Walmart Land vs. Decentraland: Must All Metaverse Be Decentralized?

摘要： Let’s visit two metaverses, Walmart Land and Decentraland, as I attempt to answer a questi...

Let’s visit two metaverses, Walmart Land and Decentraland, as I attempt to answer a question: must all metaverses be decentralized? In doing so, I will unpack the agendas behind each metaverse and weigh the costs and benefits of building a metaverse through a DAO.

At the Christmas dinner, my work sparked a lot of discussion (or rather, interrogation). “Web3 empowers the people,” I said, somewhat of a cliché. “It’s decentralized. Imagine if everyone could vote on how their social media operates, rather than Mark Zuckerberg making decisions about Facebook.” This example worked well for me, but some of them were in their 80s and hadn’t a clue about the world of web3. I did my best. My point was clear: web3 aims to achieve total democratization.

Right?

Later, my grandparents had me explain a crash course on one of the hottest topics in web3: the metaverse. I instinctively recoiled, getting a kick under the table from my mom. As I explained the metaverse to my confused elders (who probably didn’t care), I suddenly found myself living in the clichés of web3 Twitter. Between bites of stuffing and bread, I had them think back to “The Office where Dwight uses Second Life” and my childhood memories of playing Club Penguin  or even just the look of a VR headset, “I swear, the metaverse has been around for a long time.” They reluctantly nodded as I detailed one of the harder-to-understand parts of web3.

The metaverse—part of the immersive virtual worlds within the new internet—offers a (typically) decentralized network of virtual spaces where users can interact, transact, and create content. It often involves a web3-esque core of digital ownership, through gaming, social, and online marketplaces. It is not hard to find real-world applications that my grandparents might be able to understand, and with a long history of pseudo-metaverses like “Second Life” and “Club Penguin,” true metaverses have recently gone mainstream. In late September, Walmart launched a pair of “immersive experiences” projects on Roblox – Walmart Land and Walmart Universe of Play.

So, are the suits at Walmart just creating a hot mess with a metaverse label slapped on it on Roblox, or will this centralized metaverse experience become the standard of the future?

That night, my 8-year-old cousin was also boasting to me about his Roblox experiences that seemed to have changed his life, in detail beyond my expectations of his vocabulary.

I digress.

I love Walmart, their parking lots have been my home away from home on many a road trip. And with the new year just starting, nobody is really back into work mode, so I had some time to let my mind wander.

So, based on my experience in Walmart’s metaverse and a quick dip into the decentralized metaverse, Decentraland, let’s examine the question: must all metaverses be decentralized?

Stepping Into Walmart’s Metaverse

I downloaded Roblox with some excitement. But just like the New Year’s Eve party I attended, I was naively expecting Walmart Land to be jam-packed. Instead, I found a dystopian sight and sound of only three players—and one of them even stole my outfit, for goodness sake!

This wasn’t a good start. And the stuff looks a bit like knockoff Legos, priced like my weekend in Zurich. I had a little trouble finding the loot box, so I couldn’t collect coins to ride the blimp or go into the shop for a new outfit. The user experience was, to say the least, significantly flawed. So, I was ready to ask for help in the chat room, but I was worried their age might impede them from providing any meaningful guidance. My concerns were confirmed: the “employees” were non-existent.

My 2018 MacBook Air was fanning hard through the entire game, and I had no idea how to get off this Ferris wheel. The Walmart Land page on the Roblox games store was rife with negative reviews. User feedback did not seem to be a priority in Walmart’s attempt to “lead cultural conversations of relevance,” a direct quote from Walmart CMO, William White.

Eventually, I got off the Ferris wheel (by restarting the game), collected some coins, and went to the shop.

And here’s a fit pic. (Remember to look at your own Roblox gear before you judge—it’s all I could afford.)

The Truth About Walmart’s Metaverse

Walmart Land is a bit like Second Life—it’s marketing aimed at children.

It’s been reported that Walmart Land allows users to connect with the brand in a new and interactive way. In reality, it’s a way to sell toys to children or what Walmart defines as “young shoppers.” Roblox has over 50 million daily active users, ⅔ of whom are under 16.

Perhaps this assessment is a bit on the surface level, but we’ve seen this before.

It makes sense that Walmart wants to join the metaverse hype—it’s a money-making tool. Second Life was one of the earliest widely popular metaverse experiences, boasting a user peak of over 1 million users. Twenty years after its launch in 2003, Second Life’s GDP (over $500 million annually) is higher than that of some countries.

