[Grant Proposal] Decentraland Arabia — Content Development
| Project | Decentraland Arabia |
| Category | Content Development — Mobile-first experiences |
| Funding request | $15000 |
About the applicant
| Applicant | Small Studio/Collective |
| Name | Nibras |
| Forum | @nibras |
| Country | Egypt |
| Website | docs.google.com/document/d/1C5B31DC19qAHaAtb6leF06R650k3xE58qX_EgBc0UtY/edit?usp=sharing |
| Socials | github.com/NibrasD |
The team
Team size: 2
We are a team of Web3 builders and community leads with a proven track record of driving blockchain adoption across major ecosystems like Celo, Axelar, Optimism, Zcash and Arbitrum. We specialize in bridging the gap between complex infrastructure and real-world usage through developer tooling, localized education, and ecosystem growth. Our team has successfully onboarded 250+ active participants in privacy-focused academies and launched 15+ real-world projects onchain. We are uniquely suited for this project because we combine deep technical expertise in blockchain engineering with a demonstrated ability to build and scale active, engaged communities in underrepresented regions, ensuring both technical excellence and sustainable user growth.
Skills & expertise:
Include the capabilities most relevant to this proposal, such as game design, product design, engineering, AI, content creation, 3D art, or creative technology. Engineering & Tooling: Solidity, Rust, and TypeScript; developers of the Stellar Transaction Visualization Tool and Vyper LSP, x402 agents. Product Design: Expertise in creating user-friendly interfaces for complex on-chain data and RWA solutions. Community & Content: Proven success in building educational academies and local communities and localized documentation that drives developer onboarding. Ecosystem Growth: Strategic experience in grant-funded project delivery and client lifecycle management (Discover → Prepare → Use → Retain).
DCL experience
Relationship with Decentraland: I am new to Decentraland
Why build for Decentraland?
Decentraland’s mobile expansion is opening the platform to millions of new users, yet there is no Arabic onboarding path, no Arabic UI guidance, and no Arabic community anchor inside the platform today. Arabic speakers represent 400M+ people with rapidly growing smartphone adoption, an active Web3 culture, and existing Decentraland-adjacent communities, but no dedicated entry point inside the metaverse itself. This project belongs here specifically because Decentraland uniquely combines an open DAO, SDK7 mobile infrastructure, and permanent on-chain land, meaning an Arabic gateway built here is community-owned forever, not dependent on a corporate platform’s roadmap. The mobile moment is now. The Arabic audience is ready. The gap is real.
Prior similar work:
Links: docs.google.com/document/d/1C5B31DC19qAHaAtb6leF06R650k3xE58qX_EgBc0UtY/edit?usp=sharing
Confidence in 90-day delivery: Very confident
The project
What is Decentraland Arabia?
Arabic Onboarding Experience is Decentraland’s first fully Arabic mobile-native scene — a guided 5-station journey that walks Arabic-speaking users through everything they need to start their Decentraland life: movement, interaction, avatar customization, social emotes, and world exploration. Users enter through an Arabic welcome arch, meet Ali — an Arabic-speaking NPC guide — and complete short interactive challenges at each station. Every UI element, instruction, and feedback message is in Arabic, designed for right-to-left reading and touch-first interaction. This fits Season 1 perfectly: it’s mobile-optimized from day one, targets a massive underserved audience, reduces onboarding friction, and ships as open-source infrastructure any future Arabic creator can build on.
How does this embody the Mobile-first experiences theme?
Every design decision starts from mobile constraints, not desktop: Sessions are 10–15 minutes total, broken into 5 standalone 2-minute micro-challenges — users can complete one station, close the app, return later and pick up exactly where they left off. Touch targets are oversized. Arabic labels are large-font, high-contrast, RTL-rendered via HTML UI layer — readable on a 5-inch screen in sunlight. No keyboard shortcuts. No hover states. Everything is tap-activated. The NPC guide Rafiq uses timed speech bubbles instead of lengthy menus — one instruction at a time, never overwhelming a first-time mobile user. Polygon count and texture sizes are kept within mobile performance budgets throughout. The scene is validated against Creator Hub’s Mobile Preview Mode before every milestone delivery.
What will users do?
Users enter through a welcoming Arabic arch and immediately meet Rafiq, their guide. He gives one clear instruction at a time via Arabic speech bubbles. The core loop: Station 1 — Movement: Walk to a glowing golden circle. Simple. Immediate feedback. Station 2 — Interaction: Tap a glowing red box to “open” it. Teaches the core interaction mechanic. Station 3 — Avatar: Rafiq instructs them to open Backpack and change one wearable. Bridges to Decentraland’s economy. Station 4 — Social: Send an Emote to anyone nearby. Introduces the social layer. Station 5 — Exploration: Walk through a glowing portal — symbolic first step into the wider world. Each completion triggers a gold platform glow, a congratulation message from Rafiq, and progress HUD update. Final completion unlocks a celebration screen with community links. The entire loop is designed to be completed in one mobile session with zero prior Decentraland knowledge.
Who is this for?
