[DAO:4f091df] Decentraland Governance - Lowering Wearable Publishing Fee

Governance
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by 0xed0e0cb94f60f72ec94bef848f5df4cbd365af1d (InJesterr)

Linked Draft Proposal

Decentraland Governance - Lowering Wearable Publishing Fee

Summary

As someone deeply invested in our metaverse, I believe in our power to shape DCL. This proposal is an extension of that belief, aiming to refine the structure of wearable fees in a way to balances economic viability, inclusivity, and sustainability.

Abstract

Summary:

This proposal revolves around redefining the wearable submission fee, aligning it more closely with our community’s ethos and the needs of our growing metaverse. By setting the fee at $100 USD, paid in MANA, and directing a portion of it to curators, the Catalyst network, and the DAO’s Grants Program, we can ensure a healthy ecosystem that benefits creators, curators, and the entire Decentraland community.

Motivation

Motivation:

My aim is to decrease the fees, making the Decentraland platform more appealing to new users. By reducing the fee, we increase the likelihood of new users engaging in creative endeavors. Currently, numerous projects are actively integrating with Decentraland. To entice these newcomers into releasing wearables as well, we need to establish incentives. This adjustment would yield benefits for them, the DAO, Curators, and even the Catalyst.

Observing the willingness of some individuals to further reduce the fee, I am inclined to approach this gradually. Initially, I propose reducing the fee to $100, allowing us to assess its impact. This figure is both straightforward and easily divisible among the DAO, Curators, and Catalyst, providing a smooth transition.

Proposal Details:

In this proposal, I outline a restructuring plan for the wearable submission fee that addresses various aspects of our community’s needs.

Specification

Fixed USD Price, Paid in MANA: The proposed fee is $100 USD, payable in MANA. This approach removes the concerns around crypto price volatility while offering creators a stable pricing point.

Curator Compensation: A significant portion (30%)/($30) of the fee will be dedicated to compensating curators. Recognizing the importance of their role in maintaining quality and integrity, this compensation aligns with their responsibilities.

Catalyst Network Support: To sustain the Catalyst network, which underpins the Decentraland experience, a portion (10%)/($10) of the fee will be directed towards supporting the hosting expenses. This ensures our platform’s stability and reliability.

DAO Investment in Growth: A substantial share (60%)/($60) of the fee will be allocated to the Decentraland DAO’s Grants Program. This commitment reflects our dedication to fostering innovation, development, and the overall expansion of our metaverse.

Impacts

Impact:

By reducing the fee to $100, this proposal aims to create a more appealing environment for creators to launch their wearables, thus fostering a larger pool of participants in the marketplace. This adjustment in pricing not only supports budget-conscious creators but also serves to mitigate the potential curation challenges that could arise due to low-quality submissions.

Furthermore, this initiative addresses the creators’ concerns about budgeting uncertainties linked to MANA fluctuations, rendering the process of project budgeting and service promotion more stable and reliable.

The suggested valuation of $100 USD for each wearable submitted strikes a balance between incentivizing creators while concurrently deterring spam submissions. This equilibrium not only encourages the influx of high-quality wearables but also underpins the fundamental financial aspects essential to sustain a wearables marketplace.

Implementation Pathways

Implemantation

To actualize this idea, the foundation or Security Advisory Board (SAB) should take the lead in its implementation. The following steps outline the process:

Foundation/SAB Oversight:
Enlist the support of the foundation or SAB to initiate the proposed changes. Their involvement will lend credibility and expertise to the implementation process.

DAO Committee Payment Adjustment:
Task the DAO Committee members with revising curator payments, reflecting the enhanced value of the curation process.

Conclusion

Conclusion

By reshaping the wearable submission fee structure, we empower creators, acknowledge curators, bolster the Catalyst network, and fuel the growth of our metaverse through the DAO’s initiatives. This proposal reflects our community’s collective aspirations and acknowledges the collaborative efforts that make Decentraland extraordinary.

Given the current minimal traffic, it would prove advantageous to engage creators who have lower operational expenses. The curation committee is in the process of expansion, considering a rate of approximately $30 for each wearable under review. This adjustment, along with channeling $60 back to the DAO & $10 to the catalyst, would significantly enhance accessibility.

A reduced fee makes it appealing for new users to participate in the Decentraland creators program.

Vote on this proposal on the Decentraland DAO

View this proposal on Snapshot

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FYI the curation committee isn’t in the process of expanding, a line of code is just being changed to allow more to be added when they are needed

my post on the previous draft-

"Your analysis predominantly centers around the cost of submission as the solitary variable, which could potentially lead to a misapprehension among the audience. In my assessment, the pivotal factor to consider is the count of Daily Active Users. Notably, your initial point indicates that during the period when the submission cost was lower (below $100), there was a notable increase in wearable creations. This occurrence, however, correlated with a heightened number of active users within the domain. Similarly, the subsequent point in your analysis, highlighting a decline in wearable production, coincides with a decrease in daily active users.

