What is Decentraland? Is it the metaverse of the future or a fad on the way out?
A pointed criticism of the Metaverse, and those of us excited about its potential, is that it is a vague concept often used to sell a dream of a virtual future at inflated prices while offering a product that looks like it was made in the early 2000s. When it comes to Decentraland specifically, often these critics will cite the $550M market cap of $MANA, at the time of writing this, and frame the conversation as if the Decentraland Foundation, the official team behind Decentraland, is a billion-dollar corporation.
“In practice, it’s just a bad video game made up of smaller, worse video games, wrapped in a real-estate scheme cosplaying as the Matrix”
– Folding Ideas, The Future is a Dead Mall – Decentraland and the Metaverse
What is Decentraland? You can ask 38 people that question and get 38 different answers. Some will simply call it a game, others will tell you it’s the future of the internet, and trying to place it in any one box is a mistake. The truth is the story is still being written, and whether Decentraland lives up to its potential has yet to be determined. We can say that hundreds, if not thousands, of people dedicate their time, resources, and energy to give it the best chance of success.
“Decentraland is not a game. Decentraland is a platform for the future.”
– Alvaro Luque
Decentraland’s Not A Game. Then What Is It?
I recently got a chance to sit down and talk with Alvaro Luque, one of Decentraland’s Product Managers, to pick his brain and learn more about him, his role, and the Decentraland production process. Having worked at the Foundation since the Spring of 2021, Alvaro is a Perfect person to speak to if you want to understand better exactly how Decentraland the product is being made.
While discussing Decentraland and its boundless potential, Alvaro describes it as a Social Platform much more akin to Facebook than a game like Minecraft or a marketplace like Amazon. Is it a game? No, but it has those. Is it a music/video streaming platform? No, but you can watch those. Is it a Marketplace? No, but… You get the idea.
People find defining Decentraland challenging when first asked because you can do so many things, much like Facebook and other Social Platforms. Still, unlike those flat two-dimensional experiences, the 3D nature of Decentraland gives people a sense of connection in ways Facebook never could. The difference between the two experiences makes people reluctant to associate the excitement of Decentraland’s potential with the cold corporate wasteland that is contemporary social media.
When Alvaro says, “Decentraland is not a game. Decentraland is a platform for the future,” he isn’t trying to sell it to anyone. He isn’t just offering hollow words. In the hour I got to speak with him, Alvaro had a seemingly never-ending list of features and building blocks to take this “bad video game” and turn it into the future of how people engage with the internet. We can know these words are not hollow simply by looking at everything the team has released over the last few months.
From little things like adding a search bar to the backpack and improved backpack filtering to more features with more impact like being able to save outfits, adding the Hands Category, and possibly the most significant upgrade this year, the ability to export avatar VRM files and take your digital identity across the metaverse, there is no shortage of reasons to be excited about the direction Decentraland is moving.
This is not even a complete list of everything that has been added over the last couple of months!
Recent Feature Releases:
- Shopping “Wishlists” in the Marketplace
- Pre-built templates for the Scene Builder
- The ability to add animations to your Scene
- Saving Outfits
- Hand Category
- Artificial Intelligence-powered NPCs
- Improved Places and Events UI/UX
- Free roaming camera to capture content
- User Profile upgrades:
- Swapping names in world
- Add links
- Manage your wallet in-world.
- Smart Wearables and Portable Experiences
- VRM Exports
What’s a VRM File?
“I’m focused on building the best-in-class avatar digital identity you can have.“
Alvaro
For those of you like me who are not technologically inclined, a VRM (Virtual Reality Markup) is a file intended specifically for humanoid digital avatars. Originating in Japan, the VRM format exists to ensure compatibility across VR, metaverse, and gaming platforms. Before Decentraland incorporated the ability to download your avatar as a VRM file, you would have needed to learn how to use 3D modeling software and technical skills well beyond those of the average person. Now, anyone can export their avatar with the click of a single button.
“It’s a great showcase of the power of Decentraland as an interoperable platform. With one export format update, the entire avatar system has become global, and 1000x’d its impact – the barrier of entry to a personal avatar for VR and the general metaverse just got easier.“
Morph
The ability to take your digital identity with you wherever you want is one of the guiding philosophies of the Metaverse. Even Zuckerberg acknowledged that a closed platform can’t consider itself “the Metaverse.” This is why the Metaverse-maxis are so excited about this feature, and why Alvaro is laser-focused on creating the best tools available for users to create and customize their identity. By leveraging their vast collection of user-created wearables Decentraland is going to be able to build on this feature and cement itself as the place to create your metaverse identity.
Putting Things in Perspective
While there is undoubtedly merit to many of the skepticism aimed at Decentraland and the Metaverse as a whole, a great deal of this criticism is based on misinformation and misunderstanding.
The Foundation is not and has never been a billion-dollar company. Decentraland is not a “game,” and the Foundation is as frustrated by everyone who wants to turn it into a Real Estate Tycoon simulator as the rest of us.
