Decentraland Foundation Quarterly Update: Q2 2024

By Decentraland, , in Announcements

With a steady momentum building since the start of the year, Q2 has been no different with many milestone accomplishments for Decentraland! Continuing the work laid out in the 2024 Manifesto, in Q2 the Foundation focused their efforts on developing the new powerful and performant Desktop Client. Marking a historical moment for the platform, a sneak peek of the alpha version was revealed at the DCL Community Summit which took place in Argentina, bringing community members from around the world together for the first time!

In addition to developing the new Client, Foundation teams have also focused on improving creator tools, updating features based on Canny requests from the community, expanding World permissions, and more. Finally, closing out Q2 in style, the Foundation debuted the first-ever Decentraland Game Expo with a neon-lit festival featuring some of the best games in Web3 and fun attractions that kept the community coming back day after day. Read the full quarterly report to learn more about what’s happened and what’s coming next!

2024 Quarter 2 Updates

Product Releases & Platform Updates

New Desktop Client

After several months of focus and hard work, Foundation teams were thrilled to be able to share a demo of the new Desktop Client alpha at the Community Summit. See a recap of what was presented here. While the first priority of the new Client is to deliver stellar performance, free from loading issues, the team has seized the opportunity to revamp and add onto many features to improve the overall user experience. The following list of features was presented at the Community Summit and are already present in the alpha version of new Client. 

  • New avatar shader (PBR Ready)

  • Backpack

  • Better in-world interactions

  • Improved controls and cursor lock

  • New locomotion system

  • Improved camera + drone view

  • Revamped loading screens (SDK Ready)

  • Broad distance radius, rendering scenes (LODs) in the distance

  • Procedural landscape in empty parcels

  • New roads and skybox (2 suns!)

  • Improved chat

  • Real-time player interpolation

  • High performance

Overall Decentraland Ecosystem

At the same time, any engineers not focused on the new Client continued to work on improving creator tools and working on features that added to the overall Decentraland ecosystem. A fun highlight from this quarter’s progress is that 50% of the features and fixes worked on originated as Canny requests from the community! 

Wearable & Emote Creators

  • VRM Permissions for Creators: Creators can now opt out of allowing their Wearables to be included in VRM exports. Wearables that are not exportable will be marked so in the Marketplace

  • New Rarity Category: Exotic, with only 50 available copies

  • Utility Description: A new Utility field is available to Wearable creators to provide an extra description for Wearables that provide special perks or abilities in Decentraland games.

  • Keyword Tags for Wearables & Emotes: Defined in the Builder, these tags can help describe an item so buyers can more easily find what they’re looking for in the Marketplace with a simple search

  • Attach to More Bones: Creators can now attach entities to more bones in avatars (shoulders, back, hip, head, knees, and elbows), increasing creative potential

Builders

  • NFTs from Polygon & Ethereum: You can now include NFTs from the Polygon & Ethereum chains in your scenes, some big NFTs (over 6mb) might not yet be visible, but the team is working to improve this

  • Improved Scene Audio: You can now stream music into your scene, detect audio stream status, and improve visitor’s listening experience

  • Text Wrap in the UI: Long texts now skip lines automatically

  • Automatic Floor Tiles: You can now automatically place tiles on the ground of a whole scene. Tiles are then items that can be handled manually

  • New Scene Parameters UI: A new interface has been added to give creators more control when defining the size and shape of a scene in parcels

  • Quality of life improvements in Web & Desktop Editors: Planar movement, sequenced numbering for duplicated assets, and multiple bug fixes.

Worlds

  • Expanded Permissions: A World’s owner can now grant specific permissions (Deploying or Streaming) to up to 10 collaborators making group building much easier!

  • Privacy Options: World owners can now set their world to Private if they wish and approve up to 100 address to have access

Miscellaneous Improvements

  • Genderless Base Wearables: Users can now utilize any of the free base Wearables regardless of their avatar’s body shape.

  • Revamped Help Center: Users that need help can now utilize an entire help center that has FAQs, support updates, and system status, in addition to a live chat with the Support Team

  • Email Notifications: You can now choose to receive your Decentraland notifications straight to your email. On the new Account Settings page you’ll be able to pick and choose the notifications for which you’d like to get emails for a completely customized experience. 

