{"id":9614,"date":"2018-08-27T11:57:53","date_gmt":"2018-08-27T11:57:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/?p=9614"},"modified":"2018-08-31T19:53:30","modified_gmt":"2018-08-31T19:53:30","slug":"decentraland-second-life-but-on-the-blockchain-with-me-on-bbc-world-service-trending","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2018\/08\/27\/decentraland-second-life-but-on-the-blockchain-with-me-on-bbc-world-service-trending\/","title":{"rendered":"Decentraland \u2014 Second Life, but on the blockchain \u2014 with me on BBC World Service &#8220;Trending&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/p01kdgrn\">BBC Trending<\/a> on the BBC World Service has a special on <a href=\"https:\/\/decentraland.org\/\">Decentraland,<\/a> a virtual reality sandbox game with the data stored on the Ethereum blockchain. The seven-minute <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/av\/stories-45275461\/the-virtual-land-selling-for-millions\">video version<\/a> came out today:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/av\/embed\/p06j77zq\/45275461\" width=\"640\/\" height=\"360\"><span style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span>\u00a0<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s also a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/w3csws71\">radio show version,<\/a> first broadcast on Friday, which is 23 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Second Life, but on the blockchain&#8221; is my description of Decentraland, not the BBC&#8217;s \u2014 in fact, the BBC didn&#8217;t mention the words &#8220;Second Life&#8221; at any point, which is odd &#8216;cos it&#8217;s so obviously the point of comparison.<\/p>\n<p>This show is very distilled for the general public. But when they interviewed me, we did discuss the issues in depth:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>the controversial presale of the MANA token, where whales bought up a lot of the coins <a href=\"http:\/\/www.doubtreality.com\/blog\/decentraland\">before the official opening,<\/a> and the eventual sale was over in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.the-blockchain.com\/2017\/08\/19\/vr-startup-decentraland-closes-token-launch-25-million-raise-10-seconds\/\">ten seconds<\/a> \u2014 &#8220;Decentraland&#8221; is about as decentralised as Bitcoin mining;<\/li>\n<li>these thousands and millions of dollars they&#8217;re spending, mostly aren&#8217;t actual dollars \u2014 but whales&#8217; excess ETH from the Ethereum presale;<\/li>\n<li>the problems of keeping trolls and griefers from drawing penises all over everything in a shared sandbox world. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.geek.com\/games\/penis-detection-derailed-the-lego-universe-mmo-1624034\/\">It&#8217;s <em>always<\/em> penises.<\/a><em><br \/>\n<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>(For the BBC, we were faced with how to describe what the problem was, without at any point saying the word &#8220;penis.&#8221;)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2018\/08\/27\/decentraland-second-life-but-on-the-blockchain-with-me-on-bbc-world-service-trending\/bbc-decentraland-joanne-whalley\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-9635\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-9635\" src=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/bbc-decentraland-joanne-whalley.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/bbc-decentraland-joanne-whalley.jpg 640w, https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/bbc-decentraland-joanne-whalley-300x169.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Decentraland&#8217;s success will depend on whether it&#8217;s <em>a good game<\/em> \u2014 one that people who don&#8217;t give a hoot about blockchains will enjoy.<\/p>\n<p>My daughter was mad on Minecraft when she was tiny, and still sometimes visits a shared server. Would she care about this? Only if there were fun things to do. Would I buy her MANA? Lol no.<\/p>\n<p>(If your kid&#8217;s into Minecraft, and YouTube let&#8217;s plays of mod packs \u2014 get <a href=\"https:\/\/www.technicpack.net\/\">Technic Platform.<\/a> You&#8217;ll never hand-install a mod pack JAR file again.)<\/p>\n<p>Second Life is alive and well, with a small but enthusiastic audience \u2014 but nobody&#8217;s running corporate outreach there any more, or thinking they&#8217;re going to get rich selling <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Economy_of_Second_Life\">Lindens<\/a> for real money.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><b>Update:<\/b> Text version, in Spanish \u2014 BBC News Mundo, 28 August 2018: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/mundo\/noticias-45326667\">Decentraland, la &#8220;ciudad&#8221; creada por el argentino Esteban Ordano que ha vendido m\u00e1s de US$28 millones en tierra virtual<\/a> (&#8220;Decentraland, the &#8216;city&#8217; created by the Argentine Esteban Ordano that has sold more than US$28 million in virtual land&#8221;).<\/p>\n<p><b>Update 2:<\/b> BBC Radio 5 Live Drive, 28 August 2018: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/b0bgq6x2\">And as investors spend real money on virtual reality land, we&#8217;re asking how much of our lives will soon be lived online?<\/a> (2:39:58 on) (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=5oTiT4HXdcw&amp;feature=youtu.be\">archive<\/a> of the segment)<\/p>\n<br><br><div align=\"center\"><p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/bePatron?u=8420236\"><img src=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/become_a_patron_button.svg\" alt=\"Become a Patron!\" title=\"Become a Patron!\" width=217 height=51><\/a><br><p style=\"align:center;\" class=\"patreon-badge\"><i>Your subscriptions keep this site going. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/bePatron?u=8420236\">Sign up today!<\/a><\/i><\/p><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Because what Minecraft really needed was a cryptocurrency ICO. Or perhaps not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[310,853,852,9],"class_list":["post-9614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-bbc","tag-bbc-trending","tag-decentraland","tag-ico"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9614"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9614\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9713,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9614\/revisions\/9713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}