While it is true that MANA and LAND were sold in order to raise capital, it’s important to remember that the majority of the land was sold for well below $100 a parcel, and the team has very little control, if any, over the secondary market.
Without getting lost in the weeds of explaining the details around the token sale, land auction, or the 10-year vesting contract intended to fund Decentraland’s development, the Foundation has, at most, a treasury of $40 million, with 2/3s of its composition being MANA. While this is no small sum, it is nowhere close to making Decentraland a billion-dollar platform.
Building on a Strong Foundation
With so much buzz around the community around the recent feature releases, and particularly the speed at which the updates have been coming, I was excited to get a chance to speak with Alvaro and learn about the Foundation production process.
As top-selling Metaverse Fashion Week 2023 creator and Vroomway founder Nikki Fuego put it most succinctly:
“They’ve shipped more features in the last month than they have in the last three years.”
– Nikki Fuego
While Nikki acknowledges this might be a bit hyperbolic, it captures the community’s recent sentiment and excitement. One of the most common questions I’ve seen people ask recently has been, “Will Decentraland be able to continue releasing updates at this speed?”
If you didn’t get a chance to attend the Decentraland All Hands Meeting during the last week of August, you may have missed Yemel Jardi, Executive Director of Decentraland, explaining the team’s recent switch to using a system called Shape Up.
When speaking with Alvaro, I was able to get a few more details, so let me break it down:
- There are 4 Product Managers (PM)
- Each PM creates pitches for new features
- They pitch the features to the C-suite (CEO, COO, etc.)
- Larger features are built over a 6-week development cycle
- Smaller features and updates utilize a 3-week window.
This means that, on average, a new feature will be released every 1.5 weeks. Yemel was clear in the All Hands meeting that there is still potential for delays or features that are shelved because they are more labor-intensive and costly to implement than initially thought. We should still remember to offer the team some grace, but this new release cadence is here to stay for the most part.
“Ideas are the cheapest resource in a company. Everybody can have ideas. The most important thing about ideas is to understand the value they are bringing and the technical feasibility of delivering them. It’s not only about what I want. It’s about what makes sense.“
-Alvaro
Getting to know Alvaro
It can be common in the Web3 space and traditional gaming communities, where many of us are hiding behind cartoon jpegs or over-the-top avatars to lose sight of the humanity of others. While I appreciated getting a chance to understand the nuts and bolts of how a feature goes from an idea to implementation, I was equally excited for the chance to get to know the person on the other side of the keyboard.
“It’s going to sound cheesy, but Decentraland is a platform owned by its users.”
– Alvaro
When speaking with Alvaro, you don’t doubt his sincere desire to create the best user experience possible, an innovative avatar system, and the metaverse platform of the future. Throughout the interview, everything came back to one major theme, empowering the community. Whether it was to build, create, or express themselves, everything Alvaro does is in service of enabling the Decentraland community to do these things.
When discussing the future of Decentraland, he speaks of a timeline that goes beyond three and six-week cycles. You can tell that not only does he believe in the potential of Decentraland and the open Metaverse, but he also has a vision for how to make it a reality.
It’s easy for most of us to write pithy things about how we would do better or why those who are building aren’t executing satisfactorily.
The reality is we are on the digital frontier, and those who are building are often trying to create something that has never been done before. While they aren’t always going to find the best solutions to every problem on the first try, it is nothing short of arrogance for anyone to disparage their efforts.
A Note before we go
Before we wrap things up, Alvaro would want me to make it clear he is part of a team; nothing he does is done alone. He also wanted to make it clear everything he said to me were his personal feelings and should not be considered official foundation statements.
Conclusion
In a hype-fueled space where people would rather invest in the promise of tomorrow instead of building today, Decentraland can be an easy target. When the majority of projects in Web3 are doing little more than selling JPEGs and a dream, it can be easy to assume everyone is making hollow promises. It isn’t as if Decentraland is without its flaws, but you can’t build a meaningful critique off of misinformation and misunderstanding, and simply labeling Decentraland a “bad video game” is lazy and lacks any attempt at appreciating the very real work that goes into its creation.
Decentraland’s Foundation is not a billion-dollar corporation. While they are a Metaverse industry leader, treating them as if they have Microsoft or Facebook money to throw around is unreasonable. The work Decentraland has done already in paving the way to the digital future is incredible. Should we hold them to the same standard as a mega-corporation with truly limitless resources?
Decentraland has come a long way in the last two years, and it is only picking up steam. With the adoption of the Shape Up production process, the team has really kicked things into overdrive. While success is never guaranteed, there should be no doubt that the team is dedicated to delivering on its vision. They aren’t empty promises made by an anonymous team, these are real people, with a real vision, delivering real results. There will be bumps along the road and perhaps a few missteps, but to discount the endeavor based on its current imperfections is short-sighted. Decentraland might not yet be the future of the internet, but the team is doing everything possible to make that dream a reality.
