by 0x87956abc4078a0cc3b89b419928b857b8af826ed (Nacho)
Many parcels in Decentraland’s Genesis City remain empty or abandoned, creating a perception of inactivity and wasted potential across the platform. This negatively impacts the user experience, reduces the sense of liveliness, and discourages new creators from building in Genesis City, especially when surrounded by static or outdated content.
To address this, we propose a DAO-governed system that allows trusted community members or automated systems to temporarily deploy content on inactive parcels. A new smart contract, DAO Land Stewardship, would track and manage which addresses are authorized to deploy on behalf of the DAO. Parcels would qualify if they’ve had no deployment activity in over a year, either individually or as part of an Estate.
Catalysts would be modified to recognize addresses registered in the smart contract as authorized to deploy on eligible parcels. This ensures deployments are verifiable, reversible (in case of compromise), and previously coordinated. The goal is to bring more life, art, events, and experimentation to Genesis City without modifying the LAND or Estate smart contract and the asset ownership. LAND owners retain full deployment rights, and if they publish a new scene, it will automatically override the existing DAO-deployed content.
Yes, I’d like to allow fresh content to be deployed on “abandoned” LANDs
So if someone has a museum of their work on a parcel and then die or get ill and can’t “ping” their lands after a year we are just going to overwrite their content?
We rejected the ping system and a proposal to recover lost assets.
Let people have empty lands if they wish so.
I don’t want to see random content that go against my values be deployed on my lands. What if someone publish some bad stuff my land then I get assimilated to it because it’s my land so it must be my content…
The DAO has 87 lands that we should use already + some of the roads that could be repurposed. (the “DECENTRALAND” roads for example have no reason to be used as a road and could be repurposed as content lands)
The implementation details are still undefined, but to address both of your concerns, we can include an opt-out option so you can keep your museum or empty LANDs untouched.
Additionally, if someone publishes inappropriate content on your LAND, the system could include a way to override it.
As for the topic of roads, I think that deserves a separate discussion or proposal.
Great point, we should revote on the prop to return land to people who can prove they lost the seed phrase to them. It was insane for the community to be so short-sighted as to vote that down after Yemel put so much effort into writing solid governance around it, simply because of imagined fears based on nothing but anxiety.
Agree with HP; pretty much goes against the entirety of the platform ethos if owners do not have full control of their assets. We shouldn’t be creating content management systems to flag content on other people’s land - it shouldn’t exist without their consent.
The only way this could or should be acceptable is OPT-IN, not opt-out. Subtle, but huge difference for maintaining land owners’ rights. OPT-IN is explicit up front consent vs (once again) reactionary opt-out.
Too many questions and checks and balances would have to exist in an opt-out system - how long after a land owner opts out does content stay on someones land if it’s been deployed? is it manual? is it automatic? who can flag inappropriate content? is there a review timeframe? a review committee? how long until it’s taken down?
All unnecessary allocation of finances and human resources to solve a problem that shouldn’t have been created in the first place.
I’ve spent quite a bit of time considering opt-in vs opt-out. While opt-in may seem safer, it unfortunately defeats the core goal of this proposal: to bring life back to abandoned LANDs. If we require every owner to explicitly opt in, we’ll likely end up doing nothing at all, and the emptiness continues.
That’s why opt-out makes more sense here. It still respects ownership. If you’re active and want your LAND untouched, you can either:
Deploy something during the year (if a year is the defined timeframe)
Or opt out easily, perhaps via a signed request to the catalyst. No gas fees, no extra steps.
Regarding the valid concerns raised:
These are all good questions, and fortunately, they’re all solvable.
The approach can start simple, and evolve over time with feedback from the community. Tech-wise, every one of those scenarios is feasible.
I genuinely don’t see a strong reason to vote against the proposal based on concerns that are easy to address through clear rules and good implementation. This is a low-friction, high-impact way to make Genesis City more alive while still respecting the rights of LAND owners and keeping the onchaun part of the assets untouched.
Let’s play this out. In the polls current form, what is achieved from populating more lands? Is this a solution to attracting new users by having more things to look at?
The data might prove otherwise. There were more users of the platform in 2021-2022 than currently, and equal or even significantly less deployed content in that same time frame.
Also, tech wise is feasible, of course. I never doubted that. At what cost though? Monetarily and Human Resources that could be focused on other efforts to improve the user base.
I would rather opt in than sacrifice the ethos of complete autonomy as a land owner and ethos of nft ownership (I own zero lands).
Will scenes deployed be anything? Static, functional? A game?
If the goal is to attract more users to the platform because it “looks” populated, I disagree with this solution. There are other concepts to help bring in new users that don’t sacrifice that land ownership concept.
Also. Edit. I re read your first sentence again. You agree opt in is safer, but doesn’t satisfy this poll desired outcomes. Then the poll should be disregarded entirely. Making ANY decision that violates nft ownership autonomy should not be considered. This poll highlights a more serious concern of varying degree of decentralization and what level of acceptance.
Further edit. This poll suggests changing the deploy rights for a land owner, granting non consented access to someone else on to their land via this new contract. Absolute absurdity in the nft space. Imagine bored apes getting their image changed to a blank square without their consent if they haven’t attended ape fest and this kind of delegated access wasn’t relayed to them upon nft purchase.
Again, opt in might not achieve the desired outcome of this poll, but it preserves the integrity of nft ownership.
Weither it’s opt in or opt out (I prefer opt in with some sort of incentive), how are we defining “trusted community members”?
