Podcast · Episode 2
Decentraland Revisited
Episode 2 of the LFG! podcast is here. This time, we chat with Decentraland's Kim Currier for a deep dive on the confusing past and exciting future of virtual worlds.
Episode Description
What happens when the metaverse hype fades? Decentraland's Kim Currier breaks down how her team pivoted from the 2021 bull run to building something far more valuable: genuine community.
We cover lots of ground in this podcast. The challenges of scaling in Web3, the need to put Web2 in the front end, and creating an experience that will keep users coming back for more.
This one is about crypto and in-game economies. It's also about fashion, art, people, and the need for connection, and we had a lot of fun talking about it.
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This transcript was produced with transcription software and lightly edited for readability. It may contain errors and might not be a word-for-word record of the conversation. If anything looks off, the audio and video are the definitive version.
Hello and welcome to the LFG podcast. I'm Ian Horne, and this week I'm taking you to the metaverse, or should that be virtual worlds? We'll dive into that pretty soon. This week's interviewee is the brilliant Kim Currier, Head of Partnerships and Marketing at Decentraland. Kim spoke to me for a recent article, we're going to talk about that, and we're also going to talk about what's been going on in Decentraland in light of the last few years, because the metaverse as a concept has gone through so many different changes and reconceptualisations lately. There's tons to go into. So Kim, firstly, thanks for joining. It's great to have you here.
Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited, this will be fun.
Absolutely. So I think we should tackle the obvious thing, which is the metaverse. Everyone always has these crazy expectations of it based on the whole 2021 hype. We talked about this previously, so much money was pumped into that, by Meta primarily, and, as we all saw, Decentraland's currency value went flying through the roof. We're not going to talk about that so much, but it's a thing that happened. And now we're about five years on from that, and the conversation has kind of changed, hasn't it? So could you talk us through what's gone on, and perhaps what's changed for Decentraland? I know five years is a long time, but how has it been evolving in the wake of all the craziness and excitement that went on?
Yeah, absolutely. When we go back to the concept of the metaverse, everyone immediately goes to *Ready Player One* in their brain, right? They're imagining they're putting their headset on, they're in a complete alternate reality of future-future tech. And that's what was being sold five years ago, "we're building this super-interoperable future of the internet," buzzword, buzzword, buzzword. Everyone's mind went to movie-land, to speculation, and to imagination of what's possible. And that's really cool from a tech perspective, to think about what's possible. But as we learned, expectation doesn't meet reality. So when people hear that word and then they experience where the tech was five years ago, that was an expectation-and-reality miss.
Yeah, that's really interesting. Maybe some extra context for listeners would be useful on Decentraland, because I very much opened with the framing of the metaverse. As we know, you've got a major organisation like Meta that stuck major resources into this and even then was being roundly mocked for having legless avatars and things like that. It's really tricky to do this. But Decentraland is more than just a metaverse platform, isn't it? It's something a bit different. So could you talk us through, especially the decentralisation aspect, what makes it somewhat different?
Yeah, I think that's a good point on the Meta comparison. Meta had Reality Labs, which was doing all of this, virtual reality, AR, VR, metaverse, everything. They were spending billions and billions of dollars, and they've recently scaled that back significantly: big layoffs, different funding, a big drop-down on that side. Whereas you compare it to someone like us, we're a nonprofit. We're built for the community. I'm part of the Decentraland Foundation, the nonprofit side. We're way fewer people, we're not hundreds or thousands of people, we're like 60 of us who are just really here because we wanted to build a public good.
Yeah, that's an interesting point. There are loads of places to meet people online now, aren't there? Decentraland gets comparisons with gaming sometimes; you could compare it with social media platforms; you could take inspiration from all sorts of different things. So what is it that elevates Decentraland, or gives it something different from what other places have? Or is it more the case that there's just a space for many different third spaces online?
