Decentraland Foundation Quarterly Update: Q4 2023

By Decentraland, , in Announcements

Out of the loop? See what’s been happening in Decentraland: Q1 2023 Update, Q2 2023 Update, Q3 2023 Update

As the last quarter of 2023 has come to a close, it’s impossible not to look back on everything that happened and was accomplished in Decentraland in this eventful ‘Year of the Creator.’ With a focus on delivering comprehensive creation tools, expanding creative possibilities, and improving the overall Decentraland user experience, 68 new products, features, and updates were released in 2023! Before diving into the work that was done in Q4 specifically, let’s take a look at all the ways Decentraland grew as a platform in 2023.

2023 in numbers_Edited
2023 in numbers_Edited

Major Releases & Updates of 2023

For Creators:

2023 saw the full release of the powerful SDK 7 followed by continuous updates to deliver on the promise to make it a dev kit creators love to use. Alongside SDK 7, the Web Editor was also released for non-dev creators as the more advanced and intuitive successor to the Builder, intended for easy drag-and-drop creation, together with beautiful templates and scene resources. It seems that creators do indeed love these new tools as in 2023 over 50% of users that published scenes were first-time creators!

Expanding the creative possibilities available to creators in Decentraland in 2023, a new Wearable category, Handwear, and Emotes 2.0—adding the features of sound and props to Emotes—were released. The options for experience building also flourished in 2023 with the release of Portable Experiences & Smart Wearables, increasing the utility of Wearables while making experiences that aren’t tied to a single parcel possible. To top it all off, the release of the Rewards Server & Quests increased the game dev potential of Decentraland by making it easy for creators to design more complex gaming experiences while simplifying the delivery of Wearable & Emote prizes. Streamlined by the Rewards Server, over 1.15 million free Wearables were claimed in 2023!

Marketplace:

  • Improved Search & Navigation

  • Wishlists

  • FIAT & Multi-Chain Currency Payments

  • Notifications

The Marketplace also received a number of improvements and new features in 2023 making it easier for shoppers to discover the unique Wearables & Emotes made by Decentraland creators. In 2023 Wearable & Emote sales made up over 98% of Marketplace transactions! Overall search and navigation were improved and the Wishlists feature made it easy to browse and save your favorite items for later. Additionally, purchasing items in the Marketplace is now easier than ever with payment options ranging from Decentraland MANA to a multitude of other crypto tokens on the Polygon and Ethereum networks, as well as FIAT payments with card or bank transfer.

For All Explorers:

In addition to creator-specific features, many of the updates and new products of 2023 benefited all Decentraland explorers, making Decentraland more fun and easier to discover. For new users especially, the Decentraland landing page was completely revamped to best display Decentraland’s unique features and a comprehensive 9-step email welcome flow was created to educate new users on how to get the most out of their Decentraland experience. Additionally, map and navigation improvements as well as scene categorization and search in Places made it easier for explorers to discover the huge variety of scenes and experiences built by Decentraland’s community.

Focusing on digital identity, customizing your avatar’s appearance in Decentraland has been made easier while giving players more options to make their avatar into the truest version of themselves thanks to the revamped Backpack with advanced layering options and Saved Outfits feature. Already more than 10,000 outfits have been saved in the just 6 months since the feature went live! 

Undoubtedly, the ability to adapt every element of your digital identity with community-made Wearables & Emotes is a key feature that makes Decentraland special and worth sharing outside of its virtual realm. In 2023, both the DCL Camera and Avatar VRM Export feature were released, resulting in Decentraland avatars popping up all over the world outside Decentraland be it in party snapshots on social media, or live in video calls and even other virtual worlds! 

Moving Forward

With over 1.5 million Emotes triggered and more than 2,200 events hosted in 2023 (non-recurring), the Decentraland community has been busy building, partying, making new friends, learning, gaming, and so much more during this eventful year. As the Decentraland Foundation, it has been an honor to bring Decentraland to life alongside you all while supporting its continuous growth and development throughout 2023. 

We are eager to jump into 2024 and continue our work empowering the community and building a more powerful client that will take Decentraland into the future. While we can’t wait to share our plans for this year in the upcoming 2024 Decentraland Manifesto, first we have to properly close out 2023 with the Q4 report. So without further ado, let’s dive into everything that’s been worked on and released in the last quarter of 2023!