Furthermore, it would be prudent to take into account the overall market condition, particularly within the cryptocurrency domain. During periods of market expansion, disposable capital is more abundant, thereby fostering a greater inclination towards exploring diverse entrepreneurial prospects, including the development and trade of wearables. Conversely, this tendency undergoes a reversal during market contractions, as is the current situation.

An additional aspect deserving attention is the influence of events such as the MZFW (Metaverse Fashion Week), which has historically triggered a substantial surge in submissions during the encompassing weeks.

In my personal opinion, a reduction in the submission fee may not be advisable. I hold the belief that we are poised to witness a substantial surge in all facets of activity within the DCL’s economies as we approach and surpass the upcoming BTC halving event in 2024. Until then, it is crucial to recognize that the most impactful determinant of DCL’s market dynamics remains the overall health of the cryptocurrency markets themselves."

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I believe this proposal should pass the data research was only an add on and not the base factor to reduce the fee, The reason why I proposed this was due to having concersations in the DAO discord alongside with @Peanutbutta, @JTV And a few others who nearly all agreed on that the price should be changed.

Also @Canessa invited to have people who are creators them selves and even curators such as @michi to share their valuable opinion.

Michi even suggested to even lower it more then what I proposed.

There are not only data that are showing differences but also many other advantages to it.

Advantages such as a great way to make creating wearables more attractive for users who are unsure or therefore encourage them to become creators.

Advantages such as when you publish a wearable its more likely to make profit or break even since the fee is reduced, in many cases creators barely make it through to make profit therefore aren’t releasing anything because they lost trust now.

A great example I would like to use is me, and even most of my friends.

The most important reason why we lost all the creators from the hype in 2021, is because they didn’t make the money they expected that they would make from creating wearables and guess what the ones that did are still in DCL as of this day releasing weekly wearables.

When I worked as a streamer for Decentraland I onboarded maybe 20+ creators and helped them through their publishing process out of this number 1 stayed which she was only one that I onboarded as a creator that makes profit to this day. not implieng that her profit was because of me, her work was just really great received by the community, the other people all of them left or are very inactively busy with decentraland.

If we can get an attractice release price to help creators earn money quicker they will more likely release more wearables which contributes more to all of us. win win win win.

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Also you keep mentioning MZFW but that happend in the 300 dollar period, 60 dollar period and 150$ dollar period aswell, so it has no great benefit on the data particularly for each calculation, I just checked that.

Anyway even if we dont think alike or dont share the same opinion, I find it very useful to have critics plus it shows how much we both care about decentraland and trying to reach a goal that we think is best for it! Thank you :3

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@Sango is correct, the committee hasn’t been confirmed to expand. I was premature in saying it could expand~
It’s an interesting concept also to consider a publishing fee the adjusts based on user activity. (If this is possible) Having a fluctuating publishing fee before was super chaotic lol

I do want to recognise it would be good to get more community feedback around pricing and the proposal, would be helpful to have a spaces, townhall or community AMA. My personal perspective is it wouldn’t hurt to lower wearable publication prices in the current competitive metaverse landscape.

Metaverses are embracing VRM adaption including Decentraland making it easier to export to other platforms which have no charge for avatar upload including monaverse, hyperfy and free tools like ReadyPlayerMe. Blocking people from creating, buying and selling through Decentraland to use their avatar in other spaces could be an issue when looking at the growth of the platform or marketplace which I feel is already quite low in activity. I would love to get input from avatar creators in the space @METATIGER @Oble @Mark_MetaMundo @Malloy

Platforms like Sandbox still charge a curation fee to ensure quality but an entry point of $150usd is quite high in a bear market with a majority of that cost going to the DAO. Currently there have been many grant proposals passed that are meant to be driving traffic or growth from games, solo users and events. So many, that we should no longer be relying on the creators entering DCL to be carrying the DAO income because it will deter growth in the space.

I support the reduction of the publishing cost and even further reduction by reducing the DAO % drastically to make creating on DCL more accessible to a global audience.

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Great input michi, as you said I think the futher in this bear market its totally scalable to lower it even further, I’m going to do a general proposal with lots of option after a month of measuring this experience and see with which outcome the community is happy :slight_smile:

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Normally I only vote and do not comment / explain why. But since Michi has asked me directly here I will answer. I voted yes and will now tell you why:

Yes, I stopped publishing my own wearables in DCL about 1 year ago and only made exceptions lately because friends asked me if I could build them a wearable. The reasons for that were many, but also the publishing costs which are way too high in my opinion. I also don’t want to comment again on the sometimes strange requirements of the creator policies or curator opinions which are other reasons.

