[DAO: bafkrei] Would you support some sort of continuous LAND issuance?

by 0xb0145ae156d201d6e371d07265fe3c045071c967 (maraoz)

Background read & Context: A vision for Decentraland's next 5 years

Let’s make Decentraland more accessible! The original map of 301x301 parcels was great to bootstrap the project by generating LAND scarcity, but it’s already too small for our community. What’s worse, many LANDs are in the hands of speculators who will never deploy content to the world.

My proposed solution? Continuous LAND issuance. Every day, or every week, the protocol can auction a new LAND, and the highest bidder can spawn a new LAND at any coordinate adjacent to an already existing one. If nobody wants to bid, no LAND is created for that period. Believe it or not, this was the original scheme for LAND issuance, and how the first testnet worked. Yes, this would reduce prices for already existing LANDs, but… if only whales can buy LANDs, other metaverses will kill Decentraland and your LAND will be worthless. Let’s make Genesis City the first of many cities in Decentraland!

This is an initial poll to gather community sentiment on this (potentially sensitive) topic. If this passes, I’ll work on a more detailed proposal for the continuous issuance model. If you have any questions, feedback, or you agree but you don’t think the timing is right, please leave a comment!

So… would you support some sort of continuous LAND issuance?

  • yes
  • no
  • Invalid question/options

Vote on this proposal on the Decentraland DAO

View this proposal on Snapshot

Yes, yes and, yes!

Decentraland can’t go massive without something along these lines. I’d even go as far as having some sort of free “shared” land that can be “owned” for a given period of time (enforced by a contract) for people to experiment or do events on or something.

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I understand why artificial scarcity of Land is important but I agree, DCL needs to be more accessible or new creators will be driven to cheaper alternatives. I think as long as there is a set time interval controlling land issuance and Mana is burned to purchase it, this is worth experimenting with.

Going off @frantufro point, I think one or more of the public plaza’s could be used as a free for all test area. Sort of like what Anarchy District was originally intended to be where anyone could build or edit the scene. The north and south plaza’s currently host the exact same scene… One of these could potentially be repurposed as an anarchy plaza?

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One of the major obstacle to mass adoption is the current land price affordability. Most people feel left out mainly due to financial barrier of entry. User acquisition can be gained through free or affordable land model. Ability to experiment, build and create is what will attract a vast variety of players & users to Decentraland. I’ve mentioned previously how the L2 wearables opened up the pathways to onboard 1000’s of designers, creators etc… so why can’t we introduce a similar model for Land?

With a good level of technical & social research I don’t see how this is not possible to achieve.

I am all for creating new lands, but I am not fan of “auction” part. Probably whales will be the highest bidders instead of creators who wants to actually build something on that land.

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Excellent point @Shiny

I was just thinking this new land release could be for the creators only. They will have to pay a minimum submission fee similar to L2 wearables and they can create whatever experiences they want. Off course this is one idea.

I also agree on the whales buying all the land during the auction phase and once again leaving the rest out of the game. Auction may not be a good solution due to bidding wars etc…

Didnt even use a map with the Districts. Also you want to do it auction style wtf. If they were going to do it should be cut and dry over a dedicated time frame and raffle system at best. Auction leads to nothing but whales scooping the floor causing nothing but more baron undeveloped parcels and inflated market because they dont care to hodl. This should be way more thought out. Im down for more land, higher mb/ tri limits and polycounts but this is not the way.

Absolutely terrible idea. I cant imagine any land owner supporting such a disastrous approach to onboarding.

Land hardly feels scare or developed. Adding more land will make it feel emptier and sparse. Such a change will not all of a sudden spur an uptick in builders who aren’t already here trying to build.

Food for thought. If you truly believe in adding more land, why sell it or limit it in quantity at all? Why not just allow anyone to have free land in endless quantities if they want it?

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I fear that server stability needs to be addressed in order to not overtax an already taxing system.

Not dumping on the thought, just bringing up a current issue. The amount of information being sent and received at any given moment of time needs to be compiled and transmitted more efficiently because at this moment, opening an inventory can mean crashing or at the very least disrupting streams and music which effect UX.

I would encourage anyone voting to read through the conversation between @Frank @ile and @MorrisMustang in the DAO channel here:

the main point for me is this:

the rental market is barely tapped and the DCL backed rental contract is not even out yet, alternate clients are only just starting to be explored and the heroku option for deploying land to testnet is not widely used.

if it becomes clear that those three options don’t work and there is still a need for more land, i would be willing to explore other ideas, but the idea to add new land before testing those ideas fully seems premature at best

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I’m for some sort of orderly issuance of new LAND, but the new LAND should be a different class of LAND where we can correct some of the issues that have brought us to this point.

Let’s learn from history, not repeat it.

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For instance, the new LAND could be leasehold, so we don’t end up with deceased LAND.

I think we can help fix a big chunk of this issue now by setting up a website, or Google form sent out by the Foundation even, that links:

  1. Current LAND owners who’d be willing to lend their LAND for free
  2. Makers/Artists that’d be willing to build on the LAND if they had some to use

I’ve also asked in the #SDK channel on Discord if there’s a way for DCL-core to query their DB to see how many LAND parcels have had a deploy in them historically so we can assess just how much LAND has gone unused.

Barely 50% of current LAND is being built on, so why issue more LAND at all?

Perhaps do something about all the empty LAND first.

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I think DCL should organize more GameJams or similar competions for both developers and builders and as prizes give out the new land.

This way it would attract more developers to DCL and there would be a bigger chance that land would end up in the right hands.

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We don’t need to increase Land supply yet.
We need to focus on how to rent a land for Virtual Architect.
Also we need mobile app for increase meta verse visiting.

Decentraland is maybe 50% developed as it is. The amount of undeveloped space is massive and, even though a large amount of it may be held by people with no plan on developing, it doesnt make sense to just leave it blank while new land gets created elsewhere (not to mention the same thing could happen with a whale winning all of the auctions for example).

I think a better idea is for people interested in developing or funding the creation of experiences to get in touch with the owners of these large areas of land. Many land owners may even be willing to give free operator rights just to have stuff built.

Another option is looking at Aetheria and other district land that trades at a substantial discount to private land due to certain limitations.

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Another option could be a LAND split similar to a stock split, but could be an expiring option (maybe 3-6 months), so LAND holders could receive new LAND and could develop, rent, or sell which could bring down LAND prices but not at severe disadvantage of active LAND holders.

I’m open to exploring ways of expanding the board and bringing down LAND costs while trying to deal with what I think is a problem of deceased LAND.

I’ll be attempting to quantify the deceased LAND issue to more degree later this week, maybe it’s not a problem at all.

Clearly a native rent/lease contract should be operational within DCL as well.

I completely respect @maraoz 's perspective on this and agree that sometime in the future land expansion should be considered. But to do it as a continuous process would turn land into a commodity and drain huge amounts of value from current landholders. I’d rather see something like a completely separate “city” opened up in the future with a new land sale – a different class of land as @stateless said.

And to @maraoz 's other point, land expansion doesn’t make sense until it’s a lot easier for someone to build and deploy on the land. Until the 12-year-olds can do it. Game jams can be another source. I was priced out of the initial land auction but eventually collected some parcels by placing highly in game jams. The advantage there is that you know the person getting the land has the ability to build something.

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just to clarify, when you say “deceased LAND” do you mean LANDs which no longer have an owner or are effectively inaccessible (due to lost wallet or another cause)? I’m also really curious what should be done with those LANDs (and indeed what can be done…?)

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