I think the biggest difference is that we're not controlled by corporate-style algorithms. When I think of social media, it used to be where I posted for my family and friends and my circle to see what's up. But now I'm scrolling and I don't even know who any of these people are. Are they AI? Are they real? I don't even know what it is. And I'm not seeing my real friends or catching up with them. So we are not algorithm- or feed-based, it's all based on true presence. Anyone who jumps in, you're seeing the people who are in there with you. I think that's really cool compared to the world today, which feels super async. So how do we have that synchronous, real-time hangout? That's what makes us different from some of those others. And it's 3D in nature, versus a Discord or another chat room.
Yeah, it's interesting, because like you say, it's a version of someone, but it's still an avatar, which isn't a bad thing, it's a different way to interface with someone. I found it funny you mentioning your cool avatar on the platform. Mine's dead boring, mine is so dull. I gave him a silly, fun name, but my goodness, my lack of attention to fashion transported all the way from the real world into Decentraland. So I'm looking pretty plain.
What does your avatar look like? I need to fix you up. We'll get you some new wearables.
I need something. I need to elevate the game. And I've even been to a Metaverse Fashion Week, so I've got no excuse whatsoever. But anyway, there is something different about engaging with people via an avatar, isn't there, a certain different way that can be quite genuine. So I'd love to get your thoughts on that. What's on my mind, and I referenced this in the piece that I wrote, is a documentary I watched called *The Remarkable Life of Ibelin*. It was about a guy with some disabilities who ended up having a whole life online on World of Warcraft, and through his avatar there was able to make such an impact on so many people's lives. It was a fascinating thing. So I'd love to get your take on how avatar interactions can bring things to life and be really quite genuine.
Yeah. My community makes me tear up all the time with genuine stories of how either someone in the community has impacted their life, or the place has impacted their life. We do have people who may have a physical ailment or sickness. If you have an autoimmune disease, you can't be going clubbing all the time, that's a huge physical risk to your safety. But they love clubs, they love DJs, they love hanging out in that vibe of being together in music. So it's really nice to have a place to send them where they can still have that experience if, for some reason, in the physical world they can't. We have another person who is unable to walk in the physical world, but he loves that his avatar can jump and dance and do all of these things that are harder for him. So there are a lot of those heartwarming stories that come to life.
Yeah, and I think community is such a thing to drill into here, because that appears to be your strategic direction moving forward, right? To grow communities within the platform so that people keep coming back, and it gives you something different that you maybe don't have elsewhere. So could you talk me through that? I'm guessing there must have been a moment of realisation, when you were talking with other members of the team, that this was the area to double down on. How are you creating that community, and why should communities come to the platform?
Yeah, we actually just saw it happening organically. We saw certain segments of the users say, "I'm going to start a Discord for us to start chatting together about what we're doing in Decentraland." And then we were like, "Well, why do they have to go to Discord? We could just make that in the product, so that when they're talking about Decentraland, they can all walk together and go see the thing." So we started seeing that happen naturally, and then they started doing recurring events for their friends in that community. One of our community members, his name's Sinful, does a streaming podcast in Decentraland. Everyone who's part of that community gets an alert, "Hey, the podcast is about to start, it's Monday night", and you go and watch the podcast in the 3D space, which is really fun. Or there's one called Hola DCL, it's all our Decentraland community members who want to speak native Spanish together. They get in and start a voice chat and speak Spanish while they're trying to parkour or do an experience.
The real comparison here is Duolingo. That's who you're coming for.
Yeah, but it's more fun and interactive, with real humans, versus an app that's giving me a lesson. Although, Duolingo, tops, love you.
Less manipulation from a cartoon owl, I hear you. It's quite fun, isn't it?
