Centralization, Transportation, and Scaling

[Duprix]

Tier 2 Proposal
Name: Centralization, Transportation, and Scaling

Purpose: This is a political proposal to help identify and create a system to solve any potential exploits to DCL which could undermine DCL's core principle, decentralization.

Description:

Part 1: The Centralization of Decentraland

First we need to look into what centralization of power is and some real life examples of it. By definition centralization is "the concentration of control of an activity or organization under a single authority." Using this definition we can say that one single plot of land itself is centralized by its "single authority" the land owner. Today in the real world Nation-States are sovereign over almost the entirety of earth. In DCL the world is infinite but some parts of this infinite world are more important than others. This creates incentive to own land at important parts of the world.

For the purpose of this example we will say that at the creation of DCL there was 1 starting plot or "seed" as I will call it from now on. We will also take into consideration that all users spawn at the seed and transportation between two points is not instantaneous. In this system the land value near the seed would be very high, users who own land around the seed could sell it for more than the cost of claiming a plot of land. Now an uber-rich company decides that it would be beneficial for them to buy as much land as they can from the seed to rent at high prices and to advertise their product. This now means that the company has now centralized power to the most important part of DCL.

In this scenario there are 2 main variables to take into account, there is 1 seed which adjacent land can be created upon, and that transportation is not instantaneous. Right now we will focus on adding more seeds to DCL. In the original scenario the first seed is the only point of interest. To change this we will add one more seed, this would mean that there would be more points of interest. We could compare this scenario to the real world as in saying that there would be two Nation-States ruling over the world. Also in this scenario the user could spawn his or her avatar in either location. This would create competition for Joe and would allow the user to choose whichever seed they thought best. In this scenario we still have the problem of DCL still being centralized, even if power is split between two parties. We could create infinite seeds in order to make centralization impossible but this makes the land fungible and non-adjacent. In order to solve this problem we will have to get to part 2.

Part 2: Transportation of Decentraland

Many of you have probably read the book "Ready Player One" by Ernest Cline. If you haven't the book takes place in the "Oasis" a virtual world with many different planets, comparable to our seeds, where you can teleport between different locations in exchange for currency. We will be using this model for our inter-seed transport. There will be a teleportation beacon at every seed which you would need to burn MANA to use. You can only teleport to beacons at adjacent seeds to prevent cheap and fast long distance travel. As well in this scenario we will eliminate the ability to spawn at whichever seed you want so that everyone will spawn at the original seed.

In this scenario the land value near the starting seed would still be high but there are many points of interest to solve the problem of centralization. In the real world we could compare this to the seeds being airports where land value is much higher for convenience.

Now we have to solve the problem of transportation inside the seeds themselves. Here instead of using infrastructure hardwired into the code of DCL itself we will leave this up to the free market. In the real world this may seem like a pipe dream as most Nation-States use transportation funded by taxation but it does have precedent. In North Oaks, Minnesota all the roads are privatized. This means that the city, a centralized authority, does not own the roads. All roads in this city are owned by the residents themselves. In this scenario we have a person that buys a long line of land to create a road through so that he can rent out land to users that will be easily accessible to the general public. His incentive to do so is the revenue he will earn from tickets to use his subway and the money he will earn from those who he rents out land to.

Part 3: Scaling of Decentraland

For review, so far we have a system of seeds that LAND can be built on and can be used for transportation, and we have worked out the logistics of transportation near a seed. Now we must tackle the issue of how many seeds we should have. In an infinite world with infinite seeds DCL looses the appeal of it being non-fungible. In this system we will shorten the size of DCL to fit the playerbase, one that can expand based on the amount of plots claimed by the users. From here we have options such as, adding spawn points in different parts of the world or having differing environments and properties based on your geographical location.
Summary

Laws of DCL are written into the code of the metaverse as the laws of physics are written into our universe. This system is better designed to prevent centralization while still preserving the non-fungibility of LAND. We created a system of seeds that land can be expanded on and users can teleport between in exchange for MANA, we worked out the logistics of transportation inside and between seeds, and we created an expansion system that keeps land non-fungible, fosters various cultures with different geographical locations, and encourages travel for a user to enjoy different experiences.

I am fairly new to both writing and DCL so if I got anything wrong with how DCL works please notify me and I will fix it in this post, this is just my take on the system as it is now and how it can be improved.

Edit: Removed most of the Summary
Edit: Shortened Part 3 significantly as most of the numbers provided had no real basis
Edit: It is important to note that the only real change here is part 1 where we add seeds to prevent monopolies, parts 2 and 3 are almost like bug fixes to solve any logistical problems that arise from part 1

• Duprix