My individual opinion at the time, which was not able to gain majority support, was and still is: what is the point of publishing costs at all? After all, the artists bear the full financial risk for the success of their wearable, and very few manage to get their money back for the creation through sales, or become “rich” with it. It may be true in a bull market that money is looser and people buy more, but this fundamental imbalance has always bothered me, even more since the “felt” publishing costs have become more expensive.

It’s not just the publishing costs. Many don’t know how to build a wearable themselves and instead hire people like me to do it for them, often not for free of course. Then it often needs a party location and a DJ which costs additional money if you don’t have friends who do it for you for free. Add to that the publishing costs, the curators’ change requests, the amount of time invested that can’t be measured in money. Often, creating such a wearables costs $250-$350 in total, or even more. The money for this must of course first come back in before we can even talk about a “profit” here. And not in $ but in Mana, whose price has fallen significantly. That means you have to raise the selling price a lot, which in turn discourages the few buyers. A vicious circle.

Many wearables are simply given away for promotional purposes, I have given away probably twice as many of my own wearable creations for FREE as I have sold. Rarities outside Legendary/Mythic/Unique are also rarely sold, there are simply too few users for that. We can be happy if 50,60,70 people show up to a party and DCL doesn’t collapse, sorry but that has to be said.

And let’s be honest: the success of a wearable does not only depend on its quality or price, but mainly on promotion. Wearables from well-known birds of paradise are more likely to sell than if you are rather unknown. You can build wearables that are technically/visually as good as you want, but they will lie like lead on the shelves if you don’t promote them. Either you already have many friends and are established or you have to buy promotion, which I have always refused because it is simply too expensive and often shady for independent artists.

I’ll pull my pants down for a moment: my 13 published wearables cost me 1300 mana (price before the increase, but Mana was also much more expensive then than now) and made about 1396 Mana through sales until today, well, at least. For a wearable I need maybe a dozen man hours, let’s say 10 but often more, so 13 x 10 = 130 hours, makes in my case an hourly wage of $0.73, rather less. I don’t usually get up in the morning for that… I’m not complaining, but that’s not an incentive. It’s a money pit.

On the subject of money, let me also say this: I’m not doing this for economic reasons or because I want to establish a second leg in DCL, no I’m doing this for FUN. I’m not from a third world country, but I’m not a crypto millionaire either. I work full time IRL to earn a living. I come from a country with the highest taxes in the world, so there’s not a lot left over despite a good income, which means I also have to look at what I spend the rest of my money on. Releasing a wearable currently costs a not insignificant portion of my disposable income. Crypto profits (and that already includes a sale!) are taxed at the full rate here, i.e. 45%. I don’t know how it is with you but here it’s almost always a losing proposition unless you trick or cheat, which is far from my mind. Especially since this can understandably also entail high penalties or even prison sentences.

If I already have such problems, how will someone from a second-world or third-world country ever be able to release a wearable? Probably never without sponsors or only the rich. So much for understanding, but enough whining. Of course I understand that DCL needs revenue, that revenue has gone away. But I have also seen recently that DCL has put a lot of money into pointless projects and that there have been voices that a self-service mentality has spread in proposals and grants. Therefore, expenditures should first be radically cut and a closer look should be taken at what this hard-earned money should be spent on. There should also be a greater focus on long-term artist loyalty.

Which brings me to a suggestion. So, from an artist’s point of view, I would suggest the following model:

  1. Distinction companies / Independent Artists
    Companies should pay much more money for publishing wearables than independent artists. At least the price what it costs at the moment, if not more. After all, these companies can completely deduct their costs from taxes and also have budget for such things and it doesn’t hurt them. Perhaps we should also distinguish whether wearables are produced with the intention of making a profit or are purely promotional giveaways, the latter should then also cost less.

  2. One-time publishing fee for Independent Artists
    So that not everyone dumps their garbage here (not everything with art on it is also art) the first publication should always cost SOME money as a small entry hurdle, and the curators should also take a close look at the new artist, perhaps even keep an internal tally list with criteria. DCL gets as usual 2,5% on sales, but maybe a little lower publishing fee than now, e.g. $100. Just like you buy your name. Maybe you can combine that too, minted name = requirement to let you publish own wearables, to show your support to DCL and that you are serious about it!

  3. DCL Certified Artist
    If an artist has already published one or more wearables and has proven that he can do it, he could be upgraded to a “DCL Certified Artist” - with corresponding subsequent benefits. This could be decided by the curators either in a defined process or at the request of the artist. Already established artists with publications could already be classified accordingly, as it is known how many wearables they have already published.

