Yemel: 0:00

We want to incentivize the economy by incentivizing the demand. Instead of, for example, paying the creator, what we want to do is to give the money to the users, who then go to the marketplace and buy the stuff that is out there.

Joeri: 0:18

Hello everyone and welcome to the Web3 CMO Stories podcast. My name is Joeri Billast and I'm your podcast host, and today I'm so excited to be joined by Yemel. Yemel, how are you?

Yemel: 0:32

Hey, nice to see you, Joeri. I'm doing fine. I'm here in Buenos Aires at the moment, Argentina.

Joeri: 0:38

Yeah, I know that. So I'm in Lisbon, so a few hours in time zones away from you, so it's not so far, but obviously we met at the web summit. It was really exciting to see you there and now to have you on the podcast. Guys, if you don't know, Yemel Yemel Yardi is a co-founder and executive director of the Centraland Foundation with a passion for blockchain technology. Emel began building open source tools for Bitcoin development already in 2014. And it's great to have you, because I think it's two years ago that I had Giovanni. Maybe I don't think she's still a colleague, but she worked for you and she did the Metaverse Fashion Week at Decentraland, and that was also a really interesting conversation. In the meantime, I have explored Decentraland. Even yesterday, I was at Decentraland Music Festival. So, Yemel, yeah, lots of things I have happened for Decentraland, but now I know there is version 2.0. So I'm curious to hear more about what inspired the launch of Decentraland 2.0 and how it does transform the virtual experience for the users.

Yemel: 1:57

Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Joeri, for having me here. A pleasure to be sharing a little bit about our journey. You, as you might know, decentraland and the ecosystem of virtual worlds and metaverses grew a lot during 2021, 2022. We have a crazy amount of users and that found Decentraland like in the perfect storm. Like recently launched the platform, the 1.0 version, in 2020. And a year after we were on all the media, having many users and actually helping human beings to connect in very challenging times. People looking forward to connect socially, this digital way.

Yemel: 2:41

After that hype cycle ended, we get out of that crazy time with a realization that our product was not quite there yet. The first part was the performance of the client. We took the initial decision of delivering the first version of Decentraland through a web browser, so anyone the accessibility was pretty key Anyone with a web browser could enter. However, the limitations of what key Anyone with a web browser could enter, however, the limitations of what you can do in a web browser, are more for Decentraland. That is a very challenging product. Maybe we can dig deeper into why Decentraland is different from other games or other experiences, but I think that moving out of web and going to desktop for like better graphics, more performance and a more enhanced experience was like the first decision and realization we had, and the other one was like the vision of being able to take Decentraland to other platforms as well. Building on the web really limits us to stay on web.

Yemel: 3:45

If we move to desktop, we're one step closer to being in other platforms such as mobile and VR, which is ultimately the vision of Decentraland to be ubiquitous, to be able to access Decentraland In many platforms. They are all compatible. You can be interacting with someone who is on the mobile phone and you can be connecting with someone that is in VR, and maybe they have different kind of fidelities in the way they express. Like, maybe someone with a VR headset you can see they have full body tracking and they are playing around and maybe someone with a mobile phone are just looping emotes and maybe someone with a mobile phone are just looping emotes, but in any case, they both are sharing and connecting in the same virtual space, regardless of the hardware they have.

Yemel: 4:32

During the last year and a half, we have been building a new version of Decentraland. It was a challenging decision because it was a complete rewrite, starting from scratch, taking all the learnings we had an implementing like a new architecture for Decentraland 2.0, and I'm super happy to announce that we launched it and we are testing it with the music festival, as you mentioned. The launch was a month ago and we will use the platform for continue building the next year and many years to come.

Joeri: 5:04

Wow, yeah. So yeah, I'm really excited about this new version. Is this new version? I guess it's in beta right now. Can people already download it, or is it just like a small group of people?

Yemel: 5:16

No, we have an open beta. Nowadays you can go and download it for Windows and Mac and run it. That's the promoted version that we have at the moment. But we say it's in beta because we have a big package of features that we're shipping on December, another big pack of features that we're shipping on February, and every two months we'll be adding a new pack of features, mostly on the discoverability, to have an amazing map and be able to explore more of the content that is created by the users. Other features regarding the social part of Dissension being able to join communities, like having your own friends and having private conversations with your friends, so having social emotes. So we will continue improving the platform on very specific things and you can expect to have like a new wave of innovation every two months okay, cool.

Joeri: 6:12

So yeah, you mentioned it, the central and this difference. So I know already about my experiences with other metaverses and so on. So, yeah, if you can point them like, what are, like, the major differences between Decentraland and other platforms?