And another metaverse game—Fortnite—with a much better user interface, is free, but it does something similar to Walmart Land—selling stuff to children and generating \(20 billion. It took me ages to earn enough coins for clothes in Walmart Land, while I can do that on Fortnite in 30 seconds with \)20 on my mom’s credit card. There are also emotes and props to buy to help me succeed in the game. And oddly enough, the shopping experience seems less cumbersome on Fortnite. Why?

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations and the Metaverse

DAOs can help solve problems that exist with centralized organizations, especially in metaverses that are defined as “decentralized.” DAOs can use various on-chain tools to govern and manage virtual assets in the metaverse and can be used to fund and manage virtual reality projects in the metaverse, like developing new virtual worlds or creating virtual goods and services. And they are indeed doing so. Let’s look at the most widely acknowledged example of a decentralized metaverse in web3: Decentraland.

Decentraland, dubbed “the virtual world in your hands,” is a virtual world built on Ethereum, using its native token \(MANA for voting governance, which can be earned through gameplay. \)MANA holders, who are largely Decentraland players, or at least buyers into the space, have complete control over the entire metaverse.

You can use $MANA through the DAO to control strategies that determine how the virtual world behaves. What can you actually control?

• The types of wearables that can be built, allowed, and banned
• The specifics and dates of LAND auctions
• The scale of the market fees (in terms of $MANA burned)
• Allocation of $MANA grants for development work
• The members of the Safety Committee, Decentraland’s governing team
• Adding and replacing community-run content servers
• General protocol upgrades

I’m Ready to Enter the (Decentralized) Metaverse

I quickly made a new character, and its body parts weren’t made of blocks. That’s a huge improvement compared to Walmart. And what’s interesting is that each of these clothing and item options was voted on through the DAO. The millennial aesthetic is very strong here, which I think is mainly due to the player base.

Whether it’s to avoid a category of accessories being blocked by items, we need to split “hands” into a new category, or the delegation mechanism of MANA holders, everything is up for discussion on the Decentraland Governance Forum.

The biggest perk: better user interface and user experience. It’s pretty cool to see players be able to decide on the minutiae of their game. It brings back fond memories of my childhood, before age 10, where players voted on which color penguin should be available for Club Penguin.

On the other hand, it seems that the decentralization of the metaverse has a huge flaw in micro-managing. The “hands” proposal mentioned earlier was very easy to implement, theoretically Walmart Land developers could solve it in minutes. But in Decentraland, this proposal is 800 words and has “been under discussion for nearly a year” (their words, not mine). It’s concerning that it took a year to separate a category.

There is a common refrain among critics of DAOs that their decision-making is slow (or nonexistent). Despite this, metaverse tokens are the top performers in the crypto market year-to-date in 2023, with \(MANA up nearly 38% in the last few weeks. Other metaverse tokens have also risen since the start of the year, with The Sandbox’s \)SAND up 31.3%, Gala Games’ $GALA doubling in price, and more.

Walmart Land vs. Decentraland

The metaverse’s values align with web3’s values, as I explained to my extended family at the dinner table: users should control and own the content they create.

Walmart Land does not truly embody the essence of the metaverse: the decentralization of the internet. Walmart Land operates in a totalitarian manner, obviously communicating another message throughout the entire game: “Please buy our toys, children.” It’s clear that these corporations are seeing web3 as an opportunity to exploit a younger, more purchasing generation, but the digitally native generation will see through this. The MBA types still don’t understand the true power of a DAO, not just in terms of technology, but in the cultural aspects that are harder to teach.

That’s why DAOs-run metaverses lack the culture of corporate exploitation.

DAOs allow users to design, to some extent, the metaverse of their choosing. Metaverses run by DAOs are designed and served by metaverse users. This system seems like a perfect setup: in the metaverse where a person spends the most time, they also contribute the most to its development, although this decentralization comes with some complications. The debate on adding the “hands” category to Decentraland might seem tedious, but it certainly highlights the difference from Walmart Land, especially in terms of the atmosphere. Walmart Land will only repeatedly direct users to buy whatever the Walmart elite deems should be included.

DAOs and the metaverse have the potential to revolutionize how we interact and transact in the digital world, offering increased transparency, security, and decentralization. The combination of these technologies can create new opportunities for innovation and growth in the digital economy. It’s easy to see the huge advantage of DAOs-run metaverses over those created by centralized entities who “only care about maximizing shareholder value and not user voices,” as seen in the comparison between Decentraland and Walmart Land.

The best user experience comes from decentralized metaverses & activating its community voices.

So, when will Walmart decentralize?