Should Decentraland transition to a single realm?

by 0x5e5d9d1dfd87e9b8b069b8e5d708db92be5ade99 (paralax)

The Problem

Decentraland currently operates with multiple realms, presenting a challenge in understanding how to meet other users within the virtual world. To successfully connect with another user, one must understand realms, realm navigations, location coordinates, and the concept of islands or user clusters, all these must match in order for a user to be able to interact with a friend. This fragmentation hinders the platform's potential for social engagement, collaboration, and the sense of a unified metaverse experience. There have been press reports that highlighted instances where high-profile events hosted in Decentraland did not witness expected user numbers or engagement due to participants unintentionally joining realms with a low user base.

Solution

The proposal is to transition from the current 11 realms in Decentraland to a unified single realm. This initiative aims to address a critical weak point in the platform by significantly improving how users are grouped in the world and removing a layer of complexity caused by the segregation of realms. While transitioning to a single realm would require a new centralized communication service, the commitment is to maintain decentralization by making the single realm service open source and easy to launch, allowing anyone to operate their own realm. On the other hand, the Catalysts will continue to exist and be in charge of managing the decentralized content. The cost of the single realm service will be covered by Decentraland Foundation using the existing LiveKit Cloud solution and might be transferred to the DAO in the future. As this implementation implies protocol changes, it will go through a three-stage governance process.

Today the catalyst nodes have two responsibilities:

• Decentralized Content Storage: Ensuring the content of Decentraland will be replicated and live forever.
• Real-time Communications (Realms): Grouping users, messaging, voicechat, etc.

Nowadays a user can only interact with another user connected to the same catalyst.

The proposed solution is to move the communications service out of the Catalysts nodes to a centralized, highly replicated, service that will receive all platform users' positions and be able to group them based on their location, regardless of the catalyst node that they are using for content management.

Benefits:

• Unified and Connected Metaverse: A single realm fosters a more unified and connected metaverse, enabling users to seamlessly interact, collaborate, and engage with each other.
• Enhanced User Experience: With a single realm, users no longer have to navigate multiple realms to meet with friends, reducing confusion and complexity. This streamlined experience improves user satisfaction, encourages longer engagement periods, and makes the platform more accessible and appealing to new users.
• Cost Reduction for Catalyst Owners: Currently, each node owner must maintain a LiveKit Cloud account or host a LiveKit cluster, incurring infrastructure costs. Transitioning to a single realm eliminates the need for individual node owners to bear these expenses, resulting in cost savings for community members.
• Although the solution may appear more centralized, the reality is that most real-time communications are currently managed by a few LiveKit instances. Unifying these instances with the single realm service enables the implementation of the single realm model.
• Simpler and More Accurate Hot-Scenes Calculation: Currently each catalyst node must gather communication information from all nodes in the network and perform its own hot-scenes calculations, resulting in potential delays and slight variations in the data across realms. A single-realm model reduces the number of necessary requests and increases the accuracy and consistency of real-time data.

• Transition to a Single realm
• Keep 11 realms
• Invalid question/options

This proposal is summarized due to technical limitations. To view it complete and vote on it, visit the DCL DAO Governance dApp