I think we should aim to make these parcels truly public where any user can take operator rights and overwrite what’s there. This will automatically give users something free to do while also keeping a reason to buy land: If you don’t want your scene to be hijacked and changed, buy it and build something permanent.
This is great feedback. I don’t believe this proposal violates the rights of LAND owners, since they retain the final say and can overwrite any content being deployed on their parcels if they want. It’s true that an opt-in approach is safer, but the goal here is to establish a mechanism that reactivates inactive LAND, so expecting holders who do not engage in DCL to flip a switch might be too optimistic. In that case, we would be wasting development time and resources on a feature that won’t generate a real impact.
I’ve said this many times: I believe Worlds is what will drive Decentraland’s long-term growth. But in the meantime, Genesis City remains our main differentiator, and we can’t afford for it to continue looking like a wasteland.
I agree that the opt-in vs. opt-out model is an important conversation to have. But we shouldn’t get stuck debating how we’ll populate those LANDs yet. First, let’s align on if we want the protocol to allow this kind of mechanism. The rest can follow.
After reading through this proposal, I find several critical issues that I believe deserve serious attention—and should raise alarm for anyone who values the foundational principles of crypto and decentralization.
First, it’s unclear how anyone can access or alter an NFT that was purchased and owned by an individual. If Decentraland—or any central entity—retains the ability to change or revoke access to NFTs that users have paid real money for, that is not just a red flag, it’s a direct contradiction of the concept of self-custody. This isn’t a minor technicality—it’s a core security issue that calls the integrity of the platform into question.
Second, if we accept that kind of control over owned assets, we’re setting a dangerous precedent. This type of mechanism erodes trust and autonomy, and frankly, it should be deeply concerning to anyone participating in a decentralized environment. Crypto was built on the idea that ownership is absolute—not conditional based on group opinion or governance decisions.
Third, this proposal starts to resemble something like a homeowners association (HOA). If we open the door to community votes on subjective issues—like removing a virtual grill or changing how someone uses their space—then where does it stop? Do we really want a system where asset utility or aesthetics are decided by majority preference rather than individual freedom?
This is not what we signed up for. If Decentraland is to remain a truly decentralized platform, we must protect the rights of owners—even when we personally dislike how those rights are used. That’s what decentralization means.
For these reasons—and the broader implications they carry—I will be voting NO on this proposal. And frankly, I believe the community should be far more alarmed than it currently is.
I believe it’s better to simply erase all old outdated scenes and make Decentraland fresh and clean again.
There are no reasons to give rights to other people to do something, they will replace garbage with another garbage. It’s better to make parcels empty with default terrain, rocks, trees.
This proposal absolutely violates the rights of LAND owners. Let’s make it very clear and simple:
Currently
Only a land owner can deploy to their land
Only a land owner can delegate deployments to their land
Decentraland servers are set up to only allow the above two scenarios to deploy land
That’s it. that’s the agreement. No one else can do anything to your land. That is how it’s set up.
Proposal
On behalf of the DAO, NOT on behalf of the land owner. That is literally violating the rights of the NFT owner. If the owner does not give consent, then the action should not be given.
This is actually absurd we’re even even discussing the potential for creating a back door to modify an nft owner’s rights (without their opt in consent).
Quoting gino:
Exactly my point. I literally said that this is a waste of time and resources. This proposed mechanism will not bring new users into Decentraland. There are other ways to do that where we should focus our efforts.
We should be absolutely discussing how, especially when it’s this monumental.
Why is everything so reactionary from the DAO and the Foundation? Idk how to explain this in text and not on voice, but this is super reactionary, meaning - the land owner has to do something AFTER there’s deployed content without their consent, not BEFORE by giving access.
Why aren’t we discussing ways to bring back those land owners with incentives to either 1) sell their land, 2) populate it for perks 3) pair up with developers in the community (who get rewarded) to deploy content with delegated access. Do you see how #3 is quite similar to the proposal but VASTLY different in approach??
Doing something forcefully and without consent is wrong in all cases, being able to somewhat repair the damage later on doesn’t make it right again.
We should start by populating the 89 lands that the DAO owns, put cool content on the several thousands lands used as roads and update the plazas.
I believe there was a pool of people who opted-in for their lands to be used to deploy content with the builder during launch, those lands could be used too.
But in no case should lands which haven’t been opt-in to be changed be modified.
I agree with Lastraum, it’s a lot of work and edge cases and fund/human resources wasted for a problem which isn’t even one.
We have plenty of lands available to deploy content already, we have no need (AND RIGHTS) to requisition lands from people.
I didn’t express my thoughts correctly.
I wasn’t talking about replacing every single roads, some roads are clearly useless though, such as the “DECENTRALAND” sign, there are also many roads that don’t need to be 2 lands wide and would suffice as single width.
Hp is 100% right. (We should start by populating the 89 lands that the DAO owns,) or how about all the land the is on the marketplace 458 listings and I am sure more on opensea. All these people are saying buy my land and build on it. Let’s not violate the rights of those who have not agreed to this.
This attempts to solve one problem by creating a bigger one.
This proposal is smashing together two very different issues:
Empty land problem
The need for more engaging content in DCL
This proposal DOES NOT GUARANTEE QUALITY CONTENT. It only guarantees access to land in a questionable way. Before we enact a proposal like this, why haven’t we even touched the parcels the DAO DOES own? The DAO has 80+ parcels of land sitting empty, adding to the problem right now. If we can’t create engaging content on 80 parcels of land we honestly don’t deserve this place.
In my opinion, we don’t have an issue of not enough land, we have an issue of not enough imagination.