by 0x9a739c2e212754c3d8432cb717dc9437e5b3dfae (Sean#dfae)
Should the following Tier 6: up to $240,000 USD, 6 months vesting (1 month cliff) grant in the Platform Contributor category be approved?
Abstract
The team behind Decentraland’s DAO-funded and recently completed expansion to Byldr, a no-code VR creator tool for Decentraland parcels, is seeking a grant for continued development of the tool based on positive feedback and feature requests from the community. The proposed scope extends Byldr’s functionality by a) adding interactivity/logic for scene exports; b) download scene source code; c) Byldr desktop client; and d) reliability improvements.
Video | Byldr showcased at Decentraland DAO meeting
We are honored and excited to bring more capabilities to Decentraland for a fully realized metaverse experience and increased economic opportunities for creators.
Grant size
240,000 USD
Beneficiary address
0x7A5eF3b7d27Eec9B92c491283F65D85c73421f9f
Email address
sean@byldr.app
Description
Background
In December 2021, the community voted to approve a Decentraland DAO grant that launched one of the first significant VR efforts to the Decentraland ecosystem.
With the previous DAO grant, the development team was able to enhance Byldr to support exporting creations to Decentraland parcels. For the first time, Decentraland creators could use VR to build fully functioning, interactive scenes for parcels without any code or any knowledge of the Decentraland SDK. This vastly lowered the barrier for Decentraland content creation and provided an increase in opportunities for creators without any technical or programming experience. The team exceeded the grant’s proposed deliverables by also implementing a state-of-the art code converter that allowed users to use Byldr’s no-code logic blocks to create interactive scenes for Decentraland, by automatically converting Byldr’s JSON-based logic to Decentraland’s TypeScript-based logic. See a showcase video here presented during a DAO town hall meeting.
Proposed Grant
Since introducing the Decentraland export feature to Byldr, the Byldr team has received positive feedback as well as requests for further expand upon Byldr’s Decentraland support.
The development team seeks to build upon the previous achievements by submitting the current grant proposal. The proposed expansions to Byldr covered by this grant proposal includes:
- Additional no-code logic blocks for greater flexibility in interactive scene creation
- Expanding the creator tool beyond VR so that it also supports 2D platforms (desktop computer) to embrace a broader user base and further democratize development
- Increasing robustness of Byldr’s Decentraland support to accommodate future SDK changes.
- The ability to download the Decentraland scene source code for any Decentraland scenes created using Byldr, to provide creators with additional flexibility and ownership over their parcel’s content.
Additional details for proposed enhancements are provided in the Specification section of this grant proposal.
The Byldr development team is excited for the opportunity work with DAO and the Decentraland community to expand upon our trusted immersive creation experience for Decentraland and would like to thank everyone in the Decentraland community for your support and the integral part you play in building the XR and metaverse future for all generations to come.
Specification
The development team seeks to build upon its previous achievements by submitting the current grant proposal. The proposed enhancements to Byldr covered by this grant proposal include:
- Additional no-code logic blocks for greater flexibility in interactive scene creation. This includes adding support for action-trigger pairs such as collision triggers, ability to select a keystroke or specific VR button as a trigger, and increased Decentraland support for existing Byldr features such as physics, parenting, solvers, and more.
- Expanding the creator tool beyond VR so that it also supports 2D platforms (desktop computer) in order to have a larger impact and availability. A common feedback received is that while creating in an immersive environment is efficient and exciting, the lack of a 2D/desktop client for Byldr limits the adoption of the platform to only those with VR hardware. The Byldr team seeks to further lower barriers for creators by porting our experience to run on computers instead of only VR headsets.
- Increasing robustness of Byldr’s Decentraland support to accommodate future SDK changes. Currently whenever there is a significant Decentraland SDK update, the development team is required to manually update Byldr’s Decentraland logic convertor and scene exporter – or risk our Decentraland export service not working. To increase reliability, efficiency and decrease the requirement for manual updates, the Byldr team will implement automated backend SDK updates to prevent any breaking changes caused by Decentraland SDK updates from negatively affecting our export service.
- The ability to download the Decentraland scene source code for any Decentraland scenes created using Byldr, to provide creators with additional flexibility and ownership over their parcel’s content. Another common request is for the ability of creators to download the TypeScript and full source code of their Decentraland parcels from Byldr. This will empower creators to further tweak the TypeScript code or make any further customizations outside of Byldr and publish to Decentraland directly.
Personnel
The items outlined in this grant proposal will be managed and completed by the Byldr team and our associated partners.
The team comprises:
- Sean Ong (Team technical lead / manager)
- Stephen Clarke (Management)
- Ketan Kapila (3D modeling/tooling)
- Varun Siddaraju (Technical project manager and senior developer)
- Clint Campbell (XR developer)
- Paul Gumpert (XR developer)
- Clinton Reddie (XR developer)
- VeeRuby Technologies (Byldr’s development partner)
- AppVolks LLC (Byldr’s development partner)
- XR Dev Studio (Byldr’s development partner)
Collectively, Byldr’s team members have over 100 person-years of XR development experience. Additional information on our company, team members, and partners can be found in the links below:
- https://www.byldr.app/
- https://www.veeruby.com/
- https://www.appvolks.com/
- https://www.xrdevstudio.com/
Roadmap and milestones
The team will report progress to the Decentraland community on an ongoing basis and will monitor the project’s forum closely for questions or to provide updates as needed. The team will summarize major activities formally in a monthly report.
The proposed project will be completed within 6 months based on the following milestones and timeline:
- November-December 2022: Expand support for wider variety of logic block for Decentraland export. Progress toward Byldr desktop client support. Progress towards automated Decentraland SDK backend updates.
- January-February 2023: Continued work on Byldr desktop client support. Continued work on SDK backend updates. Community testing of early set of expanded logic blocks for Decentraland export. Progress towards ability to download Decentraland scene source code.
- March-April 2023: Continued beta tests expected. Testing, bug fixes, user feedback collection. Full release of desktop client, expanded logic support, ability to download scene source code. Completion of SDK automated updates.