2023 Quarter 4 Updates

Product Releases & Platform Updates

Marketplace

  • Marketplace Notifications: In this first iteration of a bigger project of adding notifications for every Decentraland dApp, users will now receive notifications for Marketplace activity such as ‘Item Sold’, ‘Bid Accepted’, ‘Royalties Earned’, ‘Rental Period Ending’, and more so you never miss a thing! 

  • Multi-chain Currency Purchases: Thanks to a partnership with Axelar and Squid, buyers can now make Marketplace purchases with a large variety of crypto tokens, from both the Ethereum and Polygon Networks, in addition to the options of MANA and card payments. With an intuitive UI, users can scroll through tokens, ordered by available balance, and choose the most convenient option making shopping for a new Wearable dangerously (for your wallet) easy!

For Creators

  • New Smart Items in Web Editor: Easily play video streams from a URL, reproduce Audio from a file, and hang your NFTs as framed art on a wall. 

  • More Web Editor Configurations: Now creators can ask players to open a link, trigger custom animations, teleport them into other parts of the scene, and show notifications in scene UI. All these actions can also be set to be triggered right away, or after a few seconds of customized delay.

  • SDK 7 UI Improvements: Now, creators can define a parent-child relationship and only configure the parent’s width, then the child will automatically adjust. Other UI elements can be defined as non-clickable. And for the end user, now they can just hit Enter on text inputs to proceed without the need to unlock the cursor and click on a button manually. 

  • Serverless Multiplayer System Enabled: Now multiplayer scenes are easier than ever to set up. Creators can sync any entity in a scene with all the players present. As the name indicates, there is no longer a need to set up a server just for this, and it is only one line of code: syncEntity(myEntity, [Transform.componentId], entityId)

  • Example Scenes & Scene Resources Migrated To SDK 7: With the help of the amazing studios and entrepreneurs in the community (CryptoTrader69, KJ Walker, Canvasland, Inihility, Polygonal Mind, Dogman, Cansy, Vegas City, Glitch NFT,  Maserphaz), a multitude of prebuild scenes and components are now available in SDK 7 and available for any creator to use, making the process of creating a scene from scratch much easier. All Example scenes and resources can be found here.

Web and Desktop (Windows and MacOS) Clients

  • Streamlined Terms & Conditions Opt-in: New users no longer need to navigate a long text, now they just need to check a box and can click on links to the full terms if they choose. This makes the opt-in process faster and up-to-date with current best UX practices.

  • Domains Updated for Single Sign-in: In order to enable a single sign-in system between Decentraland dApps, the infrastructure had to be updated from sub-domains, to paths. For example, the Builder URL changed from builder.decentraland.org to decentraland.org/builder. So now, as all the sites live under the same domain (decentraland.org), users can navigate across dApps without signing in for each one.

    • Disclaimer: This was implemented in all dApps except for play.decentraland.org in order to allow creators to make any necessary changes to their scenes (generally, allowing the new domain decentraland.org/play should be all that is necessary). The migration will happen on January 4 as announced in Discord. Also, the Docs site (docs.decentraland.org) is not yet migrated, it will be done in the upcoming days but will not require any action from anyone in the community. 

Catalysts

  • MAIN Realm: A new default realm named MAIN has been created to welcome users upon logging into the platform. The MAIN realm consists of a suite of services designed to handle an expanding user base. It was conceived to enhance the sense of a populated world, fostering connections among users, and concurrently reducing the navigation complexity associated with multiple realms (more info).

  • Extended URN: Content Servers only allow extended URN within Profiles and Outfits entities. This restriction ensures accurate referencing of NFT items, facilitating on-chain validations for all entities uploaded to the content server. The on-chain validations employ an RPC method, invoking the smart contract instead of utilizing subgraphs via platforms such as The Graph or Satsuma, as is the current practice. Check ADR-244 for more details.

  • Lighter Nodes: Catalyst owners now have the option to either host a communications service and expose a realm or simply rely on the MAIN realm while operating a lighter node. This flexibility empowers Catalyst owners to choose the hosting configuration that best aligns with their preferences and requirements and the number of realms has been reduced from 11 to 6 to foster more connections between users.

Marketing & Partnerships

Community Engagement & Creator Support

Decentraland Community Summit

A major project for the Foundation Marketing team in Q4 began with the announcement of the first-ever Decentraland Community Summit which will be taking place in Argentina May 2024. The Summit aims to enhance the human connection between community members, celebrate community achievements, gather feedback & insight, and look towards the future of Decentraland. As an invite-only event based on applications, the team managed the application process and attendee contact after selections were made. If you applied and haven’t seen an email yet, be sure to check your spam folder for an email from DCLSummit@decentraland.org. RSVPs are due January 10!

