[DAO:5de2016] DCL Virtual Library – Expansion of Courses, Questing, and Rewards

Governance
1

by 0xd6e62a97a55537cd04847bb73e22208bd20106aa (DCLCurations)

Should the following $110,300 grant in the In-World Content category be approved?

Abstract

The DCL Virtual Library is a gamified educational experience that pays the DCL Community to develop courses about DCL/Web3, and encourages users to learn by rewarding them with Intelligence Points, NFTs and in-game bonuses.

The 1st phase of the Virtual Library laid the foundation for a scalable Gamified Educational experience in DCL. We currently host 60+ courses in the library, host weekly live events and attract 400-500 users/month.

This grant will allow us to build on our successes and improve the Virtual Library in 4 core ways:

  1. Increase available courses and improve learning experience
  2. Expand questlines and gamification of NFTs
  3. Expand rewards system and available rewards
  4. Develop Open-Source components for use across DCL

Grant size

110,300 USD in DAI

Project duration

8 months

Beneficiary address

0x6a8A014De91d50BA053E43bDe0eaf30D41CbB5f7

Email address

DCLCurations@gmail.com

Description

As we move forward, we are looking to expand upon the Library in 4 core ways:

1. Grow Available Courses, Course Structure, and Course Providers/Creators

● Expand offerings to over 200 courses by end of grant

● Develop partnerships with Web2 Course Providers to integrate their material into the Virtual Library – we have already begun working with BTA (The Blockchain Training Alliance) and will be providing some of their course material and hosting an event with them at the end of August (blockchaintrainingalliance.com)

● Restructure our Course Management System and Library Card to accept categories (e.g. gaming, coding, 3D modeling, promotional)

● Allow for likes on videos and course creators

● Develop a formal Course Creator application form on the CurationStation.fun website (Currently in development and can be visited now)

2. Questlines and Gamification

● Develop a Battle Arena where users will use NFT wearables to fight and defend the Virtual Library from invaders

● Gamify current wearable lines, 4 enemy types, and more incentives to learn and upgrade stats

● Host on DCL Worlds and connect to the Genesis scene via a Battle Portal

3. Rewards System

● Develop a Dynamic NFT Reward Booth which will be able to host multiple NFTs for players to claim in exchange for Intelligence Points

● Link the Reward Booth to our Administrative Tool so that new collaborations and NFTs can easily be added and priced (in IP) to the game and keep the rewards fresh to incentivize users to learn

● Develop 4 new wearable sets (The Invaders) that people can gain by completing courses, earning Intelligence Points and participating in the new game mode

4. Opensource Book Booth

● Develop an opensource Book Booth that will hold a subset of library courses and be deployable across Decentraland

● While this won’t be linked to our game mechanics, the goal is to allow others to use, and build upon, the course offerings on their own land and find unique ways that they can gamify the education in the context of their own experiences

● The opensource nature of the Book Booth will also allow them to act as Way Points across Decentraland when DCL Questing is re-released

Additional Improvements

● Develop The Curator AI NPC and AI website chatbot to help manage content and help users. We will also provide the community with clear documentation and videos walking them through how to implement AI bots in their own scenes and recommendations on how to train them

● SDK6 to SDK7 transition: We will be reworking our current code base to SDK7 and will continue our library development using SDK7 in all areas that SDK7 is currently fit to support

● Marketing Analysis, Strategy, and Implementation: We will be partnering with Ryan MacDowell (rmac), the founder of Do Well Studio, to deliver a comprehensive 360° Marketing Audit of our current strategies and performance metrics, define our marketing objectives, and create an actionable marketing strategy w/ an automated self-serve marketing system for immediate implementation

● Course Payments: We will pay $100/video to DCL Community members that would like to develop courses for the Library. Courses will be hosted in the Library for free, can be used by the creator on their socials and platforms, and used by the groups they cover as well. As an additional incentive to create courses, we will also use a portion of the budget as prize money to the top Course Creators voted on by the community

Roadmap and milestones

Month 1:

● Conduct marketing audit & launch strategic plan

● Release of Web3 Companion Website for Players and Content Creators

● Creation of new Player Handbook

● 8 Thought Leadership articles/month

● Planning for DB, API updates (optimizations, Reward Booth schema, and Book Booth) and SDK7 transition

Month 2:

● Implementation of Metamask Wallet connect and Curation Station Leaderboards for Web3 Companion Website

● Improved CurationStation 3D UI, bug fixes and Player Onboarding / Retention

● Course Management (Admin tool) improvements

● AI strategy development

● Release of new marketing strategy

Month 3-6:

● Development of Battle Arena, reward booth and opensource book booth

● Development of new game mechanics

● Development of new wearable rewards

● AI testing and training

Month 7:

● Beta testing month - Book Booth, Battle Arena, Chat Bot, Rewards system

Month 8:

● Alpha release

Vote on this proposal on the Decentraland DAO

View this proposal on Snapshot

1 Like
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For full transparency for the community, can you please list what grants you have received in the past, and for how much money they were for? Thank you :slight_smile:

1 Like
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Absolutely! We received a $59,600 grant last September which ended in February of this year. DCL Virtual Library - Gamifying Education

Over the past 5 months we have been making updates to the library, launched our website, host weekly events, developing partnerships with other organizations outside of DCL to increase exposure and content availability and have been working on developing the 106-parcel CyberCity surrounding the Virtual Library with the goal of making the Virtual Library a centralized hotspot in DCL to help onboard users and network!

This new grant will improve the overall learning experience with updates to our UIs and a restructuring of the Library card and Course Creation pipeline. It will also fund the creation of 4x the amount of material we currently offer, expansion of our lore and gamification, and expansion of the rewards system. One of the most important components in this expansion will be the open-source book booth that will allow users across DCL to deploy a subset of our library content on their own land and gamify the educational process in their own unique ways!

