Summaries Technology and Innovation Decentraland's Metaverse: A Disappointing Future for Businesses and Users

This is a summary of a YouTube video "The Future is a Dead Mall - Decentraland and the Metaverse" by Folding Ideas!

4.8 (60 votes)

Decentraland's metaverse falls short in providing a worthwhile experience for businesses and users due to low viewership, glitchy builds, limited functionality, flawed governance system, and lack of innovation in events.

• 🎭
  00:00

  A theater has been built in Decentraland where users can buy tickets with Mana, order pizza, and watch movies with friends without leaving their house.
• 👎
  15:25

  Lindt USA and Decentraland fail to deliver on the promise of the metaverse, with laggy and poor virtual experiences.
• 👎
  29:13

  Building and maintaining a virtual world for businesses is not practical or efficient compared to a basic website or Facebook page, and Decentraland's MetaGamiMall falls short in providing a worthwhile experience.
• 📉
  45:48

  Decentraland is struggling with low viewership, lack of journalistic substance, glitchy builds, and limited functionality, while Hershey Chocolates has created their own metaverse with limited activities and small plot size, and brands are only using the metaverse for temporary promotional campaigns.
• 🌐
  1:02:33

  Decentraland's micro-MMO model and user prioritization of legitimacy outweigh low user base and disconnected cryptocurrency market cap, but Metaverse events fail to deliver on innovation and journalists overlook technical issues.
• 🚫
  1:19:35

  Decentraland's governance system is flawed, with a wealth-based voting system and unaccountable whales, leading to bureaucratic paralysis and an ineffective grant scheme.
• 🎮
  1:38:03

  Decentraland is a virtual world with jumping puzzles, controlled by elites, and may lead to a social climate change.
• 👏
  1:48:31

  Speaker grateful for help, surprised by unexpected event.

Detailed summary

• 🎭
  00:00

  A theater has been built in Decentraland where users can buy tickets with Mana, order pizza, and watch movies with friends without leaving their house.

  • A theater has been built in Decentraland where users can buy tickets with Mana, order pizza, and watch movies with friends without leaving their house.
  • Decentraland, a virtual reality world for unconstrained markets, is a bad video game wrapped in a real-estate scheme, with most of its features centered around finance and landlordism.
  • The metaverse is a reified space that sits on top of the real world, a 1 to 1 digital clone, where traditional websites and apps are just a stop gap to the ultimate aim of astrally projecting via VR into a McDonalds, and the goal is to create a space so 'real' and legitimate that it could be capable of containing divinity.
  • The metaverse is a vague and malleable concept that can encompass anything from digital fashion to virtual worlds, and its definition is constantly evolving.
  • The Metaverse is not a real thing, but a rhetorical device used to gesture towards the future, and definitions of it are rooted in present political and social values, with many writers being salesmen who have not considered if it would actually be any good.
  • The Metaverse is a three-dimensional virtual space that is often described as non-negotiable for its aesthetic details, but virtual reality is limited by the human body's tolerance for movement.
• 👎
  15:25

  Lindt USA and Decentraland fail to deliver on the promise of the metaverse, with laggy and poor virtual experiences.

  • The reality of virtual reality is that it's a limited tool for a few applications, creating a contrast between the metaverse talked about by pundits and the actuality of VR.
  • Lindt USA's metaverse store, launched in November 2022, is a laggy and hideous faux-3D website that fails to provide a cutting-edge virtual shopping experience.
  • Decentraland's lack of virtual reality and poor user experience make it an embarrassing and inconvenient claim to the idea of the metaverse, but if successful games like Minecraft and Roblox can be considered the nascent metaverse, then Decentraland can too.
  • The Decentraland pizza kiosk, which allowed users to order Domino's with cryptocurrency, was not officially involved with Domino's and highlights the incompetence and glitches of the Decentraland platform.
  • DecentRally, the first game in Decentraland, is a poor proof of concept and raises concerns about the overall quality of experiences in the metaverse.
  • Lawyer cannot help with criminal charges after client accidentally killed roommate while attacking them with a rake, and refers them to a criminal defense lawyer.
• 👎
  29:13

  Building and maintaining a virtual world for businesses is not practical or efficient compared to a basic website or Facebook page, and Decentraland's MetaGamiMall falls short in providing a worthwhile experience.

  • Building and maintaining a virtual world for businesses is not practical or efficient compared to a basic website or Facebook page.
  • The metaverse is not an efficient medium for text delivery and most meaningful content in Eashoo Law are links to conventional websites, while official productions and virtual spaces often lack functionality and are plagued with technical issues.
  • Decentraland's games, such as Wondermine and Dragon Rush, are often botted and have real estate issues, but there are more mature and refined options like Knights of Antrom and Dice Masters, which recently won a grant for development and expansion.
  • Decentraland's MetaGamiMall, funded by a $220,000 grant from the Decentraland DAO, offers a gamified mall experience with a track to collect coins for wearables, but falls short in providing a worthwhile experience due to underlying flaws in the base layer.
  • The MetaGamiMall is a cluttered and ineffective shopping experience that failed to receive additional funding, while the Decentraland Report is a decentralized news network that allows the public to control event coverage and even fire reporters.
  • Be skeptical of media, as Kevin's radical populism advocates for a decentralized approach to news that is rooted in incompetence and conspiratorial thinking.
• 📉
  45:48

  Decentraland is struggling with low viewership, lack of journalistic substance, glitchy builds, and limited functionality, while Hershey Chocolates has created their own metaverse with limited activities and small plot size, and brands are only using the metaverse for temporary promotional campaigns.