Yemel: 6:29

Yeah, so I think on a, I can answer this in many levels on a philosophical level, on a technical level, maybe starting with the technical part, but I think I will try to keep it like on layman's terms. But Decentraland has this idea that a virtual world should be traversable. That means that it's one world with the creations of different creators and that creations are like placed next to each other and you can walk from one to another and it's an integrated universe. And that's a pretty unique point of this engine. If you check other platforms, like Roblox, for example, you don't find an open world. You find different instances and you like teleport from one instance to another, but there is no cohesive experience like a world that you can walk from point to point, reach the end of it, you see the sea, and so we are really on the concept of having an open world that is user generated and all the things that you can find are created by different people, and that places some technical challenge on terms of we need technology to stream the world as you walk around. That's challenging and also we don't control fully how the scenes, the experiences that are deployed in this open world are created, like these are just the creations of our community, the landowners, like our community, the landowners. So not having full control of the pipeline is also challenging, because you don't want to let a scene that is coded poorly actually affect the experience of others and nearby, like having a bad neighbor, is affecting your experience. I think that's a pretty unique challenge. We are so super happy with the new version.

Yemel: 8:31

On a philosophical level, I can say that Decentraland is trying to do something also unique. We believe I like to see Decentraland as an extension of the internet, an extension that has an immersive component, a special web, if you want to call it, and the web has been built on open source foundations, like on open philosophy. You cannot point to one company that is called internet. The internet is a protocol, it's an industry, and that's so powerful because it becomes a platform for other businesses and individuals to be on top of that, and I believe that's the reason why that technology that really scaled to the level that we now have about the internet. Nowadays, what they say okay, internet is I don't know the apps, the app stores, and maybe it's Instagram or X, and that's the vision of what internet is, and I think that's maybe too narrow. Actually, the internet is the open protocols and the communications that allow this platform to be built. So we want to build Decentraland as an open platform and not like a business that is driven by profit. So that reflects in Decentraland. All the code we do is open source. So if someone else wants to make an alternative version of Decentraland using another game engine, that's totally possible.

Yemel: 10:06

All the content that is deployed in our world is also distributed and that means that if Decentraland Foundation decides to shut down their services, all the content will continue to be there. There is no single point of failure. As long as we have the Decentraland platform that is capturing value from the marketplace, we can continue keeping the service and the servers online, so all the content is really safe for us. Also, we believe in private property and really enforcing private property rights. We decided to use blockchain technology for that purpose, so all digital assets we craft in Decentraland are backed by these tokens in a blockchain.

Yemel: 10:51

I think that's a pretty novel idea and actually I think it bumps the ceiling of how much a person or a business is willing to invest in a virtual world if all the money and the time that you are investing in a platform.

Yemel: 11:09

It's a centralized platform managed by one company that is profit-driven and they can change the rules at any time. There is a ceiling for what you are willing to invest. However, if you want to build a website on the web, there is no ceiling there. You can't build a unicorn that runs on top of the web. So I think the same applies for Decentraland, ensuring that the property rights to be able to own a piece of land, to own your identity, to own the virtual assets you have, that's secured by a party that is not the main developers of the software. I think that's also pretty powerful in the long term and hopefully I think that's my vision. So the things and the innovations we do here eventually will apply to real life, like how can we manage rentals and how can we manage like some properties access in the central and can be like a experiment area or arena for implementing these ideas then in this physical world I love it.

Joeri: 12:11

Yeah, you covered different aspects actually. Yeah, the decentraland it has it in its name decentralized, based, built on blockchain and so on that people can really own property in there, compared to other like centralized metaverse, so it's really a web3 metaverse Something, yeah, that came up when I was organizing because I've been organizing quite some events on different metaverses already and explore different ones, and one time I did a forum, a discussion with CIOs in the US, and we were discussing what are the opportunities in the metaverse, and something that came up was the translations part, so the fact that people are in the center and speak different languages. By the way, I also, at a certain moment, did events for an events company that did multilingual events around the world real life online with Zoom, but then we were thinking of doing it in the metaverse, and so I know it's somewhere in the pipeline. Can you tell me about what role do you see real-time translation play in this plant and how you are progressing with that?

Yemel: 13:21

Yeah, I'm super excited about the potential of using current technologies. State-of-the-art AI is making a huge bump in this front. As a tool, decentraland has a pretty wide user base. We have a lot of people in the US, we have a lot of people in Europe, in Asia as well, latin America, and it's a very global community. I think some community members have expanded their horizons in terms of culture and having friends from other parts of the world thanks to Decentraland. I have seen people from the US taking Spanish lessons because they made friends from Spain or some people from Latin America, so actually sparking that curiosity about, like other cultures. I think that's pretty way into the nature of of the central culture and its community. However, being able to have a fluent conversation with another person, I think that's something that we can help with technology.