We saw there are people who want to play games with each other, and they'll be like, "Hey, let's go in and play around and see who can get to the top." But not everyone's there for that competitive experience, so how do you group the people who want that together? There's a group that loves going on tours of Decentraland, there's one called ABC Tours, and they tour all the new builds that people made, talk to the creator, and check it out together. So that's what we've been leaning more heavily into, because I think a lot of people, with the internet, feel we're more connected than ever, which is technically true. However, if you look at the stats, and I've done a lot of research on loneliness and belonging, people have actually never been so depressed, so alone, so disconnected, so isolated, even though we're more connected than ever. So how can you enable people to have this regular recurrence with familiar faces that makes you feel that sense of belonging and community, and a part of something that maybe you can't have in the physical world, for whatever reason it may be? That's the part I want to contribute more to in society. I think society as a whole will be better if we have more people who feel like they're part of something, and that they have others to learn from and be in community with.
Yeah, I completely agree, from the social aspect, absolutely, but also from a commercial point. Web3 projects and crypto projects always talk about community now, and it seems to me the community is as important as the product you're selling or the protocol you're building. It's interesting to see you take that approach, and it makes a lot of sense to me. But if we wind this back to 2022, which is when you joined, I mentioned that the year prior was when the metaverse boom happened. That must have been a madhouse to come into, not to say anything of Decentraland but purely the situation. So how has your growth strategy evolved since then, and what was the thinking in 2022? You must have tried and tested a few things and learned some interesting lessons.
Yeah, it's interesting, because I actually learned about Web3 and crypto during that madness. I learned in 2021, that's how I came in, through the NFT craze. I was in all the PFP communities, none of which made money that I was in, of course, I picked the wrong animal every time. But it was a ton of fun and I learned a lot. All of my jobs in my career have been ones where, I like sports, and there's a sense of community around your favourite sports team, and around your hometown, all of that has always been woven through my career. That's how I ended up at Decentraland: I was in an NFT community, I was actually running one, and we made wearables for our community members to go to a party in Decentraland so they could identify each other. And I was like, "This is cool, to take your community out of the Discord and into something that feels similar to the physical world."
Yeah, totally, and I think you're absolutely right. That was one thing you mentioned previously that I absolutely loved, which was this slightly cultural thing. You told me last time we spoke: you can build anything in this platform, so why build a grey building? If you're going to have wearables, why have your avatar dressed like mine is dressed? It's kind of limitless, and I think that's really fun. The more people build and lean into that, the more fun we'll have. But something else you've touched on several times, which we should dwell on, is the decentralisation aspect. We've glanced at it but haven't really fully talked about it, and I think it probably helps to unpack it a little. Decentraland, as the name suggests, is a decentralised platform with its own decentralised economy, which creates all sorts of incentives for building. Could you talk me through that and explain how that economy works, and why that might eventually become a lucrative thing for creators?
Yeah, so technically speaking it's built as a protocol. The place, the world I'm enjoying, is part of the protocol. There's also the blockchain, and then we have a DAO. People can earn VP, voting power, to help decide protocol-level decisions. One of the decisions the community has decided is: if you want to sell wearables on the platform, what percentage goes back to Decentraland, the community, not the nonprofit side, and what percentage do creators keep? They all voted and decided how that works. It's 2.5% that goes to the community, which gives our creators the highest percentage of creator revenue on any platform that I'm aware of, 97.5% goes back to the creators. How much the fee is to publish is also decided by the community. It's done through a proposal, a poll, voting, voting power, all of that, which is really awesome.
Yeah, DAOs are fascinating. For those listening who are not necessarily Web3-native, a decentralised autonomous organisation, it's essentially a decentralised way of governing something. But the thing is, they're tough to discuss, aren't they? Because no two DAOs are the same. I was at an event last week in London, funnily enough, and there were lawyers talking about DAOs and how they've tried to legally classify them. I think the initial draft, when someone last attempted to do that, went over 500 pages, which doesn't surprise me, because it's very broad. You're ultimately trying to get your community to make governance decisions, and it's decentralised to a point, but you can centralise certain aspects of it. Things are put to votes, but not everything is put to a vote, and so on. It can be complicated. So, Kim, at a top level, because Decentraland has been doing this for a long time, have there been any particularly hard lessons learned from trying to run a DAO on this platform?
