[DAO: bafkrei] Democratize Access to Decentraland for Renting, Marketing, and Hosting Events

Governance
1

by 0x46c02de46629a2babe7c9ba1d9ebf0804d4f99aa

Should the following Tier 3: up to $5,000 USD in MANA, 3 months vesting (1 month cliff) grant in the Platform Contributor category be approved?

Abstract

Nearly three months ago, we launched a website to create a gallery feed of all properties available to rent across major metaverses such as Decentraland.

The project – called https://rentparcel.io/ – received a great response so far - 70+ property posts, 2k+ post views in 20+ countries despite very little marketing. We were also able to successfully connect multiple tenants with landlords and were even instrumental in facilitating rentals worth hundreds of dollars!

We are now requesting your support to turn this project into a full-fledged peer-to-peer marketplace in order to make Decentraland super accessible to the average person for renting, advertising, hosting events, etc.

Grant size

5,000 USD

Beneficiary address

0x46c02dE46629a2bAbe7c9ba1D9EBF0804d4f99AA

Email address

asaxena1415@yahoo.com

Description

Based on our current website, land owners would submit their property posts along with a price and contact, and anyone interested would reach out to them and work the rental details out. We witnessed multiple potential tenants reaching out to us to learn more about the rental process as our website helped them connect with land owners. However, we also soon learned that Decentraland remains largely inaccessible to the average person looking to advertise, market their products, or celebrate/host events on it.

While we were able to make the lands more discoverable through our platform, the process of actually using the land remains much more complicated. Decentraland allows land owners to grant temporary edit permissions to another user for their land (LAND Manager | Decentraland Documentation) but in order for the tenants to work with it, they need to be well-versed with deploying code to build something in DCL. The problem is that in many cases the tenants don’t really need these permissions and just want to connect and work with the land owner on how they plan to use the land.

Think of the following major use cases for example:

  1. A production company wants to promote their upcoming film on someone’s land, they would like to directly ask the land owner to put up a poster or some other graphic on a particular asset on the land, for instance, a billboard. Or basically, any other company looking to advertise or market their product’s info on someone’s land.
  2. A family wants to celebrate a birthday party or some other similar event in DCL, they want to use an existing parcel/estate without any changes and all they require is the land owner’s help to let them host the event.

Neither of these above cases require the involvement of a smart contract or any sort of transfer of ownership or other permissions, and the whole process can be worked out simply by connecting and communicating with potential tenants. And so, RentParcel will build a platform that will make it extremely simple to connect with land owners for anyone who’s trying to utilize Decentraland but doesn’t have any advanced knowledge of crypto, nfts, or the metaverse.

How is this happening currently?

Currently, if potential customers want to connect with land owners they do it largely through Discord, Telegram, Twitter, and other social media sources, which is mostly unorganized. There are also metaverse real estate agents and advertising firms that act as middlemen or brokers for facilitating ‘rentals’. Our vision is to democratize access to Decentraland land and create a level playing field in terms of opportunities for land owners. By building a peer-to-peer marketplace, we would be able to have a single dedicated space where anyone can connect with DCL land owners, use their land, leave reviews, and just help make the entire process more open, accessible, and transparent.

Specification

RentParcel will streamline the process of using someone’s land - we plan to model our website in the following manner:

  1. For land owners: Land owners would go to our website and create a post for their property (wallet integration will not be mandatory) which will also include the price per day for using their land and the availability.

  2. For customers (any person, entity, or organisation) looking to use DCL land for whatever their need is - renting, marketing, events, etc., would then browse through this website and select their property of interest and duration (for which they intend to use the land), and they will then request to communicate directly with the land owner.

The land owner will then get a notification that someone is interested in their land and it will be up to them to accept/reject the invite to initiate the conversation. Once the details such as price, duration, etc are finalized, RentParcel will let the land owner set a price and duration which would be then sent to the tenant customer to accept. The exact reason for using the land will be something that will be worked out between the two parties.

In addition, we will also include features that can be found on popularly existing marketplace like websites such as leaving reviews/ratings both for landlords and customers, searching, filtering on price, land type, size, etc.

We plan to use the requested funds for the following:

  1. Accelerating the development of the project and creating informational content - we will hire more developers to expedite the completion of the project. We’ll also retain video editors to create educational content for both land owners and tenants on how to go about using space in DCL for hosting events or advertising.
  2. Marketing - We will also retain an experienced and dedicated marketing personnel who would oversee search engine optimisation (SEO), design our online ads strategy, and handle social media engagement to help increase customer traction for the land owners.
  3. Establishing Partnerships - We are currently focussed more on Decentraland and will work to partner with companies trying to bring experiences or replicating real world events in DCL by persuading them to use our platform so that land owners are benefited.

Personnel

Aditya - Software Engineer

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/saxena-aditya/

GitHub - aditya800 (Aditya Saxena) · GitHub

Tave - Software Engineer, Computer Science degree from New York University.

Both of us are full stack software engineers with experience working at Microsoft & Amazon, and will be putting up to $1K USD collectively out of our own pocket too for the project.

