Kim Courier, Head of Partnerships and Marketing at Decentraland Foundation. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, I'm so excited to be here. um So on the show we talked to all the Web3 crypto projects and I'm excited to be talking to you today and get really into the central land what it's about and also the category of the metaverse category. Before we get into that, how did you get into the crypto space? What's your prior background and how did you get into it? Yeah, so I spent about 12 years at traditional Web2 big agencies. So representing Fortune 500 brands, working on the client side. So really client service, brand strategy, and holistic account creation and servicing. So did that from college um for 12 years, like I said, and then... 2021, uh COVID time, all that got really into NFTs while I was honestly a little bit bored while I was doing stay at home mom life for a little bit when daycares closed down and had a lot of fun just diving in to learn about like what could be next for brands and marketing and loyalty and opportunities, which is how I stumbled into the NFT space. Just as a like curious person. m I'm not here to like make money, figure it out, did not intend to work in this space by any means, but as we all know, you end up going down a rabbit hole and you're deep, deep in it really quick. And so that's kind of how I ended up here just as a curious consumer. Really loved the potential to have deeper meaning on-chain interactions and build brand experiences that were really around. true engagement versus just, you know, see an ad like once, never find out what they do long term and have a experience that everyone could enjoy together. Was there a specific NFT or metaverse community you first got involved with prior to joining Decentraland full-time? Yeah, I was running a project called Eyes of Fashion, which was a generative PFP project from an art um illustrator named Talia Zoraf. um She was doing really, really beautiful fashion illustration art and took a new spin on the PFP collections, really focused on the articles of clothing that was being shown versus like a lot of them were like, you what is the character head? uh And she focused more on the fashion element. And I thought it was just a really cool way for an individual independent artist to connect with their community. And so I came in through that lens. And the way I found her was I was just in a women in web three discord, which at the time was very small. And I had just mentioned I worked in marketing and a lot of people were like, oh, there's artists in this space. There's coders in this space, but not a lot of traditional marketers. that were offering to help new artists at that time. That's really cool. What I love about NFTs is like its ability to uh kind of really create culture and community. And I've always thought that NFTs are, even though crypto is very cyclical and at one point, Metaverse and NFTs were super hot and then not so much. um But I've always thought about the promise of NFTs in the Metaverse and in its role in crypto in general. is so promising. And I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts around, know, Decentraland is uh one of the OGs in this space. It's been around for a while. And would love to hear kind of your learnings around culture and all of that. But maybe you could share with us first a little bit about Decentraland, maybe educate the audience on like, what is Decentraland? um and it's like in its place in the metaverse category. Yeah, absolutely. So I joined Decentraland September 2022. So I've been here for a few years now. And since then, we've gone through a lot of changes. um But Decentraland for anyone that is not familiar, we are a social virtual world. And I like to say that we are a part of the metaverse, but we are not the metaverse. Just like many brands are not the internet. I think there are going to be a lot of different games, virtual worlds, experiences. AR, VR, that'll all exist within the metaverse as we call it today. But um we really are working really carefully to ensure that people understand that we're a virtual world. You can experience it on your desktop. And it's really for UGC building. So people can come in, build a 3D scene. It is a completely traversable world. So that means people are building side by side, just like, you know, New York City, San Francisco, London. You buy a piece of real estate. You don't know who your neighbor may be or you do. You build together side by side. You walk across the street to someone else's build and get to experience that like community feel of what it's like to build a neighborhood or a district and build that world together for what we hope people want to see in the future or world that is full of creativity, ownership. is built on the blockchain and land wearables. and emotes, which are your actions in world, are all NFT based on Polygon. And so it's just really a special place for people that are looking for a more engaging virtual experience. I think social media is how a lot of people connect today, but it's very two-dimensional. It's you send me a message, then when I'm back online, I send you a message and it just feels fleeting in a way. And so we were realizing there's so many people that have these global friendships across the world. And more and more so now as people are going more remote and traveling is easier than ever. How do we stay connected to one another? Like if my best friend lives in Barcelona, how do we have experiences together? And that is something that happens in Decentraland kind of all the time. We see, you know, Friday night DJ parties. We see people going to art