A million. Also 500 pages, yeah. I think what we had to learn was: what is votable, and by whom, with what experience? We started with "everything is votable by everyone at the same level." So it was one vote, one VP, and you could then stack, and you could have a hundred thousand VP over time; you could earn more and do different things. But say it's a marketing question and I'm an accountant. In the real world, I'm an accountant, why should my vote weigh more on a marketing decision that I may not have context on than someone else's? Or I'm a marketer and this is a treasury-allotment question, I have no experience with that, why should my vote be counted equally? So we started with "everything's equal, let's all vote, everyone weigh in, give your expertise, and then you decide."
Yeah, I'm not surprised. But as you say, people having multiple votes per person is obviously problematic, people can have outsized influence based on how much money they've got, or whatever stock they've accrued. And equal votes are fine until, I like the comment you made, people can vote for the wrong thing, because that's so true of every democracy going. Organisation structures, especially new and quirky ones, are really easy to mock, but it's tough, even traditional governance is difficult. Certainly an interesting point to dwell on. I guess the other thing you mentioned before, which I'm fascinated by, is building. Because, as you say, people initially bought and speculated and thought, "Okay, I'll buy some land." I think it was over $2 million that one piece of land sold for at one point, I might be slightly off there.
Yeah, I don't remember the hype, it was before my time.
Either way, I wouldn't want to be that person. It was over a million dollars, I know that much. The idea was they were hoping loads of people would buy the plots around it and build on it, and then it would become this huge online hub of commerce, and they'd probably sell it for a load of money, which they haven't, or didn't. The interesting thing to me is this idea of people buying into it but almost seeming to be unaware that, unless they actually build something on their own land, that area isn't really that valuable. So how have you handled that? That wave has come and largely gone, but, firstly, do you think people are now more aware that they actually have to build? And secondly, what do you do with those plots of land that people paid for but didn't do anything with? Do they get repossessed? Do people get bought out? What goes on?
Yeah, it's an interesting concept, but what you said was so true. People bought with the idea that others were going to build and make their land more valuable, and in that statement, they were never going to do the work. That's where the problem became: everyone bought and expected everyone else to do the work for them. Now, many people, not none; we have an amazing community of builders who bought at that time and are still building, which is incredible, but there were a lot who came in and just sat on their hands and did nothing, and expected everyone else to do the work and them to profit. Luckily that's no longer the narrative, and it's not the behaviour we see today, which is awesome. But it was 100% the behaviour that people had in 2021, and that's due to hype and expectation-setting. What was happening in the cycles, all you saw in headlines was price-related, hype-related: Meta doing this versus Sandbox doing this versus Decentraland doing this. It was just a price game of who could do what faster. And people were asking, "Why? What are we going to do here? What am I going to do to contribute?" And if you're a decentralised world, "what am I going to do" is even more important than "what are others going to do for me," because you have to have a hand in the building.
Yeah, and you have made it easier to build as well, haven't you?
Totally, yeah, there are templates you can use. We actually just did, it was really fun, the DAO side organised this. They now have an operating co that can use the funds for a variety of set criteria, and they did an AI hackathon. Everyone had to build something into Decentraland using AI only, not hand-coding. That was super cool to see what was possible, because all of that was not possible even a year ago, I would say, forget two and three years ago, when people were building without that skill set.
Yeah, absolutely. And I guess, should we go on to the article now? I've written about the platform, I've played around in it, I actually spent untold hours over my Christmas break playing in Decentraland and getting to grips with it. It had been years since I'd gone in. In the piece I wrote, we talked about many of the things we've talked about now, and I think it's largely positive, but I definitely did that classic thing of tearing it down before building it up. I'd love to know your thoughts on that. I don't write things unless I think they're accurate, so I stand by it, but I'd love to know if there's anything I said there that you'd like to push back against.