Marketing 101 Workshop

In December, the Marketing team organized a Marketing 101 Workshop open to anyone in the community to share tips on how to market your personal brand including promotion, social media, and copywriting tips. Perfect for Decentraland creators growing their brand! If you weren’t able to attend, you can watch the replay here.

Supporting Platform-Enriching Events

Emote 2.0 Launch Party 

Right at the beginning of Q4, the Foundation threw a launch party for Emotes 2.0, the upgraded version of Emotes with props & sounds. As part of the launch, over 1,600 new Emotes were given away to the community. 

AI World Fair 

The quarter’s first big event, the first-ever AI World Fair was organized in collaboration with Verse Digital and Vegas City and brought together over 40 speakers from the realms of Web3, gaming, fashion, art, and robotics to discuss the future of AI. Speakers from companies such as Nvidia, Rainbird, and SingularityNet were represented. During the event, users spent an average of 4 hrs a day in the event’s main scene. 

Halloween Quest

Organized in collaboration with community studio DappCraft, Halloween Quest returned again in 2023, with an AI twist. The community participated in a multi-day AI generated quest with spooky surprises, full of fun!

https://twitter.com/dapp_craft/status/1717859365036634566?s=20

Decentraland Music Festival ‘23

Decentraland Music Festival ‘23 was Decentraland’s most innovative music festival to date! The first key Decentraland event to utilize the Artist Open Call format (over 100 applications were received), practically all the stages and experiences at the event were built by creators from the community while performances featured only the most innovative artists from the digital age. Focused on the theme of Rebirth & Regeneration, #DCLMF23 took place over 3 days and featured 80+ artists over 5 stages as well as 15 new games and experiences. The festival was visited by users over 360k times with users spending an average of 140 minutes in the festival scenes.

https://twitter.com/decentraland/status/1729653767170052468?s=20

Goodbye 2023 Quest

Closing out the year with a bit of fun, an End of Year Quest was organized in collaboration with community studio Low Poly Models which included collaborative art challenges, a quest full of prizes, and of course, a party!

Partnerships

For Halloween, Deadfellaz x MetaMask organized a special event in Decentraland to launch their new exhibition of Infected S3, with a mini quest where you could win a very cool jacket for participating.  https://twitter.com/decentraland/status/1725113989867442391?s=20

As part of Decentraland Music Festival ‘23 both Smiley x Space Runners and Gaian participated with exclusive items and interactive scenes. Smiley x Space Runners built a rocking skate park where you could get a full outfit of branded Wearables and an Emote—check it out. Gaian took advantage of the new Smart Wearable feature to offer a special Hyper Jump Wearable for the occasion.

Spreading Awareness of Decentraland

Decentraland in the Media

Speaking Opportunities & Events:

  • YFood Summit: Presentation by Kim Currier to leaders in the Food Industry

  • METAms:  Panel with Yemel, Parcel Party, Tangpoko, and Absolute 

  • Metaverse Business Conference: Presentation by Kim Currier about how businesses can get involved in the Metaverse 

  • Hollywood x Gaming Summit: Attended to learn from and network with top gaming brands and Hollywood IP professionals 

Up Next

Product & Platform Updates

For Creators

  • Web Editor:

    • Multiplayer Smart Items: Easily configurable from the Web Editor without using code. Actions from Smart items are seen by all players in sync. 

    • SDK 7 Templates: Choose from a variety of templates made by the Decentraland Foundation Team to create an amazing scene with just a few clicks. You can choose between The House, The Night Club, The Office, The Shop, and The Theater. Deploy them as they are or customize them to your liking adding your own content such as video and audio.

    • New Deploy Step: Add scene metadata as part of the deployment flow. This is key for discoverability as information such as name, description, and category are vital in featuring your LANDs and Worlds in Places. 

  • SDK 7:

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

    • New UI Feedback Library: Easily implement interactions and give life to your UIs. When a player clicks on a button, an effect can be triggered. UIs can appear with cool transitions, use progress bars, and way more. 