Yemel: 14:24

There are some biblical stories about the Babel Tower and people having the capacity to speak many languages. I think that creating the platform in which you can go and connect with other human beings and you are somehow assisted through technology is really, really powerful. I think that we already see this because some people find in the central or virtual world a more safe or easy way to connect socially. I don't know what happened with society after pandemic, but I think more people are yeah, I don't know, I couldn't say afraid, but maybe more reluctant to go outside and start connecting with random people in a networking event. Some people, they just prefer to do it in a safer way or maybe just at home. They didn't have to travel the world or take a car and drive for a while to be exposed into this situation that maybe generates some kind of anxiety, into this situation. That maybe generates some kind of anxiety. So if connecting digitally is a safer way or it's a more convenient way to connect with new people and on top of that, you have the easiness of being able to speak your language and that being translated automatically, I think that's powerful.

Yemel: 15:48

In terms of the current state, we are working on automatic translations on the chat. That's the main feature. Where people connect, you jump into Decentraland with your avatar, you go to a scene, see other people, you can play animations, walk around, explore together. But the general room for Hangout is through a chat and you can see the bubbles on top of the avatars as well being able to select what's your language of preference and get all the messages translate to your language and when you send a message that's translated to English or it's sent raw and then other clients are translating to their version. That's what we're playing now.

Yemel: 16:29

Nowadays, I think the the tweaking is about a lot of slang. That is that happens on the chat. Instead of saying what's up, people say soup, and so I think getting all the nuances about that how to translate that slang I think is what we are working now and like the main challenge. But I think it's what we are working now and like the main challenge. But I think that's totally doable and we will see it like early next year in production. Then I'm really interested in also, as you said, like being able to have an event and get the translation, the speaker at that time. That's really powerful.

Yemel: 17:08

I guess the challenge there is the latency and how fast you can be translated the talk. We can do, for sure, the translations of the subtitles, but getting like with AI now you can get the full translation of a speech that actually maintains the voice of the tone and the voice of the original narrator, but that's done like asynchronically, so like getting into real time. That's, I think, something challenging, but I think at the progress of evolution of AI. We're not that far away. Ultimately, maybe what we can do is like an event that is first recorded in one language and then replay in many languages later on, like maybe in a second, like a few hours later, you have all the speech in many languages so you can attend the live version, or you can attend the replay version in your own language, like 30 minutes later. So I think that's really interesting. So I think that's really interesting.

Yemel: 18:07

And the other part that is not particularly translation but I think builds upon on your digital identity is being able to model your voice. Now the primary communication is the chat, but having voice chat is also an important feature. We don't use it, like the chat is more used for general handouts, but for doing a presentation or being the host or giving indications to people there. Voice is a more important and prominent method. And being able to model your voice and have more of a I don't know dark, bright voice or tune more of a I don't know dark, very dark voice or tune in to a particular character, I think it's also powerful to build your own identity.

Yemel: 18:57

In Accenture. There are many tools already available for doing this. They're pretty powerful. So I think the state of the art to do it in real time is already there. It's a matter of when we're going to implement it, but yeah, overall, making it easier to different people that are in different parts of the world to connect and actually feel immersed and represented. Their avatar is the ultimate vision of building a social platform for the creativity of all the people. Like a game that you go and you have a mission and you have a and you can die and restart. It's not a proper game. It's more like the platform for other people to create and connect and do whatever they want yeah, yeah, also a question about that, because creators let's talk about them.

Joeri: 21:01

So you want to attract creators to the platform. How do you actually subsidize the demand from players and how do you incentivize creators to keep building on the central end?

Yemel: 21:13

Yeah, well, we have many actors in Decentraland and I think that incentivizing them is part of activating the economy and having a more vibrant economy. That's actually the main goal of next year is to incentivize all the players across the world in this entrant. Some are landowners, for example. Some of them are developing their land. Others maybe they just bought a piece and are still figuring out what to do with it. So we have a rental system. So if you're a landowner, you can provide a ground floor of the rental market and ensuring that our DAO or our incentive program is actually renting all the land that is at some price point.