No, I mean, it's always good feedback to hear how people experience it for the first time. What I was saying in general is just that there are really cool things happening, and you experienced the problem we're solving today, which is: how does someone find the cool things, versus explore the empty portions that are from old legacy problems? That's what I'm most excited about, giving those clear pathways for anyone new to jump in and be like, "This is the main centre, come hang out here." There are people welcoming you, they'll point you in the right direction. What types of stuff are you interested in? Do you like art? Come to the Art Week Plaza. Do you like music? Friday night's a blast, come hang with me Friday night. The one thing for us is we're really trying not to be algorithmic and tech-forward in that way, and instead be human-forward, just making sure all the humans hanging out in the world, which is a lot of fun, can find each other easily. That's been the recent challenge. A lot has actually changed since you were in, in December, the team's been shipping really fast, so it's a lot easier even since then. But that's been the challenge: making sure people find their people and their cool thing quickly, versus expecting you to explore it.
Yeah, totally. But there's something very interesting there, which is that, as you say, there's a lot more going on around organised events from the Decentraland Foundation. There's also Genesis Plaza, which you rightly mentioned is probably the liveliest part of the map for meeting new people and dipping your toes in and getting started. Is there, and I'm not being facetious, something slightly ironic about that being the most centralised part? Or is that more just a hard-earned lesson in trying to grow a decentralised platform? Is it the case that you have to start with some centralised action and then let go of the reins as it grows?
Yeah, what's interesting is that the popular events are actually not run by the Foundation, they're run by the community. We just help surface them. So in the plaza, we have a kind of, your local coffee shop has a pushpin board of what's happening this week. We made it easier, in the plaza, to see what's happening this week, but it's community events that are surfaced; it's not all stuff created by us. We do host a few. We have a Watch Party Wednesday in our theatre, and a Play With Friends Friday, where you play different games. Those are meant to be starter experiences, to then ease you in to go find all the awesome UGC stuff from the community.
Yeah, and I did, on your invite, attend the Watch Party Wednesday. I came along to one and watched an interesting film about AI, which is right in the nerd sweet spot for me, about the evolution of AI. It was a great documentary, actually, and I'm a documentary nerd as well, not just a fintech and finance guy. So right in the sweet spot. Having been there, it was nice. I stayed out of the conversation, I'll admit, I was a bit antisocial, but there was conversation going on, people were commenting on the film, and I thought that was quite good. The other thing is, I still think the platform is smaller than people would expect it to be. There were maybe 30 people there, but it was a nice experience and a cool thing. I see what you're trying to build. We talked before about trying to make it go mainstream, how do you think you can guide Decentraland to the point where you go to one of these events and there are hundreds of people there, maybe more?
Yeah, it totally depends what time of day, what time zone you're in, what type of event it is. I like to think of it as, depending on the scene, you go to your bar on a Monday at 1pm, there are probably not that many people at your bar. But if you go to your bar Friday night at nine, I bet it's poppin'. So it depends which scene you're jumping into. There was a card tournament on Saturday that was pretty popular; our Friday nights are always a good time. So it definitely depends on the experience you find yourself in, and the ebbs and flows of traffic. But sorry, the second part of your question, I lost track.
It was about growing it to the point where you've got thousands of people there, which has happened before, to be fair. Metaverse Fashion Week, of course, has had big crowds; the music festival has had big crowds. So it has happened, but how do you get to the point where that's a more regular occurrence, so that your Monday, Wednesday, Friday gatherings are getting big numbers?
So for that, this has been a long time coming, but we've put a lot of the crypto stuff under the hood, because that deterred a lot of people in the beginning. Your audience, I know, is fintech-aware, so they're aware of crypto, they know the possibilities. But the mass media, all they see is negative press, they associate it in negative ways. And that's just not who we are, that version of crypto. We're the decentralised, "you can do anything, own your own stuff" side of crypto. It's hard to differentiate that from the outset. So what we did is, it's all under the hood. You don't need a wallet to sign up anymore, you used to. Now you can sign up with a one-time password, your email, your X account, your Discord account, whatever you want, whatever you're normally used to. Just log in, no problem. A wallet's created on the back end, but we don't even talk about it as your wallet. That will allow us to get into different audiences than we've been able to in the past.