galleries together. We see people checking out a new build, like, hey, did you see what so-and-so built? Let's all go together for an opening. ah And that's what we are trying to create is like, where can people come together, have a friendship with someone on similar interests, or even someone that's super different from them, and you never would have been able to meet them in your physical experience, and really build the world you want to see. I think the metaverse, and I'm grateful that you clarified kind of uh that it's part of the metaverse versus like the language I was using, which was incorrect. I've met with folks at the sandbox and other metaverses in the uh NFT and metaverse category. what I've always found really fascinating is it's like a universe where you can kind of escape reality and enter into a universe that you create, meet new people, but there's also commerce, there's experiences. You can create the types of experiences that you could have, it's really, really interesting. I'm wondering about the, I guess inside of Decentral Land, what are some kinds of experiences that... ah You've found like your users becoming very like interested in you know You mentioned like going to a museum like tell us more about those like kind of help describe so that people can like envision Like what it might be like if they have an experience You know this central in Yeah, I would say the biggest thing and the most popular use case is um friendship gathering moments. So that could be a party. We have weekly parties that are in Decentraland. Like Friday night, there's the MetaBeast party where everyone from like the, kid called Beast community comes into Decentraland. They hire a DJ and they just like have a great time and catch up. So that's a pretty common occurrence in Decentraland. I would say there are multiple of those a week where you jump in and there's a party. I went to one yesterday, which was a birthday party for a community member who just has friends across the globe and wanted to celebrate their birthday. So that's the most common use case I will see, but there are others, like you had said, we've had um partnerships with like the Finnish National Gallery or different um We had a UNESCO site that was built. So there are like historical or cultural opportunities where you can only visit that if you live in that geography or you're financially able to travel to that geography. And that's super limiting on who gets to experience that amazing cultural moment or opportunity. So we've had partnerships where we say like, let's make a replica or an experience that showcases what your country, your art gallery, um your tourism board wants to show. And so those are different moments we have. We have a lot of art. think 3D sculptures are really cool, 3D experiences, art galleries in the sense where you walk around and you can see, you know, on a wall, different art like you would in the physical world. Those are very possible. And then of course, brand experiences. um A good example, I can think of a few, but one would be... So if you're a marketer, which I know there are marketers that listen to your podcast, uh you can think about how do you reach your audiences in meaningful ways? And Doritos, for example, they do a big campaign every year for their Superbowl. So they had their TV spot, they had their Instagram ad, and they had their Decentraland build for this concept. And so the Decentraland build was really, really cool. I wish I had visuals to pull up right here, but... ah It was a triangle like a Dorito and it was this it was called triangle studios and you walked in and you could claim wearables one was this really amazing like orange glow which is just so funny because when you think Doritos you think like the orange on your fingers and that that very specific visual and So it was this really cool orange sparkly jumpsuit that you can come in and get so like immediately as a consumer and a fan, I'm like, I got something of value. I got this really unique wearable that the only way to get it was to go to their scene during their Super Bowl promo. They had a really fun experience and like engagement experiences I think are key, not just slap an ad on that doesn't work in Decentraland. You really have to do something that your audience is interested in. And so they made a game out of sounds you would think of with. uh Doritos, so the crunch, the bag open, all of that, and you turned it into a soundtrack and shared it on social for a really fun, like music, acoustic experience. They had also created a chip parkour. So your avatar jumped in and you had to like get to the top of this parkour experience for a prize. And people had a ton of fun. I mean, we had. engagement times of 30 minutes, 40 minutes. And if as a marketer, you're lucky to get like three seconds on Instagram sometimes, or like, how do you create that thumb stop on tik tok? It's really, really hard to do. But when you're building an experience for a world people are actively engaging in, they're looking for brands that are saying, hey, we're here to give value. We're not trying to extract anything. They weren't selling anything in that experience. They were just trying to make people say I had a really fun moment with Doritos. That was a good time. I have a good brand association with them. And I still see those wearables today in world. um Mountain Dew did an amazing one. I believe it was end of 2021, 2022 with an e-sports team. So they did an e-sports team watch parties. Watch parties are also really popular in Decentraland. Film nights, watch parties, that kind of stuff does really well. So they had a e-sports watch party and one of the wearables, which I thought was hilarious and so on brand is Mountain Dew, obviously caffeinated, gives you a boost. So they did like a backpack that was rocket boosters and it was like upside down Mountain Dew bottles as the fuel. And I was like, hilarious. This is so great and such a fun experience there. And then they also had um a Mountain Dew like uh dinosaur dragon skin that was promoting one of the products they were doing with like the Mountain Dew Red. So it was just a ton of fun. And so I think finding ways to say, how can a brand have fun here with the intention of giving value, again, not extracting value, and what can community members use the platform for to connect with one another in a way that feels a little more fun. than a Zoom call or a Google Meet, which we did so much during the pandemic. And we saw a lot of people saying, instead of doing this, can we go have fun and play a game together, go dance to a DJ together, go see art together and have a real experience. I think the brand experience is pretty fascinating. I want to double click into that if that's okay. um I think you bring up a really good point that these brands just want to provide and give value back to their uh customers and engage with them. Whereas in crypto, there's a lot of extracting of value and I think probably an overemphasis on ownership in NFTs and how you can make money from these NFTs. But it sounds like the partnerships with these brands, it's just, it's like, let's have fun, create a good experience, make it memorable so that they become more loyal to the brand. What does that collaboration look like? Let's say with Mountain Dew or really anyone. How do you co-create an experience together? Like, what does that look like and how long does that take? I imagine that's like, that's probably just a ton of work on both sides. It depends. It really does. think the Doritos one was obviously really well done. um A studio had done that build for them and they brought it to us. So they had an agency. They were looking for interactive game-like experiences. They came to us and said, hey, we have a client that's looking to do something. What would that look like? How would we partner together on this? um One thing I should note is I work for the Decentraland Foundation. So we are the nonprofit side. of Decentraland and our goal is to make sure the platform is continually running. So the fundamentals underneath on the tech side, and then we help and own the brand IP. So the social handles the website, all of that kind of stuff too. So the partnerships do flow through us on that side, but we are not a for-profit company. So these partnerships, I'm not saying come on in, pay us a lot of money and you can have a spot. We're really saying. Okay, what are you going to bring to our community? Is there value here for our community? And if so, let's co-market it together and like make something really cool. So when they come to us with an idea, they either have a studio and a team in-house that can build to Decentraland specs, or we connect them with a official Decentraland studio. So these are community builders that know how to build in Decentraland. They're really, really talented. Honestly, a lot of them are self-taught, which kudos to them is so impressive to be able to build in that capacity. And we partner them up, bring the vision to life and say, okay, what is the brief? What are we hoping to achieve here? What value is it giving to the community? And they collaborate and build depending on how complicated the build is. um We do have no code solutions. So there's some templates, there's some easy things. If you're an individual builder or a small company that wants to do it in a low lift way, that's totally possible. But if you're talking about like, know, Doritos custom parkour, that's a lot of like custom code that's being done and a lot of creativity on the content side. So they just kind of work together, creative minds, devs and build something really cool. Those take a few months, but definitely not as much time compared to like in real world activation. So I sell a lot of brands. They think of them sometimes as like their pop-up store. So it could be around a campaign that does like a pop-up store in New York. Like could you replicate that and get it to a wider geography? Could you think about that experience that maybe stays beyond a day because you're not worrying about like the land lease or the permits that you need in the physical world? That's a lot easier to do in a digital space. That's so cool. In a brand partnership, who typically comes up with like the storyboard? Would that be the brand? And then you guys would collaborate on that? It totally depends. Some brands know what they want and they come in and they're like, this is our vision. And then other brands come to us and they say, we know we want something in a virtual world. Here's our audience. Here are the types of things we're interested in and like what could happen. Cause you know, a lot of things, some brands come and they think very web too. Like, can I just replicate XYZ in a virtual world? Can I replicate my storefront in a virtual world is a question we get a lot. And it's like, you can. But why would you when you could do something so much cooler? Like a virtual world allows for creativity in a way that is very different from physical creativity. We're not talking about the same types of architectural constraints. We're talking about floating. We're talking about fire, glitter, really cool stuff that can be built in. We're talking about gaming mechanics, animations. Like there are things you can do that aren't possible in the physical world that can be built here. So. A lot of times we will bring in like uh our content team and for us content is in-world content not like social media content. So our content team can say like, okay, what are you trying to do? We have a brief and we can bring ideas to them. Like have you thought about this or what if we brought this element from your brand in in a totally different way here that kind of experience we can do. um The possibilities are so much because you're not tied to physics, right? There's so much creativity that can happen with brands. I imagine commerce. um How do you prioritize kind of all of the growth drivers for Decentraland with partnership with these brands, um possibly with sports leagues, possibly with commerce? m how do you prioritize kind of like, where should I be spending my time right now from a partnerships perspective and a growth perspective? Because it sounds like there's so many opportunities. Yeah, it's honestly my biggest challenge because I oversee both the marketing and the partnership side and within that is also our in-world events. So we have these like 10-pole events every year that we talk about. um The next one coming up is a Pride film night. Then we have a prom, we have art week, we have music festivals. We have all of these different events. What we find is that a lot of people's first experience into Centraland was a big event. So there was an event that happened, someone told them about it and they come in. So we do prioritize a lot of time and resources around these big events because they're really cool, unique experiences into Centralland. And it's a really, you know, it's an easy way for someone to come in. We say, hey, there's gonna be a four day EDM festival. Like jump in and come watch a concert with me. And they're like, okay, I can conceptually understand what's gonna happen when I get there. You know, I'm gonna watch a screen, there's a DJ, I'm gonna dance, cool. So we do do a lot around those events. um And we bring in partnerships for these events as they come up. last, we just, we do music fest every November, for example. So this year we tested a concept where all around the stage outside was a huge like showroom type of environment. where we had um all music related brands could have a booth and talk about what they were doing in this space. And that was a lot of fun. We're testing a lot of different concepts. We've also have brands do like a full build nearby an event or related to an event for additional visibility. And then we are doing partnerships like I just announced this week, we're doing partnership with SheFi. So from a growth perspective, we are first a social platform. And I think that is what sets us apart is while we have brands coming, that's really exciting. What's the biggest growth driver in my mind is just individuals looking to connect. And so I do prioritize that over kind of everything at the store at the beginning. So how do we get more people that are looking to connect across the globe? Where are those people spending their time trying to make new friends, to connect with others? Where are they learning about Web3 crypto metaverse? And so an example of SheFi, where are you familiar with SheFi? But in case your audience isn't, it's an educational um cohort-based learning about Web3 crypto and um all of the ecosystems within it. And so we're working with them to create some course content, to do some workshops on how you build in virtual worlds. We will host many events for them. They're invited to all of our hosts. And so I'm trying to think about partnerships that are, it makes my job harder, but they're not always repeatable. um It's really unique to that community or that brand that is trying to have an in-world experience. You know, I'm reminded of, uh I took my kids to this trampoline park and I was, I do like literally every Saturday I'm there. I was talking to the owner and I was just asking him about how business is going and then I asked him, like what, know, telling me about like, they have this subscription or membership thing and I asked like, what's the biggest driver? Like what's helping to grow memberships? He said that, The number one thing that has helped them to grow are parties. He says that birthday parties. Exactly. Yeah. So birthday parties m usually is like really low cost for them. um But it's like from a user acquisition perspective, it's great because these are people that have not gone or experienced this specific trampoline park. then usually after the party, they talk to the manager and said, hey, we'd like to join. And so like their user acquisition costs is like zero because it's like they came from a party. And the way you're talking, it sounds kind of like that. Like these events become like a funnel to, to, retention. And which is pretty fascinating, which brings up another question. You know, if, if I, you know, as you grow through these events and parties, what are some like non kind of calendar events that are kind of like, but always consistent, like Mm-hmm. an event going on, what would incentivize me who might be interested in entering the central land? What are some things to do that are not event specific? Yeah, absolutely. And funny enough, birthday parties are so big in the Central and and are a reason a lot of people come in is like, oh, my friend has a birthday party. I don't live in the same country as them, but I would love to celebrate them. I'm to go to their virtual birthday party. It is super popular. Yeah, it's really funny that you say that for trampoline parks, because it's very, very true for us as well. So non-event stuff. I mean, we have actually on Monday. coming up, so May 19th, which will be after this is live, but we are uh launching marketplace credits. So just a way to reward people that are in world. for anyone that is not familiar in Decentraland, you create your own avatar to really own your digital identity. All of your clothes, which are known as wearables are created by community members. They fully own them and they put them on the marketplace. You can buy those and they are NFTs. So you will own it. forever. However you want to handle that you could buy it, you could sell it, you could trade it, could gift it, which is super popular in Decentraland. Gifting is like one of the things about Decentraland I love the most is just like the generosity of the community. And um that is a big part of it. And so when you get started, you come in with your basic avatar, but like owning your identity in Decentraland is such a key thing. And so it really says a lot about you. I, as you can tell, am like, pretty toned down in my physical world appearance. But in the metaverse and in Decentraland, I have like a hot pink ponytail. I have like crazy boots that I would never wear in the real world because they're not practical. But building who you could be without constraints is a ton of fun. And so the best way to get started is to shop the marketplace. And so we are launching marketplace credits to give people a way to earn credits to use in the marketplace, just like store credit as you would in the physical world. on May 19th. May 19th, it'll start and it'll be a six week beta test, sorry, eight week beta test. And we're just gonna see like how do people perform respond to it? What things do they want to earn credits for? What do they wish they could earn credits for that they couldn't today? And then we'll take a pause, do some uh feedback and relaunch it again in the future. But we just um agreed to a $2 million uh investment in marketplace credits and ensuring we're really putting money towards people being able to invest in their digital identity. uh What's the mechanics there? So the pin tweet says your time equals rewards. Tell us about what is the mechanism design for it to earn credits? you'll be able to jump into Decentraland and it'll give you some tasks to do to earn credits. And so it could be um explore three new parcels. And so you have to go and check out different spaces built by the community. It can be attend two events this week. And so it's like, okay, well, if I go to two events this week, I'll earn a certain number of credits. ah It could be so since we're social we want people to meet each other. So it'll be open three new people's profiles and So you get to open their profile learn about their interests see their identity and their style Learn how long they've been into Central and and really just all of them are meant to foster social interaction So you're exploring someone's build you're going to an event you're exploring profiles and just trying to get people to have reasons to meet one another um Again and again and as you do more of that you earn more and more credits the best part about it and I know this is common in the crypto space is everyone's like How do I earn money? How can I be a creator? Where do royalties fit in the Decentral and marketplace is an intentionally built with creators in mind first so 97.5 % of all sales goes directly to the creator for primary sales and then 2.5 % of secondary is built in royalties forever on that as well. So really a creator first. on the backend, of the sales will make sure they all go to creator pockets. None of them are coming to the foundation at all as a nonprofit. That's cool. um So I'm thinking of two things. First of all, that sounds really, really cool. um The way you earn these credits. And uh I mean, it incentivizes more participation, exploration, and that's awesome. um And really kind of takes advantage of the natural curiosity that we all have. um I'm curious about the... If I do some kind of event like the Doritos brand partnership, for example. and I did like some kind of parkour move with my chip. Is there a way to tweet about that? uh like, so that whatever I do inside of Decentraland, I'm able to brag about it outside of Decentraland to, you know, for some clout or even, you know, more brand kind of, create brand awareness outside of Decentraland. Yeah, absolutely. I think about the brag moments all the time because our community is proud of what they're building, but they're also competitive and I love that about them. They're super proud of their moments in there. They'll say, you know, I've been in for this date. I've probably visited the most scenes and we were seeing that happen a lot and we were saying, How can we give the proof for them to brag about? And so when we launched the new desktop clients, we rebuilt the Central Land from the ground up and launched it October 22nd of last year, 2024. So everything was rebuilt with social and community first step in mind. And so we launched with badges as well recently. So now you can earn all these different badges for different moments. So if it's, you know, made a certain number of new friends, if it's visited a certain number of parcels, bought your certain number of wearables, all of these have tiers and badging like they have in games. So you can level up in different ways in our badges throughout the game. And so when we say game though, a lot of people describe us as a game. I don't necessarily just because there's no winning and losing. There's a lot of gamification elements and there's a lot of fun and there's a lot of play. but you don't win or lose. It's all about like the daily experience you have all the time. However, there are people that are competitive and want to level up. And so we added those elements into the experience for them. Badges is definitely one of them. Yeah, the other thing I'm thinking about too is, know, oftentimes it's, you know, creating an experience like in a virtual world. It's like, um often the most powerful things that come from that are like stories. um And because stories are able to capture emotion more than so, you know, really more than really anything. It's pretty amazing. And so I'm curious about what are some stories that you could share? um of people's experiences inside of Decentraland and any kind of emotional hooks or um any kind of emotional story that maybe you could share that would give us a better sense as to what it might be like to experience Decentraland. Honestly, this is my favorite part of my job. So I'm so happy you asked. There are so many touching stories that I never expected in taking this role. There are people who were DJs in the physical world and their jobs were gone in a day when COVID happened and all the clubs were shut down, all the birthday parties were shut down and they lost all of... their opportunities to make money and do what they love to do. And so we had people that self-taught how to do virtual concerts, how to do virtual performances, how to sell themselves as a virtual DJ for these birthday parties, these music festivals, and made a full-time living being a Decentraland DJ. And it was so exciting to be able to see that we have people who We have a community member who shared with me that she in the physical world has autoimmune disease and so she's not able to go to raves in the real world. Like that's just not a safe experience for her health but loves going to raves and EDM concerts and really felt since she was diagnosed she was missing that part of herself and that experience. It's such a community vibe to like go to a concert together or a festival. And so she said, this year's music fest, she jumped in, it was a three, four day EDM event with like concerts all the time. And she was like, this is the first time I felt that part of myself that I felt was missing since getting diagnosed. And it was just so heartwarming that we were like, what other experiences are people missing because of whether it's their health, financial, geographical, whatever it may be that they can't have in the physical world. um We have a lot of parents, people like me, who I'm a parent, I have two toddlers, like I am not going anywhere at night. I would love to. I grew up in New York City, right outside of New York City. I love being able to do cultural experiences and I don't get to do that much. So there are a lot of parents like me who put their kids down and just want to like do something social, but they can't leave their house because their kids are here sleeping. And so they jump in at night and like go to a party. go play a game with a few friends, um meet up, go see some new art, a new art installation that was built. And so I really love that we're giving people a way to experience something that they can't in the physical world because of a barrier that is kind of outside of their control. So we have a lot of stories like that. I think one of my most favorite opportunities was in May, we created the first ever Decentraland Community Summit. in the physical world, said, all of you have made these amazing close virtual friendships. If you're interested to bring that into the physical world, we're gonna host like on our dime, the foundation will host a summit in Argentina. Get yourselves there. We will have come learn about the product, what's coming up next. We'll give you some alpha. We'll have parties, we'll have dinners. We'll just get to know each other on. the physical connection as well. And we had people come from 21 countries. We had someone come who had never left their region of their country before get on a plane to come to Argentina with strangers that they had only met online. And that first day was just tears from community members, but also from us seeing like, my gosh, what is happening here? And it's real friendships, even if they're virtual. And I think that's something a lot of people talk about is like, is the virtual world the real world? And that's why you'll hear me say the physical world versus the virtual world, because the virtual world is real and a lot of those relationships are real and a lot of those experiences are real. And so being able to say, we're giving people another opportunity to have real impactful experiences from a laptop. That's the Argentina physical world experience sounds fascinating. And I bet you and the team were just so surprised at the, that's really amazing. um I wonder, maybe you know, but I am curious if there's like been relationships that have been built, like romantic relationships, maybe even marriages that have happened through Decentraland. Are you aware of any? We do have Decentraland couples. um A lot of them have more so it was brought their partner in, but we have seen really, really strong like best friendships definitely happen. We've talked about doing like a Decentraland speed dating or like that type of stuff in the near future. I think it's definitely possible. um But we know deep, deep personal friendships, business relationships, like people have never met in person and have Decentraland businesses together. um There are two people I know that um live physically next door to each other and build an entire business in Decentraland together, which is a lot of fun as well. um the personal relationship stuff is definitely happening. And we said it is only a matter of time before we learn about a wedding that started in Decentraland. We have had... a Decentraland wedding, but they had met outside of Decentraland, but had their wedding in Decentraland. And it was, I don't remember if, I don't know if you've caught this, but it was like a Taco Bell Decentraland wedding. It was very viral for a hot minute. Yeah. Wow. um I wish the, I hadn't heard of the physical experience in Argentina. I wish that we were kind of like more well known because that seems like a both surprising and like pleasantly surprising and really amazing experience, I'm sure. um plan to do more of them um to be announced soon, but we have since done, I hosted a community dinner at East Denver and said, hey, I'm going to East Denver. Anyone from the community, I'm gonna book off a part of a restaurant. Let me know, you're welcome to come, dinner's on us. Let's all just hang together. We had, I think 18 people at that one in particular. um It was a little late in the game for some people to get flights, but it was a ton of fun. We had a meetup in Paris. We've had a meetup in Amsterdam. So we're starting to see them kind of popping up all over, but definitely a summit part two is in the near future. the metaverse is so there's so much crossover between web two and web three. I'm curious to know roughly the audience of decentralized participants and audience. What is the rough, I don't know, percentage wise in terms of web two people versus web three? I imagine it's probably 50-50. Not yet exactly, but I think that's mostly because when we launched and up until October, we very much used crypto tech language. said, have a wallet, log into a decentralized virtual space where you can own your own. know, it was just like so much web three crypto jargon that I don't know that it was so inviting to Web2 up until this point. Since then. we have added social integration. So you don't need a crypto wallet to log in. You can log in with your X account, your Discord account, your Gmail, whatever it is you choose. Feel free to log in and we'll, we partner with Magic to create a wallet on the backend. So if you want to jump in and claim wearables, you absolutely can do that without knowing about blockchain, about Web3. We know they'll learn over time through the experience. Recently, I will say we've been doing growth acquisition for the first time really into Centrallands history and like an intention, a campaign paid dollars type acquisition. And we're seeing a lot of growth in areas we weren't expecting. I was expecting, know, to see the best results on crypto websites and crypto places where people understand web three, they get decentralization, they care a lot about privacy. um But those people are also pretty skeptical of downloading new products, of trying new things, of connecting wallets, you know, all of that, which I totally understand. um I am as well. ah But what we're finding is there's a huge audience out there really striving for connection and social and fun digital experiences. And they may not know anything about Web3. And that's okay because our platform isn't DeFi, you know? You don't have to know the intricacies of this space to enjoy the platform. And so we really have done a lot of work over the past year to ensure blockchain is there, but it's happening on the backend. And so that it's really welcoming to anyone that may come across ah content from us about how do I build 3D virtual worlds? I care a lot about digital fashion. I'm looking to just make some friends that like music. I'm looking to explore digital. art galleries, like all of that shouldn't require you to know about crypto. That's just general interests. And so we've done a lot of work um past year, I would say, especially in the past like five months on that to ensure that we're making that people looking for those types of experiences can find essentially. And I think that's that kind of welcoming approach where kind of blockchaining type language takes a backseat. It makes a ton of sense because most people, want an experience and probably don't care if there's even blockchain involved or blockchain supporting it underneath. And so I think I imagine that that that kind of um changing the language and then kind of making very intentional effort to make it welcoming. is going to be a huge growth driver for Decentraland um and might even be one of the root causes for why Doritos and other brands have become interested in partnering with Decentraland, I'm guessing. Yeah, it's been a ton of fun. mean, a lot of them, think originally they came because they were like, I have an innovation budget or I have a web three budget and we come top of mind in a lot of those places. Um, but I think when they're in, they realize how strong the connection is, the opportunity for real long-term engagement. And that's kind of where they get the hook. Yeah. Another area I was thinking about that's think quite popular in enterprises, like B2B enterprises is like um training. I wonder if, if, essentially, if you guys have looked into, you know, creating like a universe where employees can come in and like be trained on some, I don't know, HIPAA or something like that. We haven't had it done at an organizational level, but we have had people come in and say, can I stream a webinar about XYZ in Decentraland for our audience? And the answer is yes, you can. We just released a new streaming feature that makes it lot easier to do that. We have a template of an auditorium that you can drop in and stream your whatever. It is your XYZ of the training purposes. uh More so what does best is like, is there a social element to it? Otherwise, why would you not do it on a stream like a Google meet or something? So when, if you're trying to make it be something more fun, something more socially engaging, if you want to give out rewards, that's when it tends to make sense to integrate. Yeah, that's really cool. There's so many possibilities. um I'm thinking, yeah. the biggest challenge, think, like you said, is like prioritization and finding out for us right now, we're doing a lot of testing and learning. And I think that's such a big part of growth marketing of saying, I have a hypothesis. Let's try it. And if it doesn't work, that's okay. We learned something in this process that can impact the next test, the next hypothesis, the next decision. And you know that 1 % time over time compacted is gonna make a big deal. So you're trying to find the little changes and then occasionally, you know, there's a spike that really is an aha moment. In the let's let's talk about the events coming up you mentioned a couple maybe you could maybe run through a couple of those to give the audience kind of an idea of what they can get involved with and when. Yeah, absolutely. The most ah time sensitive one we have coming up is we have a two day event. The first day is Decentraland Pride. We're doing a film screening and PJ night, which will be a ton of fun. It is gonna be Wednesday, May 21st. All of the information is on our blog and our social media accounts for that. But basically come on in, we're gonna watch some films. Everyone's gonna get some cute onesies. It's gonna be a good time. And it's so that we can all also rest up because the next day is going to be the first ever Decentraland prom. So this is a new event we're testing. Like we are learning more and more about our audience, the social experiences they're looking for. And we learned so many people never went to prom and didn't have a prom. And I'm based in the U S prom is such a big part of the culture here. And I was just, we were talking with our events producer Bay about a bunch of different opportunities and she brought prom to the table and we were like, yes. Prom will be so fun because everyone loves to get dressed up. So like the idea of getting your outfit together for prom, it ignites the marketplace for our creators to come up with something new. Are you doing top hats with tuxes? Are you doing suits? Are you doing dresses? Are you doing skirts, heels? Like it it brought so much fun stuff that's now on the marketplace this week. So I will be shopping after this for my prom look. And then, so prom is Thursday, May 22nd. We are starting to see promposals on social, which I think is just so fun. So asking a asking a date to your prom. So we're seeing a lot of couples do proms, bring a prom date. It can be romantic. It could be a friend. We've seen some group dates getting started. So we're going to have some DJs, live DJs for the event. Jump on in. There will be free wearables as well to come and claim and a free emote. So dance moves and just a good old. Fashioned, know high school prom type vibe, but for adults That sounds fun. Is there a theme like 80s night or any theme for the prom? Just virtual. Fun. as your best and kind of bring a date, show off and we're doing it. It's very much a love centric, but love being a very broad term about it. That's awesome. And all the information is at Decentraland.org and also in your socials. Okay. yeah. So that's the one coming up the next week. Really excited about that. ah We are also having a game night. So come on in, play a bunch of games with us in the middle of June. That'll be June 19th. I can't share yet, but we're building some new game experiences in Decentraland for people to come in, multiplayer game, and then you can also be a spectator, watch what's going on. So it'll be a ton of fun, and then there'll be some like mini games around. as well for people to come in and play. So much more of that like social game type of experience. I do game nights in the physical world. So I'm really excited about how that comes to life. It's our first time trying that experience. um And then we have a career quest coming up in July. So learn more about what it's like to be a builder. How do you 3D build, coding, smart contracts, kind of all of that. type of stuff will be on the table, recruiting in Web3, et cetera. um Art Week is in September. So rolling into our big season, have Art Week, Music Fest, and the holidays. Is there a calendar that like a public? OK. ah I'm like, I need to remember all of these. We have a really cool graphic that's in our blog on our manifesto. So our plan for the year is our manifesto and it listed out all of the big events that are put on by the foundation. But also our community puts on amazing events every day. So you can go to Decentraland.org and there's an events page and anyone. can upload an event that is happening in Decentraland. So if there's something you wanna create, a friend's birthday party, whatever it is you wanna do, you can go into the events page and make it public for everyone. That is so cool. There's like an entire world that I think people just aren't aware of. this calendar points to how active this community is and so much to do. That's really amazing. Well, Kim, thank you so much for taking the time to educate us on Decentraland and all the fun and opportunities there are there. um I'll make sure to put in the show notes all the URLs that are relevant and invite the audience to check out thecentraland.org and to get involved. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. This was a ton of fun and Decentraland is open for everyone. So just go to Decentraland.org, download, set up your avatar and I'll see you inside. Thank you so much.