Decentraland, Blockchain-Based, Open Standards Virtual World, Attracts 15,000+ Unique Users in First 5 Weeks of Closed Beta Launch

Since last month's closed beta launch of Decentraland 5 weeks ago (the open standards virtual world which raised USD $25 million in Ethereum sales of virtual land to fund its development) user growth has been pretty impressive. Specifically, as project lead Ari Meilich tells me, about 15,000 unique users.

And that's without opening up the floodgates yet: "We haven’t started letting people en masse yet", as Ari puts it. "We’re finalizing solving some log-in and infrastructure issues. We started on-boarding 50 per week in late Q2 and we just increased to 75 new invited per week."

With 15,000 users and an average in-world concurrency just under 100 (Ari tells me), Decentraland is already one of the larger next gen virtual worlds out there -- already ahead of Sansar, which typically has about 50-75 concurrent users, and Rec Room, which usually has concurrency numbers in the low three figures. 

The teaser video above shows some of what users are doing there, in all its blocky, cartoony charm, which reminds me a bit of Second Life's graphics when it launched in 2003. (Not a slam: I miss SL's simple, non-Uncanny Valley graphics.) 

And more updates are coming soon:

"This post covers a few interesting projects of late. There’s the game jam coming up -- unlike last one, we’re actively marketing it so we expect a much higher turnout (last one was private with ~150 community members). So a lot more cool interactive content should come from here. And the next big milestone is releasing smart items in the Builder, which opens the door for end users to build interactive content, considering lessons from the game jam on what works best."

 

Much more on the site and the official Discord server.

Comments

[Rio]

Great post! Decentraland is making good progress. Looking forward to the Game Jam.