Roadmap and milestones

We plan to complete the project within 8-10 weeks, here are the goals we’re setting:

  1. Week 1-5: Software development. Upgrade the RentParcel website to have a login and communication system for land owners and customers, as well as the other UI changes highlighted under specification.
  2. Week 5-6: Onboard potential customers, focus on marketing, and establishing partnerships.
  3. Week 6-8: Beta testing and launch website.

Follow the progress of the project on:

Discord: RentParcel

Twitter: https://twitter.com/RentParcel

Vote on this proposal on the Decentraland DAO

View this proposal on Snapshot

2

voting no for three reasons:

  1. but for a rating system, what are you bringing that’s new? landworks seems like a better choice and covers more use cases
  2. i think i commented on the map display issues for DCL properties on your site the very first time I saw your URL in the land channel and to this day they haven’t been addressed. that seems like a huge red flag in terms of development speed / organization
  3. the rental contract from DCL is in the final stages of testing and as I understand will be coming out soon
1 Like
3

Hey, so we’ve spoken offline too but just to reiterate over here:

  1. Decentraland is not super accessible for anyone who is not into crypto. We want to create a website that lets anyone connect with land owners and utilize their land in the simplest possible manner. So, everything we’re trying to bring is new - you’ve cited landworks and we appreciate what landworks is doing but we are not even remotely trying to become like them, we believe a smart contract based service is honestly unnecessary when DCL directly allows you to let anyone build on your land.
  2. This has been deliberate actually, we saw more land owners uploading 3d images of their land and wanted to encourage this trend and give them the flexibility on what image they want to provide in their post.
  3. I’m not sure what you’re referring to, Decentraland doesn’t have an official rental platform. But anyway if you read the grant in detail we’ve talked about how we want to move away from rentals to a peer-to-peer marketplace.

I really really encourage you to reread the grant and evaluate us on the basis of the results we have generated as opposed to how innovative we appear. Thanks!

4

check it out: GitHub - decentraland/rentals-contract

5

Thanks for sharing it, but again, this is different from what we are working on! From the code, it seems that it has much more in common with projects like Landworks and Double. We’re trying to build a project for use cases that don’t necessarily require a transfer of any permissions, we want to make DCL accessible to those who might not even have a wallet. This functionality will in fact help us because it simplifies the ‘renting’ part for land owners. We want to solve the problem of getting people to rent or use the land as opposed to facilitating the renting. Happy to discuss it on a call :slight_smile:

6

okay but in that case the use-case you’re proposing is nonsensical.

  1. A production company wants to promote their upcoming film on someone’s land, they would like to directly ask the land owner to put up a poster or some other graphic on a particular asset on the land, for instance, a billboard. Or basically, any other company looking to advertise or market their product’s info on someone’s land.

why would the person wanting to advertise not simply contact adshares, versadex, et al and access a fully formed and well made ad-network built for DCL?

  1. A family wants to celebrate a birthday party or some other similar event in DCL, they want to use an existing parcel/estate without any changes and all they require is the land owner’s help to let them host the event.

if a family wants to celebrate a party they don’t need anyone’s permission. they can simply log into genesis plaza, or a casino, or anyone’s land, or a road, or a district - if they’re not making changes to the land what is required to contact for hosting?

8

Okay but the very fact that these websites exist makes the use cases sensical. We want to lessen the dependency on the websites you have mentioned and have customers directly work out their land needs with customers.

For the birthday thing, it was a generic example but what we meant by that was that the land owner would offer to clients to customize the land for making it more usable for birthdays or some other event. They would already have a picture sample of what it would look like and the customer would deal with them to turn the land into what was in the sample.

I think we have a difference of opinion as to what might be the best way to approach the land owner but I am not trying to convince you that one way is better than the other, just want you to see reason in accepting the fact that our option is also pretty feasible :slight_smile:

1 Like
9

Hey, the project seems pretty intresting. But are you guys validating that the user who wants to rent out a parcel actually owns it?

10

Hey Parzival,

Yes, because we only have a limited number of properties listed currently, we’ve been able to manually verify the ownership and speak with our customers, but in the new website that we’re proposing, a ratings/review system will take care of this. A new landlord who has not rented before will have some restrictions to ensure that they are genuine such as access to payment only after the rental is completed or not getting full visibility on our platform. Once a single transaction is successfully facilitated, they will have full access to everything! Otherwise, we will verify that the listings meet our standards and that the land owners are who they say they are to the best degree we can.

11

We created a video too to better illustrate our vision: RentParcel Vision - YouTube

12

love it! small grant, working prototype, and would use this eventually. voted yes

13

Democratize Access to Decentraland for Renting, Marketing, and Hosting Events

This proposal is now in status: PASSED.

Voting Results:

  • Yes 65% 1,435,076 VP (56 votes)
  • No 35% 794,649 VP (6 votes)
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Democratize Access to Decentraland for Renting, Marketing, and Hosting Events

This proposal has been ENACTED by a DAO Committee Member (0xfe91c0c482e09600f2d1dbca10fd705bc6de60bc)

Vesting Contract Address: 0x5a590260cd53b68f3634e5fbfd5a813aa3584a2c
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