  • New Creator Landing Page: For all creatives that want to dip their toes into the ecosystem and become a Decentraland Creator, a new appealing webpage will be deployed to highlight the Why’s, What’s, and How’s of creating in Decentraland in a visually appealing, easy to digest way. This page will also give more visibility to the Decentraland Studios page, and it will be mobile-friendly! 

Marketplace

  • Map NAMEs to Address: As voted in this Governance Proposal, users will be able to transfer assets like Wearables or Emotes by typing the NAME of the recipient instead of the whole address of their wallet. This will make it easier for anyone to send gifts or prizes without exchanging long wallet addresses. 

  • Improved NAMEs Minting Flow: Based on several user interviews, it was observed that users expect to be able to mint a NAME in the Marketplace, making the processes’ current home in the Builder unintuitive for new users. Therefore, the minting flow will be moved to the Marketplace to optimize the whole process. On top of that, to make it even more accessible, FIAT payment methods will be integrated so that users can mint their NAMEs paying with MANA (as of now) and also credit, debit cards, and bank transfers. 

Web and Desktop (Windows and MacOS) clients

  • New & Improved Desktop Client: Foundation teams will be focused on developing a faster, more resilient desktop client that will deliver better performance overall and be capable of supporting the growth of Decentraland and future developments.

  • Auth dApp: a new dApp will be introduced to consolidate the log-in, sign-in, and transactions/signatures flow into one unique dApp. Here, not only users will find all the log-in options (Web3 and social logins), but it will also be available for any other Clients to authenticate users with their Decentraland account. Scalability, security, and UX are key outcomes after introducing this. 

  • Social Log In: In both the web and Desktop Client, together with all the dApps, new users will be able to log in with Gmail, Facebook, Discord, Twitter, and other social media accounts from the new Auth dApp. This will be made possible by Magic. At the same time, Web3 log in options such as Metamask, Coinbase, Wallet Connect, and other current options will remain available. The social login options will be critical to onboard new users from the Web2 world. 

  • Web Avatar Creation: Players will be able to start their journey and create their avatar from the Web, this will make it easier for new users to engage with the project by investing in the avatar creation right away. Not all the capabilities of the client-avatar-creation flow will be available, but users will be able to choose from a predefined set of avatars, choose a NAME, and subscribe to the newsletter. At the end, there will be a ‘Jump In’ button to enter Decentraland’s Genesis City.

  • Improved NPCs: There are currently 2 welcome NPCs in Genesis Plaza, but their answers could use some improvement. These NPCs will be optimized to have better interactions with users and help them discover content throughout Decentraland.

Upcoming Events

New Key Event Strategy for 2024

Following the formula that was established with Decentraland Music Festival ‘23, key Decentraland events will begin with an open call to the community to get involved. Each open call invites creators to submit a proposal for an experience they want to build for the event in order to win a funded event artist slot. This strategy empowers the community to get involved, offers opportunities for exposure, and attracts new creators. Content is then deployed to one of Decentraland’s plazas where it can remain active for a longer period of time, allowing more explorers to discover the community’s latest content.

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Decentraland Wellness Week | January 24-26 

The first event of 2024 with Decentraland’s first-ever Wellness Week! The open call closed in December so community creators are currently hard at work building something new for us all to discover. The 3-day event will feature 15 new experiences, interactive games, and daily virtual activities focusing on physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual growth. Stay tuned for more news in the coming weeks!

Decentraland Art Week | March 26-28

This year, Decentraland’s annual Art Week will take place in March! More news will be coming soon, but if you're interested in getting involved, keep your eyes on Decentraland’s Twitter so you don’t miss the opening of the Artist Open Call! 

IRL Events

In 2024, the Foundation will be attending and sponsoring more IRL conferences focused in four key areas: Gaming, Tech, Development, and Web3/NFTs. We will kick it off with a presence at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in March in San Francisco. 

Decentraland Ambassador Program

The highly anticipated Decentraland Ambassador Program, voted on in this proposal, is finally primed to kick off in early 2024, so be on the lookout for local events across the globe!

Closing

In our journey through 2023, the Decentraland Foundation appreciates the opportunity to have worked together with the community in fostering the advancement of Decentraland. We can’t wait to continue our work in 2024 empowering the community and building strong foundations that will lay the groundwork for Decentraland’s future growth and development! We are eager to share our plans for this year in the upcoming 2024 Decentraland Manifesto with you, so stay tuned to our social channels and look for the Manifesto next week. Thank you as always for being part of the amazing Decentraland community. 💜