  • The Decentraland Report raised a quarter million dollars but the reporters only receive around $10 a month from the Xpand pot and the organization itself doesn't provide any equipment or support, resulting in low viewership and a lack of journalistic substance.
  • Kevin spent a significant amount of money on building a Decentraland news network, including grants for a reward system and hiring staff, but the project has little utility and has faced rejection for further funding proposals.
  • Hershey Chocolates has created their own metaverse, Hersheyverse, which includes gamification, a treasure hunt, and an NFT wearable, but with limited activities and a small plot size.
  • Decentraland is a monumental failure as a platform for socialization, commerce, and gaming, with glitchy and weird builds and limited functionality.
  • Brands are not really moving to the metaverse, but rather using it as a temporary promotional campaign, and the experience often requires users to leave Decentraland to accomplish anything.
  • Decentraland's only successful location is The Stronghold, a casino offering poker, which has legal approval from Decentra Games' lawyers and attracts crowds of over 100 attendees.
• 🌐
  1:02:33

  Decentraland's micro-MMO model and user prioritization of legitimacy outweigh low user base and disconnected cryptocurrency market cap, but Metaverse events fail to deliver on innovation and journalists overlook technical issues.

  • Decentraland's low user base is irrelevant to its business model as it operates as a micro-MMO, similar to other long-standing MMOs, and its purported value based on its cryptocurrency market cap is disconnected from reality.
  • Decentraland users prioritize legitimacy through brand activations and events, despite the platform's current limitations and flaws, as they believe in the inevitability of the metaverse.
  • The Metaverse events, such as the Music Festival and Fashion Week, rely heavily on pre-recorded messages and fail to deliver on their promises of innovation and merging of digital and physical goods.
  • Metaverse Fashion Week failed to capture the magic of physical fashion shows, with the game-ified aesthetic of Decentraland taking away from the fantasy and craftsmanship of luxury fashion, resulting in little interest and deliberate efforts to downplay the embarrassing product.
  • Journalists covering the Metaverse Fashion Week and other aspects of the metaverse often rely on the narratives given to them by those trying to sell something, leading to a lack of critical reporting and a tendency to overlook technical issues and bugs.
  • Virtual reality allows for immersive experiences and social interactions, creating a more realistic and interactive online world.
• 🚫
  1:19:35

  Decentraland's governance system is flawed, with a wealth-based voting system and unaccountable whales, leading to bureaucratic paralysis and an ineffective grant scheme.

  • Decentraland is a speculative real estate scheme that relies on hype and deception, and despite claims of being a VR experience, it has never been one.
  • Decentraland's system of governance through the Decentraland DAO is flawed and lacks credibility, as evidenced by proposals to fire committee members for biased behavior and failed grant proposals due to personal conflicts.
  • Decentraland's DAO voting system is based on wealth, leading to those with the most money having the most power and shutting down proposals, with one wallet holding 99.7% of the voting power against a proposal to address the inequitable system.
  • The Decentraland DAO is plagued by unaccountable whales, bureaucratic paralysis, and a convoluted committee system with minimal discretion and no appeals process.
  • Decentraland is not truly owned by its users as the Foundation holds the copyright and the DAO is controlled by a small group of whales, while the Foundation acts autonomously and is not dependent on the DAO.
  • The Decentraland DAO lacks autonomy due to a lack of tools, inequality, incompetence, and a lack of authority, resulting in an ineffective grant scheme.
• 🎮
  1:38:03

  Decentraland is a virtual world with jumping puzzles, controlled by elites, and may lead to a social climate change.

  • Jumping puzzles are the only consistent ludic interaction in Decentraland, added as an afterthought after four years of development.
  • Argentinian developers Ari Meilich and Esteban Ordano were part of a communal workspace known as Casa Voltaire, which became a worldwide legend for its crazy hacker haven for cryptocurrency projects and deep philosophical conversations.
  • Decentraland was conceived as a virtual world based on open standards and blockchain technology, with the potential to test political and economic movements, but in reality, it is controlled by its own elites.
  • The exodus of people to virtual worlds will lead to a social climate change that will make global warming seem insignificant, but the real world may become like a museum.
  • Huizinga proposed the concept of the "magic circle" to describe how play space is delineated from the ordinary world, creating a psychological bubble where board pieces, dice rolls, and social interactions take on unique meanings distinct from reality.
  • Decentraland is a collective fairy tale, a farce and a tragedy, forever bound to being little more than a fantasy real estate scheme.
• 👏
  1:48:31

  Speaker unable to use something and expresses gratitude, followed by surprise at something unexpected happening.