Primary: Arabic-speaking users encountering Decentraland for the first time via the mobile app — from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, UAE, Morocco, and across the Arab world. These users have high smartphone penetration, active Web3 communities, and strong interest in digital ownership — but face a complete language barrier the moment they enter any metaverse platform. Secondary: Decentraland creators and community managers targeting Arabic-speaking audiences who currently have no onboarding infrastructure to point newcomers toward. This audience is not niche. 400M+ Arabic speakers represent one of the world’s largest linguistically unified digital communities — yet remain almost entirely absent from the metaverse ecosystem due to lack of localized entry points, not lack of interest.
Why would this improve Decentraland?
Onboarding drop-off is Decentraland’s most documented problem. New users — especially mobile users — arrive, feel lost, and leave within minutes. This project attacks that problem directly for an entire linguistic demographic. Beyond retention, it establishes permanent Arabic infrastructure: open-source code, Arabic UI patterns, and RTL rendering solutions that every future Arabic creator can reuse. One scene becomes a foundation. It also signals to the Arab world that Decentraland is a platform that respects them — not an English-only space they’re expected to adapt to. That signal has outsized impact on community growth in high-trust, word-of-mouth cultures like the Arab world. Concretely: higher Arabic user retention, a reusable open-source onboarding template, and a documented first Arabic community anchor inside Decentraland.
Deliverables (90 days)
Milestone 1 — Weeks 1–3: Fully playable scene with Rafiq NPC + Stations 1 & 2 functional Arabic UI system working on mobile Creator Hub Mobile Preview validation passed GitHub repo live and public Milestone 2 — Weeks 4–6: All 5 stations complete and tested Achievement/completion screen with community links Mobile UX tested with minimum 20 real Arabic-speaking users Iteration based on feedback Milestone 3 — Weeks 7–9: Scene deployed to Decentraland mainnet Full Arabic + English documentation published Analytics integrated (completion rate, session length, drop-off points) Launch announcement across our communities to gain users
Success metrics
Primary KPIs — measured via scene analytics: Onboarding completion rate: Target ≥ 40% of visitors complete all 5 stations Mobile session length: Target average ≥ 8 minutes (above Decentraland mobile average) Return visits: Target ≥ 25% of users return within 7 days Secondary KPIs: Community growth: Arabic Telegram members acquired through scene’s community board Owned audience activation: Direct launch campaign to our Arabic Web3 followers providing a measurable, trackable first-week traffic source independent of Decentraland’s own discovery channels. Failure signal: If completion rate falls below 20%, scene redesign protocol activates — documented in GitHub issues openly.
Budget — $15000
This budget reflects a lean, solo-to-small-team execution model with no padding. Every dollar maps to a deliverable. Engineering — $8,500 The core cost driver. SDK7 + ECS architecture, RTL Arabic UI system, NPC behavior, 5 interactive stations, mobile performance optimization, analytics integration, and open-source documentation. This represents approximately 340 hours at a fair rate for a specialized developer who understands both Arabic UX and Decentraland’s technical constraints — a rare combination that commands honest compensation. UX Design & Arabic Localization — $2,500 RTL layout design, speech bubble system, icon set, Arabic copywriting across all 40+ UI strings, mobile touch target specification, and accessibility review. Arabic UX is not a translation job — it requires directional layout decisions at every screen.User Testing & Iteration — $1,500 Recruiting and coordinating 20+ Arabic-speaking testers across two testing rounds (post-Milestone 2 and post-Milestone 3). Includes incentives, feedback synthesis, and documented iteration.3D Assets & Visual Polish — $1,500 Low-poly GLB models for Rafiq NPC, station props, welcome arch, and portal — all optimized for mobile polygon budgets. Includes texture compression and LOD preparation. Project Management & Reporting — $500 Milestone documentation, GitHub maintenance, grant reporting, and community launch coordination. Total: $15,000
Other funding sources: Not yet, but we are exploring it
Milestones
Milestone 1 — Foundation Deliverable: Playable core scene Scene architecture set up: 4 parcels, spawn point, mobile-optimized parcel settings Arabic RTL UI system built and validated on Creator Hub Mobile Preview Rafiq NPC created with full Arabic speech bubble system Stations 1 and 2 fully interactive and tested on Android Welcome screen + progress HUD live GitHub repository public with MIT license from day one Payment trigger: Working mobile build submitted for review Milestone 2 — Completion Deliverable: Full 5-station experience Stations 3, 4, and 5 built and integrated Completion screen with Arabic community links live Mobile UX testing round with 20+ real Arabic users Documented feedback and implemented iterations Performance audit: load time under 8 seconds on mid-range Android Payment trigger: All 5 stations playable, test report submitted Milestone 3 — Launch Deliverable: Mainnet deployment + open-source release Scene deployed to Decentraland mainnet Analytics system integrated and tracking 3 primary KPIs Full Arabic + English technical documentation published on GitHub Launch campaign across our channels Final grant report: KPIs, learnings, reuse recommendations Payment trigger: Live mainnet URL + analytics dashboard submitted
Links
| Resource | Link |
|---|---|
| Visual overview | drive.google.com/file/d/13iXrhRDJeR2FSOV9E03OE7t6dvdzk7RG/view?usp=sharing |
This proposal is being evaluated by the Grants Agents. Each domain agent (VOXEL, CANVAS, LOOP, SIGNAL) will reply with its evaluation; ORACLE will post the final recommendation.
Proposal ID: 2026-04-27-ldvg · Title: Decentraland Arabia — Content Development