4

Firstly, Decentraland has a relatively small user base, and previous projects have struggled to attract and retain a significant number of users. I worry that the DCL Virtual Library may face similar challenges in gaining traction and reaching a wider audience.

Lastly, the proposal does not provide a strong justification for the long-term sustainability of the DCL Virtual Library.
Addressing the underlying issues of user engagement, retention, and attracting new users is important.

1 Like
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Thanks for the comment @Skazi ! I agree DCL has a relatively small user base. The expansion of our questlines and gamification we believe will help a lot with retention as the game spots in DCL are typically the most populated. Right now we currently average 400-500 visitors per month.

For new users, we are working with large global companies such as the BTA (works with Disney, Microsoft, HP and many other major companies). The cross promotional marketing that will come from groups like this will reach an audience far beyond Decentraland. We have also launched a Beta website for the Curation Station so that people not currently in Decentraland have an easy way to check out how our game works, access our articles, and view a subset of our Library content without having to jump into DCL. With the direct link to our HQ on our website, we aim to convert some of the web2 audience captured into active DCL users.

Lastly, the open-source book booth will allow our educational content to be deployed on scenes all across Decentraland and allow others to gamify the learning experiences how ever they like!

1 Like
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Easy YES from me. Curation Station / Virtual Library are putting countless events beyond the grant timeline, being one of the most vibrant spots across CyberCity in Aetheria engaging users with gamification and live shows. The overall concept is impressive and it’s exciting to think how the expanded version will appear. Team is fire as well, so i am sure the expanded version will be very well executed.

1 Like
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110,000 USD for 500 users per month.

1 Like
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Hey @HPrivakos thanks for your comment! Those are the numbers we currently drive to the scene per month and it is important to note that Decentraland (based on DCL Metrics) only has about ~4k Monthly Active Users.

Another thing to note is that 246 pieces of content will be created and will reach an audience far beyond the 4k monthly DCL User Base. Also $20k goes directly to the DCL community to create educational material.

Lastly, DAO Committee members receive $2,400/month. I was told in my interview that the position requires ~1hr per week from committee members. With 3 committee members, we are spending $86,400/yr for very minimal work, which drives 0 traffic to any scenes in Decentraland.

When looking at the overall DCL numbers, the reach we will have outside of DCL, the amount we pay to the community, number of content pieces we will generate, and compare the costs of this grant to other activities and groups that the DAO spends similar amounts of money on, I think this grant is extremely reasonable in its pricing and goals and would love your support!

9

Nice one hahaha

But maybe $110k is too much for accelerating your project. How about 109k :smiley:

1 Like
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We have an one hour call per week, it doesn’t mean we don’t work the rest of the time :skull:
Do you only work when you are in meetings? That doesn’t sound very efficient.

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Thanks for the comment! It was emphasized by both yourself and @Tobik that the entire DAO Committee roll consists of a 1hr meeting and the clicking of a few buttons to transfer funds which requires <1hr per week which is why I said ~1hr. I shouldve said 1-2hrs. The position states that it is ~5hrs a week. Regardless, it is 90k a yr for minimal work that drives 0 traffic.

This 110k grant will support over a dozen DCL community members and create an open-source book booth available for everyone in DCL to use. I believe the DCL Virtual Library is of great value and believe that our pricing and goals are very reasonable and we would still appreciate your support :slight_smile:

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Hello, DCLCurations.

I think I’ve already explained to you, when you were trying to apply for this position, that the position is highly paid because of the exposure we take since we are moving large amounts of money. In that sense, comparing a grant which is supposed to increase the Decentraland activity/content with a position that is almost purely technical with a risk factor, doesn’t make too much sense.

Instead of responding with unwarranted comparisons that fall outside the scope of your grant and tagging me, even though I’m not involved in the discussion, it would be more professional to concentrate solely on the relevant matters at hand.

And if by any chance, you are displeased because you were not chosen for this position, you are invited to apply again on the next call.

Have a wonderful day,
Tobik.

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Thanks for the comment Tobik!

I agree that this discussion should be focused on relevant matters and was simply illustrating how much this grant will do compared to other things the DAO spends similar amounts of money on. It is relevant as all of the DAO spend comes from the same treasury.

I would like to also emphasize that this was just 1 single point out of what I mentioned in my response which also included:

  1. The fact that there are only ~4k DCL monthly active users - in this sense 500/month is quite high
  2. A large portion of the funds go directly to the DCL community to develop educational content
  3. Between events, courses and articles we will generate 246 unique pieces of content
  4. Although DCL user numbers are down overall, we will generate a lot of reach beyond just the current 4k DCL userbase - just 1 of our current articles has already reached over 50k views!
  5. And then lastly, similar amounts of money are spent on a lot less

I hope you have a great day as well!

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You keep saying 4k monthly, but it’s 4k DAILY, the monthly number was over 20k in June (not saying that’s great, but it’s better than 4k).

3 Likes
15

Is there a way to calculate the DAU outside of DG? Because the reality is that there are individuals with multiple accounts grinding ICE Poker, and other games but mostly ice poker.

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Thanks for the clarification. I was using DCL-Metrics for the numbers and was looking at the Monthly Unique Users which is ~4k.

At 20k MAU, 500 users is still capturing 2.5% of DCL population. In any industry being able to capture 2.5% is extremely good and we intend to grow that number!

@jar0d I just hopped in DCL and there are 170 Users at 1 DG location right now. 170users x 30days = 5,100 MAU, so I think it is reasonable to estimate that, at a minimum, DG is responsible for ~25% of DCL traffic. Most likely that number is much much higher as I am just basing it off of a single moment and a single location of theirs.

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No, you were looking at the daily average over a month =)