The blockchain-based virtual world platform’s membership will bring at least $135,000 in additional funding to the open source Blender project.
Remember Second Life? Evidently virtual worlds are still a thing, and one of them, Decentraland, is now funding Blender, the popular open-source 3D computer graphics software used for creating everything from animated films to computer games (and yes, virtual reality), to the tune of $135,000 over the next two years.
The cryptocurrency/blockchain based Decentraland platform, in which virtual real estate is acquired through blockchain-based purchases and deeded as non-fungible tokens, announced on Monday that it’s signed up to be a top level Patron sponsor of Blender for a two year period. In doing so, they join such A-list Patron level contributors as Unity, AMD, Facebook, NVIDIA, Amazon Web Services, Epic Games, and Apple.
“This initiative was originally posted in Decentraland’s governance platform by a member of the community,” Decentraland said in a blog announcing the action. “The proposal quickly gained unanimous support from the entire community. As excitement and momentum built across a range of social media platforms, the original proposer connected Decentraland’s DAO Committee with the Blender Foundation to finalize the agreement.
“The Decentraland Foundation, the non-profit organization supporting the development of the Decentraland platform, joined the effort by matching the DAO’s original donation.”
Although not exactly a well-known name, Decentraland seems to be on the sort of roll that the pioneer virtual world platform, Second Life, was experiencing in the early 2000s.
When first launched as a beta in 2017, Decentraland land parcels were going for as little as $20, but since the recent NFT boom its most valuable real estate has been selling for more than $100,000. This summer art auctioneer Sotheby’s created a virtual replica of its London headquarters on the platform, to be used as a virtual gallery in which to show digital art.