Yemel: 22:02

It's a good incentive for landowners that you know that you have an income from the land you own yeah and actually putting the land in the hands of someone that has also incentives to deploy interesting content in the central. So it's not only incentivizing that landowners is also bringing a lot of content to the genesis city. That's the the name of the metropolis of decentralization. Well, that's the landowners. Other really important part of the system are the wearable creators emote creators those are, for those you don't know, the digital closes, the assets, the skins that you can use on your avatar, and those are all user generated. There are a few that are the basic ones, but all the other things you can find were created by some person that knows Blender and they know how to do the animations and they publish it on our marketplace and it's available for sale. Also, in general, in events, they do giveaways of wherever. So it's a big part of digital identity and also onboarding people. When a new user comes into a party and it's using the defaults closest, it's pretty common someone approach you and say, hey, we have a new person here, let's give them away some clothes so they feel more at home and they give you. That's the gifting approach for our community. How to incentivize the creation of more warehouses? I think that's a an important part um. We want to incentivize the that economy by incentivizing the demand. Instead of, for example, paying the creator, what we want to do is to give the money to the users, who then go to the marketplace and buy the stuff that is available. So I think it's a more fair way to do it because, ultimately, it's the end user that goes to the market, the one who selects what is the best, whatever out there or whatever that actually resonates with him, the best wearable out there or what's the wearable that actually resonates with him. So our approach is to actually incentivize users that use the platform and, based on their activity, they will receive mana redeemable in the marketplace to be exchanged by wearables, so that a new user to invest in their digital identity. The more you play, the more money you have to improve their digital identity. The more you play, the more money you have to improve your digital identity. And also, if you're a creator, there is a demand for your work out there. There is a lot of money to be exchanged for your creations and actually you receive money on the other side. So I think that's an interesting approach on subsidizing the demand instead of the offer, and then we have a big program for creators.

Yemel: 24:49

We want to bring a lot of new content into Decentraland next year, probably around some things, and there are many studios out there. They have been building Decentraland and maybe other platforms as well, and one of the things that they are looking is okay, but how frequent I can get a job here? How many people brands are looking for a studio to build something? So, having a base program that incentivizes the creation of content in a streamlined way that actually does the curation of what's the content that we want to bring to Ecentral and be the ones who articulate into our big list of studios and have a personal relationship with them and say, okay, we have this pipeline, how much work you can take? So going deeper in the relationship with the studios and ensuring that it's a pipeline of the creation of new content that's the way we scale it, because the Metropolis Genesis CT is huge and also ensuring that all the creators are actually verified, have a steady pipeline of projects to work on.

Yemel: 25:57

And I think the final point is the community builders, like the most engaged users in the platforms, are those who actually take ownership in this world. That the philosophy of being decentralized, the philosophy of being open source really boils down into. This is a world that is owned by its users. There is a governance platform you can go and discuss about its future, some radical decisions such as I don't know lowering or hiring the fee of the marketplace Nowadays it's pretty low. Creators get like 97.5% of the revenue of the sales of their digital assets. If you compare it with, for example, roblox, roblox takes more than half of what you sell, which is crazy.

Yemel: 26:48

But, yeah, coming back to this is, this is a world that you can own and you can be part of, and those who really embrace that idea are the ones who want to be a leader in the community, want to create a space for their friends and the new friends they will make, ensure they have like activities to do together, and they, yeah, I think, create activities such as like recurrent parties in a social club, the projections of movies of a particular theme, or giving free walking tours, or role playing as reporters in Decentraland, or role-playing as reporters in Decentraland. So those are the ones who not only bring the content, they bring the people the heart, something that you want to belong, a big part of. So that's really a core part of Decentraland being a vibrant and engaging platform to find other people. So incentivizing these community leaders is also a big part of our plan for next year. So really excited to see how this unrolls, starting the first decentralized season with a big pool of rewards all across the world.

Joeri: 28:00

A lot of people that are now listening. They are inspired or maybe they haven't been in Decentraland yet. They need to find out. Time flies when I'm listening to you on the podcast, so if people they really want to try out or they want to know more or what should they do, Yemel?

Yemel: 28:19

So go to Decentralandorg that's our website Clicking the big red button that is download. Download the client, install it and you can look. Once you open it, you can create an account. If you don't have it, nowadays it's pretty easy. We support many social accounts, so if you log in with google or twitter or facebook, like there are many options to sign up or if you have a Web3 enabled wallet, you can also connect with your wallet as well. If you choose a social login, there is a wallet behind the scenes that is being created. You will be the same level of citizen as any other being. You can actually own property and receive gifts and actually transfer them. But that part of the technical, well-treated part is behind the scenes. You just jump into the center and start exploring with your avatar. You can customize it and then open the map and see what pops your eye.

Joeri: 29:23

Great, actually, that's how I did that. Just go inside the world, create your avatar. Once you're there, you will see. Oh no, I want to change my avatar. I want to discover that. You try out and that's how you learn it.

Joeri: 29:36

Wow, Yemel, what a nice, what an impactful episode. Thank you so much. It was really a pleasure to have you on the show. It's my pleasure, Joeri. Thank you so much for your time and, yeah, so happy to be here. Guys, if you want to try the central land, go for it. Download the app and be sure to connect with me, because I will be there too. If you think this episode is really useful for people around you, share it with them. I think you will make it a pleasure, because then they can also join you in the virtual world. If you are not yet subscribed to the podcast, this is a really good moment to do this. If you haven't given me a review yet, I would love for you to do that, because that gives me even a bigger audience, more listeners and more impact, and, of course, I would like to see you back next time. Take care.