Decentraland Foundation Quarterly Update: Q1 2024

By Decentraland, , in Announcements

 

As promised in Decentraland’s 2024 Manifesto, the Foundation has started 2024 hitting the ground running. This year’s theme focuses on ‘Forging Foundations for the Future’ with the central goal of developing a new, powerful and performant Desktop Client to improve the in-world Decentraland experience and pave the way for expansion into other platforms. 

While the majority of the Foundation’s product team have been hard at work on the new Client, almost 30 updates were released in Q1 of 2024. From a new, streamlined account creation process that utilizes social profiles, to UX improvements for creators, to more payment options in the Marketplace, new features and updates were released across the Decentraland experience.

Outside of development, the first quarter of 2024 saw the first edition of Decentraland Wellness Week, the 5th annual Decentraland Art Week, the official kick off of Decentraland’s global Ambassador Program, and Decentraland’s first appearance at the world’s biggest gamedev convention, GDC in San Francisco. Read the full quarterly report to learn all the details of how Decentraland has progressed forward in Q1 of 2024 and what’s coming next! 

2024 Quarter 1 Updates

Product Releases & Platform Updates

The individual projects being worked on by product teams are now listed in a public Notion page detailing the team’s development cycles. Projects worked on also include various Canny requests submitted by the community—if you have an idea or request, please share it here.

Short on time? Watch a quick recap of what’s new:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/ft4uWGJoG2g

Work on New Desktop Client

The new Desktop Client—the product team’s main objective this year—is slated for an alpha sneak peek at the end of May, so already, a lot of work has been put into it. Focusing on enhancing performance and reimagining core functionalities, significant improvements have been made in several areas, including networking, avatar animation and locomotion, and UI. The team will continue their work throughout Q2. 

For Creators

  • Walk/Run New Wearable Preview Modes: Creators can now test how their Wearables will look on an avatar in motion. Avatar models will show off outfits while walking, running, and jumping, so creators can see if any adjustments need to be made to their design before publishing.

  • Skin Wearable Size Increased: The maximum size for skin Wearables has been increased from 2MB to 8MB to allow creators more flexibility and creative freedom in their designs.

  • Pay Wearable/Emote Submission Fee in FIAT: Lowering the entry barrier for new creators, it’s now possible to pay the 100 USD submission fee by credit or debit card powered by Wert, without having to take the additional step of purchasing MANA first.

  • Web Editor:

    • SDK 7 Templates: Deploy an amazing scene to your World or LAND with just a few clicks. Choose between The House, The Night Club, The Office, The Shop, or The Theater. Deploy them as they are or customize them to your liking, adding your own content such as video and audio.

    • Add Scene Metadata During Deployment: This new step in scene deployment is key for discoverability as information such as name, description, and category are vital in featuring LANDs and Worlds in Places. 

    • Out Of Bounds & Limitations Warnings: Clear feedback when an item is outside your scene’s land, or when going over the limits with materials, triangles, etc.

    • UX Updates: Several quality of life improvements to make the usability of the Editor a lot smoother.

    • Smart Item Updates:

      • Multiplayer Smart Items: Actions from these smart items are seen by all players in sync and are easy for creators to configure from the Web Editor without code. 

      • Player Health Smart Items: A first version of items that deal with the concept of health. These include health bars (that can be added to players or any item), weapons, enemies, spikes, exploding barrels, and health packs. This content pack also comes with 14 new actions that can be carried out from any item without any code, like playing avatar animations, swapping 3D models, etc. 

      • Simplified Smart Item View: The Web Editor’s smart items are more powerful and configurable than those from the old Builder. To streamline the creation process, a Simplified View has been added with full customization options available in Advanced View.

  • SDK 7:

    • Positions & Data from All Players: For every player in a scene, a creator can now get their position, Wearables equipped, Emotes being played, NAME, address, and more info. This is key to creating more personalized game mechanics for players, as creators can get way more context about what’s happening in their scene.

    • UI Feedback Example Scene: Creators can now easily implement interactions and give life to their UIs. When a player clicks on a button, an effect can be triggered. UIs can appear with cool transitions, use progress bars, and much more. 

    • Control Scene Audio from SDK: The way to interact with sound is now easier. Now it’s also possible to pause and resume a sound, or retrigger a sound that was already ongoing. It’s also possible to play a sound from the middle of the file, and to query its progress.

    • Dev Exp Package: This includes a lot of quality of life improvements for developers. It includes creating a project from a GitHub URL, a library project template, a cleaner console output. It also includes improvements to the Desktop Editor, with more clearly labeled buttons, and autosave on by default.   

    • Bug Fixes: Now it’s possible to teleport a player within a Decentraland World, and to adjust the scale of UI text to the screen size to create more responsive UIs.

Marketplace

  • Map NAMEs to Wallet Address: As voted in this Governance Proposal, users are now able to transfer assets like Wearables or Emotes with just the NAME of the recipient instead of needing their whole wallet address.

  • Improved NAMEs Minting Flow: Users can now select the option to mint a NAME from the Marketplace instead of having to find it in the Builder. Users are then taken to a new, informative NAME landing page that covers all the benefits of owning a NAME. When checking out, users will also be able to pay for their NAME by card or with any cryptocurrency instead of having to first purchase MANA.

  • Multi-Chain Purchasing Expanded: Making Marketplace transactions is now easier than ever before. In addition to being able to make purchases by card, shoppers can now purchase Wearables, Emotes, NAMEs, and LANDs with virtually any cryptocurrency they may own. All tokens from the following chains are supported: Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, Binance, Smart Chain, Optimism, Fantom, Avalanche.