  • Research on Improving Linked Wearable Submission Flow: Currently, third parties need to develop an API to map the underlying NFTs to their (Linked) Wearables that their NFT owners will later equip in Decentraland. The outcome of the research was this DAO Proposal, broadly backed by the community, where the technical definitions for a new flow were defined. 

Events, Community Support, and Awareness

Decentraland Community Summit 

Marking a major milestone for Decentraland, the first-ever IRL DCL Community Summit took place at the end of May in Argentina, the birthplace of Decentraland. A celebration of innovation, collaboration, and the vibrant Decentraland community, the groundbreaking event allowed for the convergence of digital identities and real-world connections. 

In addition to strengthening community bonds and promoting a flow of insights and ideas between the community and the Foundation through workshops and parties, the Summit served as the stage for the big reveal of the new Desktop Client alpha which was streamed live. Read more about the Summit here or watch the recap video below.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/gh22bJDdMiI

Decentraland Game Expo 

The first-ever edition of Decentraland Game Expo brought some of the best games in Web3 and industry experts together in Decentraland to explore the future of Web3 gaming. Taking place on neon-lit festival grounds, DCLGX featured 25 booths, 4 Game Jam winners, a giant prize claw machine, daily quests, over 20 free Wearables & Emotes, and exhibitors from games such as DeFi Kingdoms, Planet Mojo, Aavegotchi, KMON, MotoDex, Chibi Clash, and many more. Read more about what the Expo included in the Ultimate Guide or jump in and check out the games and attractions for yourself!

https://www.youtube.com/embed/7rNgHtLmb8w

Decentraland’s YouTube Channel

Are you subscribed to Decentraland’s YouTube channel? If not, you should be! New videos are regularly added on everything from How to Create Your Decentraland Event and Marketplace Rarities Explained to scene-building tutorials, and more! See what’s new on Decentraland’s YouTube channel and subscribe to get notified when new videos are added.

Decentraland in the News

What’s Up Next

Production & Development

New Desktop Client Alpha Testing

Throughout Q3, Foundation teams will continue to primarily focus on the development of the new Desktop Client. At this time, the Client is being prepared for alpha testing which you can apply to be a part of here. With testing starting sometime in Q3, applications will be accepted on a rolling basis, so feel free to apply to test out the new Client any time! Throughout testing, production teams will work to identify issues, continue to add additional features, and overall focus on polishing the Client in preparation for a public beta release in Q4.

Streamlining Content Creation

Those designers and engineers not working on the new Desktop Client, will continue to work on streamlining Decentraland’s content creation flow to make building scenes and experiences more accessible to everyone. Part of this streamlining process will be focused on the development of a comprehensive Decentraland Editor that combines both the advanced approach of the current Desktop Editor based on VS Code as well as the no-code approach of the Web Editor. Additionally, the team will give special attention to expanding the creative possibilities offered by Decentraland’s creator tools so that creators will be able to fully take advantage of the new shaders and completely revamped visual style of the new Desktop Client.

Upcoming Events

In order to fully focus on the upcoming launch of the new Desktop Client beta, the Foundation will pause hosting major events until the new Client’s release in Q4. Given the limited timing, only one major event will be held before the year's end, but this focused approach will ensure an event worthy of debuting the beta version of Decentraland 2.0!

What might that event be? Decentraland Music Festival! 🎉

Holding the title of one of Decentraland’s first major events from way back in 2021, it’s especially fitting to kick off this new era of Decentraland with the 4th edition of DCLMF in its traditional month of November.

With 2024 closing out with DCL Music Festival, you can look forward to Metaverse Fashion Week in March 2025! By holding the platform’s most popular event during its usual spring emergence, Decentraland will be able to present a more polished version of the new Desktop Client, so the platform can sparkle especially bright in its global runway spotlight. The extra time gained will also allow the Foundation to better collaborate with partners to deliver a MVFW25 to remember. If you’re interested in participating in either DCLMF24 or MVFW25, please reach out via this form.

We’re thrilled to be working on these big plans for Decentraland’s future and can’t wait to share more updates with you as they come out. Stay on top of what’s coming next in Q3 by subscribing to Decentraland’s weekly newsletter and following @Decentraland on socials so you don’t miss a thing!