  4. Elective model / Benefits
    As a DCL Certified Artist, one should either pay significantly reduced publishing fees according to their certification level or significantly increase the DCL share percentage of single sales. Thus, depending on the number of published wearables, one could also further subdivide the certification, e.g. into Junior / Senior / Legendary / Mythic Certified Artist and reduce the fees accordingly (e.g. $100, $75, $50, $25 per wearable) or significantly increase the DCL share percentage of it (e.g. 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%). The DCL portion chould perhaps also always be transfered automatically to DCL as soon as a wearables is minted in that case.

So the risk / success would be better distributed, there would be attractive incentives for established artists to release MORE wearables and it would not be too difficult to implement this. To what extent such a model is financially viable for DCL I cannot judge. However, I see that the wearable costs are only a part of a bigger problem: how to attract more users / make DCL more attractive. Unfortunately, I haven’t found an answer to that yet, but I also see that the Metaverse competition is not sleeping. In any case, you won’t get them by discouraging them with such entry prices. Artists will also stay only if they make money, but at least not lose money.

I am aware that many will not share my opinion here, but you asked me and this is my answer. I’ve used a translator for this long text so sorry if some passages may sound weird.

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Coming from someone who has spent around $40,000 on publishments. It makes zero sense to continue spending $150 or even any money on a publishing fee other than gas. Doesn’t matter if it’s bear or bull market.

You want creators to create. Build a creator friendly platform not a massive roadblock. The publishing cost is stunting growth and user experience.

An example: Exodus has over 300 assets that could be in the game now. This costs $45,000 to put it in the game.

Sure we could go for linked wearables over and over again every time we make an update with more assets. Why make this so hard though? The creator barrier is like climbing a wall while everyone else throws stones at you.

This is my experience.

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Big thanks to everyone who posted their perspective here. I felt like before I voted, I wanted to hear from more people to make sure this was the right decision. My fear was the damage we could do if we take away more income from the DAO. But, if more people can publish now, this could help the DAO.

@METATIGER your input is so valuable. I really appreciate your transparency. @michi (It’s good to see you!!!) I also really appreciate hearing input from a committee members’ perspective.

Voting yes, and I’m excited to see what this might do to the creator economy.

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Thanks for your comment I believe you mentioned many subjects that cover most of peoples questions :smiley:

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changing my vote to yes based on community sentiment

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Many already know my opinion about it, perhaps I have spoken more in private conversations but for those who do not know, I am of the opinion that barriers must be broken down and creators have to be given facilities.

Creators are the backbone of Decentraland, not just the fashion creators, but also the ones who own plots and build on them, the ones who hold events, musicians, and so on. Anyone who participates with a certain initiative in Decentraland does so driven by certain motivations, if barriers are created for these people (in the case we are dealing with here: the creators of wearables), such as a high publication fee, few will publish:

There are 3 main reasons to publish:

1 - PERSONAL USE / GIFT: If you want to build your own wearable to wear it in DCL, you won’t do it either.
2 - SELL WEARABLES: If you want to make money it will not be profitable.
3 - PROMOTE YOUR SKILLS: Only in this case is it viable to publish in Decentraland.

It makes me think.

I feel that despite being a bear market, a large number of creators would enter daily if they were given more facilities and tools to build. Maybe @Canessa @SugarClub @METATIGER have something to add to this.

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Nothing is going to the catalysts from the DAO.

The Foundation is not involved in DAO matters and the SAB is not required for that change.

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https://media1.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExb2NiMm4wNmtjdzB6eTc5d2J5dW42OW00cDF4ZXNoMXUxYWh4aDEwdiZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/2fs2I4ujlBf20/giphy.gif(image larger than 4 MB)

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Alright I saw in the last proposal to change paying mana into dynamicly 150$ at all time that catalyst was included, if its not necessary we can skip that part and see together how can implement this proposal. The technical part I did little research other then looking at how previously had done it.
I know if this proposal passes that we can actually enact simply because it happend before.

What do you suggest @HPrivakos on implementation if it comes to pass?

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I have heard a lot about the conflicts that exist in the DAO, after the time of existence of Decentraland it is something inevitable, after all it is a community and there are all kinds of people. Leaving all this aside, if we facilitate the entry of new creators, things will begin to change.

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Decentraland Governance - Lowering Wearable Publishing Fee

This proposal is now in status: PASSED.

Voting Results:

  • Yes 92% 6,470,076 VP (100 votes)
  • No 7% 520,111 VP (13 votes)
  • Abstain 1% 769 VP (4 votes)
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Decentraland Governance - Lowering Wearable Publishing Fee

This proposal has been ENACTED by a DAO Committee Member (0xbef99f5f55cf7cdb3a70998c57061b7e1386a9b0)

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Enacted on Polygon block 47299463

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Thats really great HP well done :slight_smile: