TL;DR

• Decentraland is a DAO governed virtual world and one of the largest in the metaverse, working with brands such as Samsung, Miller Lite and JPMorgan to bring an immersive 3D experience to thousands of users.
• Biconomy has been supporting Decentraland with meta-transactions to cover gas fees for users in the wearables collection since May of 2021.
• Over 677,000 transactions have been processed through Gasless to date equivalent to over $1,948,894 in volume and $32,500 USD in gas savings for users.
• Gasless processed 204,763 transactions in January of this year alone for Decentraland with 65,000 in a single day at its peak, signalling substantial growth in transaction volume for 2022.
• Unique users in Decentraland have grown by 106% on average, in the first 6-months since integrating with Biconomy.
• On December 28th, Gasless received a 99% approval rate from the DAO, for continued support and investment for Decentraland in 2022.

Introduction: Decentraland

Decentraland is a virtual reality platform powered by the Ethereum blockchain. Within the platform, users can create, experience, and monetize their content and applications.

Decentraland is also the first virtual world to be fully decentralized, and governed by a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization). The DAO owns the smart contracts and assets that make up Decentraland including the LAND Contract, the Estates Contract, Wearables, Content Servers and the Marketplace. It also owns a substantial purse of MANA which allows it to be truly autonomous as well as subsidize various operations and initiatives throughout Decentraland.

The Challenge: Expensive Fees and Complicated UX

In May of 2021, Decentraland reached out to see if we could help them overcome two challenges:

1. Expensive gas fees for users

Fee’s are paid by users on every transaction, resulting in a negative impact on sales in the marketplace, especially for those new to crypto who are unfamiliar with gas.

2. Complicated UX

As a result of paying for gas, users have to jump through multiple hoops to complete a single transaction resulting in a poor experience.

The Solution: Gasless Meta-transactions

The Decentraland marketplace is the largest of any virtual world to date, averaging over $300k USD in fees per month, with thousands of NFT’s available for purchase and 95% of active wallets profitable within the marketplace.

To help Decentraland accomplish their goal of improving the transaction experience and eliminating gas fees for marketplace shoppers, we worked with the team to integrate our Gasless API. By enabling meta-transactions via our highly efficient relayer, Gasless allowed the Decentraland team to sponsor gas fees on behalf of their users, thus removing the cost and associated friction points.

Before making any platform changes however, all proposals gain approval of the DAO. Fortunately, the idea of creating frictionless transactions has been a point of discussion since Decentraland launched on mainnet in 2018. As such, when the decision was made to switch wearables to Polygon from Ethereum, our Gasless API provided a unique opportunity to not only remove gas fees, but also drastically improve the UX on behalf of users.

Internally, the team is easily able to manage gas fees on behalf of users thanks to our recently released Gas Tank feature. By utilizing the gas tank, the team is able to deposit funds to be used for meta-transactions and receive warnings should the tank drop too low to sponsor fees. This enables a hands-off experience for the team when it comes to sponsoring gas, while simultaneously improving the UX for users. Talk about a win-win!

The team had this to say about our solution…

“Gasless provided a way for users to sign on mainnet during the onboarding flow. UX in onboarding has been in discussion since 2018, when we began on ethereum. Once wearables made it to polygon, it was an opportunity to improve the UX.” — Ignacio Mazzara, Decentraland

Integration

Needless to say, we were more than up for the challenge and thanks to Gasless, users have been able to buy, sell, and trade wearables for their avatars entirely on Polygon, with zero transaction fees, as shown below.

Typical gas transaction: costly gas fees with multiple steps required

Gasless meta-transaction: one-click purchase, no fees!

As shown above, users simply click “sign” and the transaction will be queued, and once complete it will be added to the individuals store like so…

Impact in numbers

Community: 99% DAO Approval

Since enabling Gasless, users have heavily supported the new and less cumbersome UX and lack of fees in the wearables marketplace. By avoiding the bulk of a typical transaction process by simply signing a signature (see fig 1.2), users are left with a familiar experience to major platforms of web2, one-click and done.

Decentraland Blockchain Lead, Ignacio Mazzara had this to say about the new UX for both the internal team and users…

“Another added benefit from integrating with Gasless was not having to manually check transaction statuses for purchases made in wearables. Additionally, users no longer have to change the RPC in their metamask wallet when making a purchase in the marketplace.”

As mentioned previously however, all platform changes must be approved by the DAO. Therefore, continued investment in the Gasless integration was put to a vote in December which resulted in a 99% approval rate, thus allowing the team to add an additional $60,000 USD to the gas tank to fund meta-transactions for 2022.

Transactions: 677,000+ Gas-Free Transactions

To date, there have been 677,103 meta-transactions with Gasless transactions for users. We expect this volume to continue increasing as we move closer to 1 million transactions, thanks to growing sales in the marketplace and thousands of new users joining every week.

Gas Fees: Over $32,500 in Gas Savings for Users

Since integrating, Decentraland users have saved over $32,500 in gas when minting and purchasing items from the wearables collection. We expect to see gas savings continue to climb due to increased transactions and user growth in Decentraland.

Volume: $1,948,894 USD in Wearables Marketplace Volume

In 2021 wearables transaction volume rose to over $1.9M, thanks in part to the increased activity and reduced fees due to the Gasless integration. Giving users the ability to purchase land, wearables and all other NFT’s within Decentraland are what make the platform such an exciting place to be and will allow it to continue growing into the year ahead, during which we plan to keep supporting gas-free transactions for wearables and beyond!

User Growth: 106% Avg Increase in Unique Users

In their first six months with Gasless, the number of unique active users in Decentraland increased by approximately 106% per month from 3,137 to an average of 7,414. While an increase in users can be attributed to multiple factors, improving the user-experience and sponsoring gas, particularly during the onboarding phase for crypto newbies is imperative.

Conclusion

We couldn’t be more excited to continue supporting gas-free transactions for wearables, as Decentraland as continues to expand and add exciting new partners. With no shortage of gas fees to sponsor in one of the fastest growing virtual words, we hope to bring more exciting announcements between Biconomy and Decentraland.

Thanks for reading!

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