What is a blockchain without decentralisation? Effectively, it’s just a database. Blockchains that are decentralised in name only don’t bring real benefit or innovation, they just enable the completion of activities (data transfer and storage) in a more coherent way while hijacking a global movement.
Legitimately decentralised systems rely on a community of “contributors” and operate in a trustless fashion. Rather than a central authority, the control system is distributed among those many contributors, ensuring it can continue into the future while its contributors can turn over.
Discussions about the decentralised credentials of blockchains rear up often. In 2021, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey caused headlines by stating his belief that venture capital firms and their investors effectively controlled most blockchains, arguing “You don’t own ‘web3’… It’s ultimately a centralised entity with a different label.”
Others contend that the small concentration of nodes controlling a substantial percentage of Bitcoin’s hash rate means the network, despite its lofty decentralised aspirations and genius design, actually suffers from an alarming level of centralisation.
Whatever your view on the decentralised merits of various blockchains, the fact is this: decentralisation is core to the ideological appeal of blockchain, just as the 21 million hard cap is core to bitcoin. If decentralisation as a concept wasn’t invariably wedded to blockchains, few would even be discussing distributed ledgers and how they could introduce efficiencies to cross-border payments, healthcare, supply chains, government and all the rest.
To amend James Carville’s famous quote, It’s the decentralisation, stupid.
The Pursuit of Full Decentralisation
As a DAO-driven metaverse gaming project, Alien Worlds respects the fact that decentralisation is the god particle of blockchain – the thing that gives blockchain “mass” or value. In its purest form, decentralisation describes the inability for individuals to institute change without collective agreement. Admittedly, this isn’t helpful when building a user-owned metaverse that constantly changes and evolves with its community. So to us, decentralisation is a spectrum.
While Alien Worlds has always been decentralised, we are moving it further along that spectrum, progressing towards total decentralisation and community control. Many important strides have been made in this area since the launch of the Planetary Syndicate DAOs.
While Dacoco GmbH remains the longest-serving and primary contributor to Alien Worlds, player-governed DAOs or “Planetary Syndicates” have grown steadily more powerful over the last 12 months, ruling their planets according to weekly community elections and managing treasuries of Trilium tokens.
Syndicates, and some Galactic Hubs Grant Program participants, have helped to encourage and support the creation of community-driven content and proposals including concept art, stories, initiatives, events and games. Communities affiliated with the various planets maintain a strong presence across various communication channels including Twitter, Telegram, Discord and YouTube, acting as islands with their own cultures and credos. Collectively, these active player communities constitute nearly 16,000 of Alien Worlds’ most engaged Explorers.
The Planetary Syndicates aren’t the only showcase of growing decentralisation in the Alien Worlds ecosystem. Communities like Mission Control (formerly known as the Miners Union), the InterPlanetary Federation and CryptomonKeys speak to the empowerment players feel to come together, build, play, collaborate and thrive. Almost 50% of all Alien Worlds communities have released their own NFT collections, three have their own community-focused websites, and there are now over a dozen community-created tools and products available online for Alien Worlds players. Moreover, games like NFT Panda, Galactic Standoff and Acryptia X have integrated specific Alien Worlds NFTs into their gameplay.
Of course, some will argue that the best indicator of a project’s (de)centralisation status is the number of smart contract actions which are not controlled by a single authority. In this regard, Dacoco does not wield undue authority as things stand, managing just 67 or 322 total smart contract actions.
DEC is a core decentralisation metric that measures who manages permissions for smart contract actions and is expressed by non-Dacoco owned permissions. Currently, the DEC ratio stands at 7.69% – though Dacoco ultimately aims to increase this ratio to 53.79%. More community-managed actions will result in greater decentralisation.
Naturally, ongoing decentralisation of Alien Worlds smart contracts depends on a sufficient level of community engagement. Providing such engagement continues, there are many opportunities to hand more power directly to players by, for example, creating DAOs for specific users and purposes: landowners, TLM holders, game builders, NFT enthusiasts, etc. There could be a Syndicate dedicated to providing miners with resources, tools and strategies to improve their mining efficiency, another offering members the chance to contribute to product development or support content creators.
An LLM, But Not as You Know It
Another exciting action that will be decentralised relates to Alien Worlds lore. There is no reason why players, Syndicates and potentially new DAOs should not be able to have a say in the mythology of the metaverse. One implementation introduced recently will be an LLM trained on our lore which we’ve labelled a Large Lore Model, a repository that effectively serves as a vessel for canon.
A dedicated lore DAO has the responsibility of determining which characters, art, stories etc become official Alien Worlds mythology and it can in turn be used to train AI, the better to scale up new content. Managing AI in a decentralised fashion in this way is something that hasn’t really been done before, and it represents a new frontier for evolution in Alien Worlds.
Ultimately, the goal is to ensure that Alien Worlds is an experience-centric, community-controlled metaverse shaped by a decentralised experience. To this end, Dacoco is supporting the creation of several Pilot Community MSIG groups that will be positioned to transform into DAOs. More information will be shared about these efforts in due course.
As work continues on the creation of a more decentralised and inclusive ecosystem, there’s never been a better time to become an Explorer and help to shape the Alien Worlds Metaverse.
Alien Worlds offers a truly unique decentralized platform where players are more than mere participants; they're active stakeholders influencing both the present and future of the game. Whether you aim to create services, tools, games, or other platforms, the community stands ready to embrace and utilize them.
Developers, you can access our API toolkit here.
Innovators, breathe life into your project by applying for a Galactic Hubs grant today.
Leaders, step into the Planetary Syndicates and propel your ideas to the forefront of the community.
If you need assistance with any of these endeavors, please visit our official Discord or Telegram channels.