Yeah, and that makes a lot of sense, because the way I'd perceive it is that the economy you've got and the cryptocurrency you have support the actual virtual reality, they support the environment, the communities, and all the rest, rather than the other way around. So I can see how you've come to that position.
Yeah, and within the world, you don't need crypto to participate. You can use your credit card in the store, the marketplace, we call it, you can use your credit card, or, like I said, use email. It's no longer a barrier to entry, but it absolutely was prior to 2020. We added it in 2024.
And one last thing on events. I mentioned the Fashion Week and the Music Festival, and you had an art festival as well, right? In the past there have been major names attached to these things, all the major brands came out for the Fashion Week, some headlining musicians came out for the music festivals in years gone by, some really big names. But my understanding is that you've switched the approach to focus more on streamers and people on YouTube, people who have a different audience. Can you talk us through that? Because, again, this is something I talked about in the article: from the outside looking in, you'd think the popularity's gone and the interest diminished. But I do think there's a different story that runs counter to that, which would be good to get from you.
Yeah, and around interest, it's really funny, just because you don't see the headlines, people think things aren't happening, but that's not necessarily true. In 2025, we had almost 4 million, 3.9 million, unique new people come to our website. So there's interest in learning more and understanding there are problems being solved. But because there's not a headline around, like, Adidas coming to Decentraland, which did happen, and it was awesome, I still have the wearable, it's beautiful, what we've learned is that for that type of situation, people came for the collector speculation again, versus the full experience. So Adidas wasn't bringing all of their fans in necessarily; it was our core community, or some speculators being like, "I'm going to go get the Adidas thing." What I'd rather focus on is people who are like, "These are my fans, they're all going to come to this experience, and I'm going to get new fans from it." That's been working well, and a lot of fun. An example is, we did Music Fest this year and we doubled down on smaller, community-focused artists, and we had so much fun with it. We had this guy, Office Drummer, who's a famous YouTube drummer. We had Vloo, who's a hardstyle DJ streamer, her community is called the Darksiders, and all the Darksiders came in, they were standing at her concert, they wore all black. It was a fun community moment for them. I think that's more authentic to who we are than a one-and-done big name.
Yeah, I think that's important, because money did come in through those brands, but not to the Foundation, which, as you say, is a nonprofit. And it's all well and good, even if you had spent that money and it had been a big outlay for Decentraland, if those fans of different musicians or artists are visiting the platform thinking "that's novel" but never coming around again, not sticking around, then it's just a waste of money. Again, that's not how it played out, but it would have been a dud had it taken that route. So it's really interesting to see you shift it towards the community, and perhaps have people who are building great things within the platform achieving the kind of prominence and recognition they deserve, rather than it being given to someone who's just shipped in for an hour and then disappeared.
Yeah, what's been really fun is there's a DJ, DJ Henny, Henny Wubbs, she goes by DJ Henny now, on Twitch. She was a DCL OG DJ a few years ago and had a good group of followers from Decentraland. She's an amazing DJ, a ton of fun, and now we're seeing her get really great growth on Twitch as a Twitch DJ. How cool is it to have someone who was a community member, who got their start doing some stuff on a different scale, come in and go to different platforms, see how that works, and then bring people into Decentraland who maybe hadn't streamed in Decentraland before? They take that skill set, because streaming in Decentraland and streaming on Twitch, there are some similarities in the skill sets, and they get it. They get the community interaction, they get the idea of showing up over and over, because that's what they want their stream audience to do. They get the idea of authentic connection and surprise-and-delight, and all of these things that matter for good community-building, versus someone doing it for a big paycheck, or, at the time, some people were doing it because it checked their innovation box.
