Dear all,
I hope this message finds you in good spirits and health. Six months ago, in an attempt to bring decentralization and amplify the voices of the actual users of Decentraland, I allocated the Beluga account’s voting power to users whose voting patterns were in alignment with [what I perceive to be] the core values of Decentraland. I believe the experiment was largely successful, but I have recently been approached repeatedly regarding possible abuses of this delegation, and some of the recipients also told me that it has been a burden at points. I don’t think the “abuse” is as it was pointed out, but it definitely gets amplified by the constant trolling.
So, in order to distribute and relief some of that burden, I’m continuing the experiment by allocating ~6M more voting power in the hands of more users. My only ask to the recipients of these delegations is that you vote what you think is best for the platform. And keep strong against paid trolls trying to destroy whatever good vibes appear.
I revamped the code I was using for enhanced clarity and ease of comprehension. It’s a basic frontend without any design, which uses the DAO’s public data and enables users to select a group of delegators by comparing how one would vote with their past votes. Check it out at eordano.github.io/delegation I have made the code publicly available on my GitHub account with a guide to use it, and a guide to modify it: the repository also includes some prompts that I ran on ChatGPT, who was responsible for coding a significant portion of the application. I recommend you try out cursor.sh, a really good coding companion.
We should not be in-fighting, the threat lies elsewhere. I believe that platforms nowadays have too much power relative to their users, and that this power imbalance comes from users not being able to modify the interfaces of their software. Software systems need a lot of effort, time, knowledge, and money investments to make computers do what we want. I’ve been deeply interested in the idea of reducing these costs, as I see it’s the only way to the decentralization of big platforms’ power.
At Decentraland, we encounter this issue often. Whether it’s a desire for faster performance or new features, the effort and expertise needed to make changes can be overwhelming. About 15 years ago, creativity was bubbling in everyone’s mind, with ideas for new mobile applications, like social networks, dating apps, and navigation systems that could improve everyone’s lives. However, development costs are often prohibitive, and most ideas never saw the light. I think that a significant reduction in these costs is due in the next few years, possibly by several orders of magnitude with the use of AI. When app development becomes as affordable as a few hundred dollars, instead of a few hundred thousand dollars, the protocols for this new wave of applications will become critically important.
In order to achieve these reductions in cost, it’s critical for software to be open source, friendly to AI systems to modify and test, and built on a solid protocol layer. I’ve been obsessed with the idea of accelerating this change, particularly for Decentraland’s protocol. I’ve been building a social sharing app for Decentraland, separate from the awesome new features being built by the Foundation under Yemel’s leadership. Just this past month, they released (list credits to Alvaro Luque, PM at the Foundation):
- Marketplace Wishlist
- Prebuilt Templates
- Saved Outfits
- Profile Updates
- Handwear category
- Search for Places
- Exporting VRMs (YouTube Guide)
- Add Animations to Scene
I’ll keep you posted of any progress; in the mean time, I wish you happy times in the metaverse!
Best,
Esteban
