Steem building next to Pepe and Vitalik's Statue

Hello Friends 

Around a month ago, I came across a project called Decentraland. It’s basically an ETH blockchain based project, where users can buy/sell lands, properties; build and govern districts, buildings, universities etc. The best thing is that this project supports virtual reality and if you don’t own VR headsets, then also you can access and participate in this project using your browser. In order to fully utilize the features of this virtual world, you would also need a browser addon like Metamask or you can use an ETH based browser like mist. Before I discuss how it can be super useful for the Steemit, I would first like to give more information about this project.  Right now, the project is still in the very early stages. Even the alpha version is yet to be released, probably after December. It’s ICO has been done a long time ago and now you can only get the native tokens of this world (known as MANA) on exchanges like Etherdelta, HitBTC, Binance etc.  

Demo: 

Ha, ring of the fidget spinners!!

You can explore the web demo of this world here. You can use arrow keys to move around, space key to jump and shift key for running. Right now, not much is there; expect some crazy buildings, flying elephants, UFO etc. You should prefer Mozilla Firefox to run this demo, as it is more suitable for 3D stuff. 

Terraform Event: 

The full world is not currently accessible as the lands have to be first claimed by the token holders by staking their tokens. For this a Terraform event is going on. This Terraform event started in October and will last till December. It will allow MANA holders to claim the fresh unclaimed lands by bidding their MANA tokens and locking them till this event gets over. In case you are not able to participate in this event, then you would only be able to purchase lands from the land market, which will come in to existence later. And of course you should expect the prices to be higher in that market than the initial bidding. I always wanted to buy cheap land and sell at higher rates. Can’t afford to do that in the real world, but hopefully I can do that here! Just today only, I staked my MANA tokens in Genesis city. Now these tokens are locked, and in December, I along with all stakers would be allowed to participate in the land auction process. Details on participating in this Terraform event can be found here.   

You can either stake your tokens to buy a piece of land in the main city, known as Genesis City or stake them in the community driven districts, which would be built around the Genesis city. These districts would be governed by people like you and me, but exactly how the governors would be chosen, is yet to be decided. Probably each specific district will have its own laws and maybe the normal democratic method will be the most used method to elect the governors. Or maybe, some districts could adopt the anarchism and manage their districts according to that. I would say a great opportunity and place for the anarchists to try their system, ideologies etc. before forcing them on the real world!  Actually, I just saw that someone has already purposed a district for anarchists here. 

Back to the topic, Genesis city will be located exactly in the center of this Decentraland world and the land here would be the most expensive. It is estimated to be at least 1000 MANA per piece of land here. Each land parcel would translate to around 10mX10m dimensions in real world, which is 100 square meters.  And the lands available in districts would be cheaper than genesis city lands as they would be around the genesis city and not everyone might be interested in becoming part of a district community. Pretty much like the land price differences between the capital city of a country and other cities. Sometimes these cities could have higher prices than the capital city, but mostly lower, i.e. depending on their success. 

A district proposed for a university

The limit on how this world will evolve is only limited by the imagination. Decentraland has a basic editor ready to create scenes, which can include buildings, trees, furniture etc. Don’t know if you could add animals or not, maybe later. You might not be able to add people in the scene too, as you would expect real people to roam this world, not assets. Again it is not confirmed if there would be human avatars for each participant, as this is not a game and more about buildings and stuff. But then you can of course add complex details to the buildings, surroundings etc. Add utilities to the buildings, like maybe ability to book real world air tickets, take various education courses etc.  

How Decentraland can help Steemit (or maybe Steem as a whole): 

A non-artist's (me) impression of how Steem building could look like!!!

I think Decentraland can give Steemit a whole new level of self promotion, visibility and acceptance in both the crypto and non-crypto worlds. Since Decentraland is a VR project that basically maps the real world on a virtual space, with real people and organizations, it will surely attract non crypto people towards it. Virtual headsets are becoming more and more popular and in reach. But the VR content is still less and kinda boring right now. New stuff is not added that much, expect VR porn I guess!! Between anybody seen a VR porn video? If yes, then do tell your experience in the comments section!

Ahmm, so I was saying about better visibility of Steemit. What I have in mind is that if Steemit could officially announce a district in this virtual world, then it would be just awesome. Nothing would be better than that. A district that is inhabited by the current and future Steemians, managed by the witnesses and Steem team taking responsibility of all the technical and behind the scenes stuff. But I know that this is much more difficult than said. The focus of team is on Steemit, and building and managing an entire district in a virtual world is a time, resource and attention consuming task.  So the other idea is to claim some (actually a lot more) land in the Genesis city or a popular district and build a good scene on it. 

