Provide fundamental Decentraland metrics to the community for free

by 0x895be97bdb9f8a244c472b18ea96dee39ddf8fe5 (dax)

Should the following Tier 4: up to $60,000 USD, 6 months vesting (1 month cliff) grant in the Community category be approved?

Abstract

Decentraland is made of data but it’s technically difficult for the average user to meaningfully collect, interpret and visualize. DCL-Metrics aims to make public data accessible in a relevant way so it can be used by the community to build a better metaverse.

Grant size

48,000 USD

Beneficiary address

0x895Be97bDb9F8a244c472B18EA96DeE39ddf8fe5

Email address

dax.dcl@gmail.com

Description

Goal

Provide fundamental Decentraland metrics to the community for free at https://www.dcl-metrics.com

Current Implementation

The following metrics are currently implemented, but there are many more features already planned which we will be able to provide with some more work (see the Roadmap section):

• Daily active users
• Daily active parcels
• Daily / weekly user metrics
  • Time spent
  • Parcels visited
• Weekly parcel metrics
  • Average time spent
  • Average time spent AFK
  • Logins
  • Logouts

Limitations

• Infrastructure costs - to be able to ramp up the amount of data we make available, we need a bigger database and more powerful servers
• Development focus - the work we've done so far has been paid for from our own pockets and the work on a volunteer basis - a small salary will ensure we are able to devote time and resources to this project

Specification

Budget Breakdown

TOTAL: 48k to cover costs for 1 year (~4k / month)

• Infrastructure costs for 1 year (6k)
• Salary for development and maintenance (42k)
  • Backend dev: 1500 / month for 12 months (18k)
  • Frontend dev: 1500 / month for 12 months (18k)
  • Designer: as needed (est. 6k in total over 12 months)

Tech Stack and Approach

• Backend: Ruby served via Sinatra API on Heroku
• Frontend: Next.js + Chakra UI & Nivo charts served on Heroku

We pull data every 90 seconds which gives a reasonably clear picture of traffic. We’ve found this provides an acceptable trade-off between precision and infrastructure strain.

From there we calculate metrics from the raw data - at present this happens once per day, but we have plans to run these jobs more often to more closely approach “live” in-world metrics. For the alpha version, we focused solely on global level aggregations, which are immediately meaningful at a high level such as daily active users and parcels.

Future Tech // DAO tools

As part of the research that has gone into this proposal, I’ve had discussions with many members of the Decentraland community including MorrisMustang and howieDoin as their recent proposal fits quite well with what we are aiming to do.

Whereas the aim of their proposal is to create a robust framework to provide developers reliable access to the public data of Decentraland, our intention is to display that data in an accessible way to end users, regardless of the level of their technical skill.

When the time comes we hope to be able to seamlessly transition from relying on the catalyst servers as a source of data to pulling data more efficiently from Atlas Corp.

Personnel

Team

Dax

• 10 years in backend development
• Part of the Decentraland community since the Genesis Auction

Jongwoo

• Recently graduated CS major focused on modern frontend
• Lifelong nerd

We’ve known each other for 5+ years and have done several side-projects together. We’re looking forward to continuing working together and with the Decentraland community!

Partners // Beta-testers // Advisors

• Edifice Metaversal
• Atlas Corporation
• Wilderness P2E
• 8MetaBalls

Roadmap and milestones

2022 Q3

• Update FE aesthetic and charts components
• Build metrics for scenes (ie, Wilderness p2e as a whole rather than each of the 20 parcels of which it is comprised)

2022 Q4

• Build metrics for all users / parcels / scenes not just top 10 lists
• Introduce Daily New Users to global tracking
• Increasing daily run intervals for nearly live metrics
• Incorporate land sales and rental data
• Incorporate and work with Atlas Corporation's new data warehouse

2023 Q1

• Personalized metric dashboards
• More detailed parcel and scene-based metrics
  • Z-axis analytics
• Advanced user analytics
  • Wearables
  • POAPs
  • DAO activity

2023 Q2

• Working with the DAO and users to build desired features based on feedback up to this point
• Buffer for any unfinished features

Vote on this proposal on the Decentraland DAO