosystem.