Construct an attractive building where we can have things like: 

• Induction room for new steemians - New steemians often feel confused after joining steemit and especially get confused over Steem based currencies and so many other things, which all of us have gone through. A short induction video or maybe sometimes a live induction given by a steemian, a tour of the Steemit world etc. can be done in this world. Obviously a VR experience of learning about Steemit is much better and effective than reading FAQ or text chat or via question comments. 
•  Support desk - Almost similar functionality like new steemian induction, but available for all steemians and more issue specific. For example if a steemian is facing some issue on steemit or is not able to understand something related to Steemit, then they can visit support desk and either view pre-made help articles, videos etc. or just interact directly with steemians volunteering for support, like @firepower and so many more. 
• Hall of fame which features the top steemians by filters like reputation, post rewards, total trending articles, Steem Power etc. And of course also feature people like @papa-pepper, @officialfuzzy, @stellabelle, @surpassinggoogle and so many, many more steemians who really help Steemit and steemians via their honest and selfless efforts. 
• Steemian interaction hall, where steemians can just meet another steemians, talk, kick, tease, or maybe just take revenge of their recent downvotes! 
• Performance hall - Many steemians have extraordinary skills of art/design ( @aleister, @mynameisbrian, @kaylinart), dance ( @soldier, @sirwinchester), photography ( @timsaid, @knozaki2015), modeling ( @sweetsssj, @suerisue) etc. And they can probably display them live via either live stream videos or maybe their avatars, if the project allows. 
• Merchandise shop and member market - Merchandise shop being the official shop of steemit to sell merchandise like tees, mugs, toys, downvotes (oops that’s not a merchandise) etc. And a member market where steemians can sell their digital and physical goods and services, like art, translation services, extra Ledger Nano S, silver coins, piglets, broken HDD packed in shiny new bubble wrap, and maybe even a hot calendar by your favourite steemians like @sweetsssj (I once actually suggested her), @trafalgar. Oh you don’t want too many Asians hanging in your room, well then ask Bernie for a hot calendar!! 
•  Complaint box - Well many of us (including me) like to complaint a lot regarding Steemit, some steemians, downvotes, post quality, Ned’s hair and so many things. Complaining is actually a good thing, helps an individual to clear his mind, show his/her anger, even if sometimes on the expense of other people’s peace of mind. For a company/organization, well, it is a good way to improve if they take the complaints seriously. Like our Steem team does. CEO, devs and other team members hear our complaints, sleep for a while, wake up, upvote some articles in appreciation of Steemit and SMTs, sleep again, watch some NSFW content, sleep again and then after 4 months design a new logo, promote the logo, sleep again, then do some real changes like night mode, better speed and stability and well then keep doing it. Kudos to Steem team, they are finally awake!! So now you can stuff the complaint box with your complaints, without having to rant in your posts, comments, like I did above!! 
•  Office - This is mainly for potential business to business relationships for Steemit and other companies (celebrities, influential people) who would like to work with Steemit for mutual benefits. Maybe you can find Ned and Dan there too, hopefully discussing the future of SMT and EOS peacefully. 
• Some random rooms like cafeteria, bedrooms (in case you want to get cozy with that steemian, virtually) and exclusive rooms for communities like weed community, anarchists, country specific communities etc. where they can discuss their ideas without any hesitation and intervention. 
• I am out of the ideas, you tell me!   

Their editor is based on A-frame

These are just some raw ideas, which can obviously be modified, expanded, new ideas added etc. The aim is to build a VR presence of Steemit and also make things more exciting and useful for the steemians. I wish I could build some scenes and share with you, but well those things are not within my skills set. But, I am thinking about trying this Decentraland editor and maybe learn designing stuff and all in my free time. I know many of you are architects, asset designers, coders, animators etc. Maybe you guys and gals can do it by combining your efforts.  

What do you think? Is this idea of Steemit on VR cool and feasible? Would you like to contribute your efforts for it? And most importantly, if everything is done, would you actually participate in this project? Let me know in the comments section. All honest comments will get my full vote (just $0.03, LOL!!) and 100 POCKET coins. 

**I have used names of some steemians in my post. Hopefully the concerned steemians won’t mind it. Also there were some categories, where I mentioned only 2-3 names per category. This should not mean that there are not other talented people on Steemit or the once I mentioned are the best, its just that those are the names which came to my mind first. I am just not very good in remembering names.**   

Thanking You 

Siddartha Gupta  

Image Courtesy: All images have been taken from Decentraland website, it's blogs and some images have been created by me on Powerpoint and Pixlr web editor.

Page dividers and above art by @aleister

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