Web and Desktop (Windows and MacOS) clients

  • Social Sign In: New users can now have the option to create their Decentraland account by using their Gmail, Discord, Twitter, or Apple accounts instead of having to create and link a wallet from providers such as Metamask & Coinbase first. This makes the process much more accessible for new users coming from Web2 and is made possible by Magic. At the same time, Web3 login options, such as Metamask, Coinbase, Wallet Connect, and digital wallet options are still available.

  • Web Avatar Creation: Players are now able to start their DCL journey from the web without needing to load the Client first. They can get started with a randomized avatar, choose a NAME, and subscribe to DCL’s newsletter. At the end, there is a ‘Jump In’ button to enter Decentraland’s Genesis City.

  • Improved NPCs: The two AI NPCs that welcome users to Genesis Plaza have had their responses optimized to be able to offer improved assistance to new users and help them discover content throughout Decentraland.

  • Block Players Visually: Now, in addition to being able to block someone from sending you friend requests or messages, blocking another user will make it so you will also not see their avatar in-world. 

Other

  • Redesigned Website Navigation: The main Decentraland.org website’s top nav-bar has been completely redesigned to help users find the information they need and to be more action-oriented with call-to-action headings such as ‘Create’ instead of ‘Builder’ and sub-sections with short descriptions.

  • Categories for Worlds: In Q4 categories were added for Genesis City scenes in the Places dApp, now they’ve been added for Worlds as well! Make sure to update your scene metadata to make your World more discoverable.

  • Event, DAO, & Marketplace Notifications: Creating a more unified Decentraland ecosystem experience, users will now see notifications for events they’ve RSVPed to and Marketplace and DAO interactions no matter which dApp they’re in.

  • Hearts Are Back!: Back by popular request via Canny, the floating hearts that used to appear when a user triggered the base ‘Kiss’ Emote have returned.

Events, Community Support, and Awareness

Decentraland Wellness Week 

This feel-good, inaugural wellness event was attended by many in the community who showed an outpouring of gratitude for #DCLWW24. The event featured group meditations, relaxing landscapes, and thoughtful panel talks, such as an interview with Shira Lazar and Jordana Reim, co-authors of the JOMO Journal—watch it here if you weren’t able to join in live!

https://twitter.com/decentraland/status/1753144917130707349

Decentraland Art Week ‘24

Over 40 artists participated in Decentraland’s 5th annual Art Week! One of DCL’s longest-running events, the festival was covered by NFTnow and cryptonews and was attended by people from 81 countries! If you didn't get a chance to explore the reality-defying creations of this year's edition, it’s not too late to jump in and explore 8 new galleries and 32 floating MESHfair cubes.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/fJjDc97jJic

Ending with a sparkling awards gala, the event closed by highlighting the work of 3 winning MESHfair artists whose creations really stood out:

https://twitter.com/decentraland/status/1773484586447867941?s=20

IRL Ambassador Program Events

Originally brought to life by a DAO Proposal, the Decentraland Ambassador Program went live at the beginning of the year with numerous live events held around the globe. So far this year, ambassadors from the community have hosted 7 IRL events in 6 different countries with ~400 attendees so far. Events ranged from educational student onboarding sessions at Henley School of business to influencer events in Dubai, to workshops in Brazil, and more still to come! All of the events are built with the intention of showing what’s possible in Decentraland to new audiences.

New Creator Landing Page

A new page has been designed and deployed specifically to help attract and inform future Decentraland creators, covering the Why’s, What’s, and How’s of creating in Decentraland in a visually appealing and easy to digest way. The aim is to grow the numbers of the creator community. The page also gives more visibility to Decentraland Studios and is mobile-friendly!

GDC 2024

GDC is the world’s largest gamedev conference that is held annually in San Francisco. This year, Foundation teams took advantage of two sponsorship opportunities at the conference to introduce Decentraland to the gaming community and share why Creators are building in DCL. The week was eventful, packed with meeting gaming IP brands, community members, and gamers. The valuable learnings gathered at the event will be applied to strengthening Decentraland’s appeal in the gaming community going forward.

Discover Decentraland Video

Originally created to play on a loop at Decentraland’s GDC booth, this DCL sizzle reel will continue to serve as a useful marketing tool at future events and activations.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/EaddnOkoA90

What’s Up Next

Decentraland Community Summit - May 2024

Decentraland’s first IRL Community Summit is now less than 2 months away! The summit will bring together 80 esteemed members from the community, Foundation, and DAO for an enriching 3-day experience in the birthplace of Decentraland: Buenos Aires, Argentina. Preparations for the event have been underway and more details have been shared with confirmed attendees. Energy levels are high ahead of this historical gathering!

First-Ever Decentraland Gaming Expo - June 2024  

Get ready for the first Decentraland Game Expo! Coming at the end of June, the event will feature the best games of Decentraland as well as the top submissions from a DCLGX Game Jam and Expo Open Call coming in the next few weeks! Stay tuned for more information coming soon.

Upcoming Features & Products

Want to stay up to date with the projects currently being worked on by Foundation product teams? Dive into a detailed list of active projects on the public Development Cycles Notion page, kept up to date and originally announced in a Community All Hands meeting. The team also works on projects that originated as Canny requests submitted by the community. At the beginning of each development cycle, product teams review all submitted requests and add any that are feasible to the list of potential projects for the current cycle. Projects are then selected based on prioritization. Have an idea or request for a feature or fix that will improve the Decentraland experience? Share it on Decentraland’s Canny to collect feedback from the community and it may be considered in the next development cycle!

Exciting things are coming in Q2—stay on top of what’s coming next by subscribing to Decentraland’s weekly newsletter and follow @Decentraland on Twitter so you don’t miss a thing!