Got you. And let's finish with a glance to the future, because there's obviously so much road ahead and so many things you're trying to build. I'd love to get it from your stance as someone who's building partnerships, which kinds of organisations and people are you looking to partner with moving forward, and how will that help the platform to evolve?
Yeah, I'm really excited about small creators. Again, that idea of creativity, giving someone their shot. I really love, we partner with a group called SheFi, which is actually super relevant to your audience. I don't know how I didn't bring it up before, but SheFi is financial literacy and crypto for women. We partnered with them in the past and we'll continue to do so, they're an amazing partner. We host their graduation parties in Decentraland all the time. They spend, I think it's eight weeks, on their crypto learning education, and then they come together to celebrate that amazing time. So those are the right types of partnerships for us, where they're a community that's learning something together, or doing something together around shared values. And then, how do you give them a place to have these special moments together that feel immersive, when you can't do it physically?
Absolutely. And there's one thing I've neglected to mention as well, which is the whole definition of "metaverse," because it started as a very attractive branding term and very quickly became something people weren't so keen to be associated with. I know your shift, and this makes sense to me as well, is to refer to Decentraland as a virtual world, or at least a series of virtual worlds. Can you talk us through that shift in mindset? I think that's quite an important thing to mention.
It's funny, everyone had a different definition of metaverse. I use the definition from, oh my gosh, I'm going to totally blank on the book name, but I have it on my nightstand.
It's a Matthew Ball book, right?
Yes. So it's the one where they're like, there is one metaverse, and there are different experiences within the metaverse, and the metaverse is an interconnected thing, kind of like the internet, the internet is the metaverse. But people would describe each project as an individual metaverse, and I don't think that's necessarily true to the original definition and thought, either. So we describe ourselves as an online hangout place. We describe ourselves as a virtual world. We describe ourselves as digital experiences. All of those feel more true, and set the proper expectation, versus "we are a metaverse," which is what a lot of people naturally called us, versus what we associate with.
Yeah, and I think expectation is everything here. If you're trying to build a virtual world, or anything that's branded a metaverse, it's borderline impossible to do that without being judged unfavourably based on this dream that was sold to everyone five years ago. So I guess what I'd ask as a final question is, firstly, actually, let me think about this just for a second, because I've managed to knock my light over, which is very clever of me. There we go. That's getting cut out. But you make a really good point there. So, firstly: when people are looking at a metaverse, or a virtual world, what should they expect when they come to Decentraland, so that their expectations are aligned with what it actually is? And then, why should they come, and why should they join in?
Yeah. So when you join Decentraland, what you can expect is, first and foremost, the most welcoming people ever. I like to say it's the most welcoming place on the internet. You jump in, you download an app, you create an avatar. You can make it as simple as Ian's, or as crazy as some of the ones in the community. But what's cool is that when you create your avatar, over time, those will be creations made by the community, so it's part of your identity, but you're also feeding into other creators, which just makes you feel good. And then you'll land in Genesis Plaza, which is like the city centre. You can hang out by the fire pit, you can see what's happening on the event calendars, and the expectation would be that your avatar is exploring a world based on your interests, and you can have the community help you find others who have similar interests to you, and experiences you want to have.
Amazing. That's a great way to finish, and I couldn't agree more. People shouldn't make their avatar like mine, it wasn't very fun, don't do that. If you're going to get involved in this platform, show some creativity.
Yeah, come find me in-world. My name is Kimbo, I will drop you some very cool gifts.
Amazing. Look, Kim, so fun to chat with you. Thanks again for another eye-opener on Decentraland. Perhaps we'll chat again at some point, but thanks for joining LFG, it's been great to have you here.
Thank you so much, it was great chatting with you.
Brilliant, thank you. And for everyone listening in, thank you for tuning in. I'll be back again soon.