Hi Kusama community, Please find this update on the Kusamaverse Milestone 2 (https://kusama.subsquare.io/council/motions/499):

TLDR:

• The Kusamaverse has struggled with adoption after initial enthusiasm;
• The company behind the Kusamaverse went through a major pivot;
• In agreement with Raul and Otar, the project was paused during the pivot.
• The work for Milestone 2 has not been started;
• We’ve agreed to return all Milestone 2 funds to the treasury and have already done so;
• The source code is open source.

In February 2022, we successfully applied for a treasury grant to develop Milestone 1 of the Kusamaverse. All Milestone 1 objectives were met and we delivered a fully-functional metaverse platform for the Kusama community in its basic early form. The Kusamaverse Milestone 1 has been fully up and running and is being hosted by Odyssey (at our own expenses) since the launch in May 2022 at https://kusama.momentum.xyz/login

Please find:

• The treasury proposal here: https://kusama.polkassembly.io/treasury/134
• The report on Milestone 1 here https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xQMsineQsmQrDVP4LypEJp_zvv0TjkTCMCOQV0hAsnY/edit#heading=h.vuwsewzbwlbu
• Kusamaverse keynote at Polkadot Decoded 2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0wSLQ8Co3M

After the support and enthusiasm received from the community, we successfully applied for a treasury grant in June 2022 to develop Milestone 2 of the Kusamaverse: https://kusama.polkassembly.io/treasury/174 / https://kusama.subsquare.io/council/motions/499

Even though we have received quite a bit of enthusiasm after delivering Milestone 1 and presenting it at Polkadot Decoded in Berlin, we encountered significant challenges in getting user adoption and retention for the Kusamaverse in the weeks and months after Decoded.

At the same time we encountered problems on the “ownership” level. We saw the same adoption issues with all the 3D worlds we’ve built for other organizations and communities. We began to explore various directions to pivot the platform towards greater success, all the while abstaining from spending the funds allocated for Milestone 2. During this time we have been in continuous conversations with Otar and Raul from the Kusama community.

In the past year we have developed the open source Odyssey stack. With it, the Kusama community can build their own Kusamaverse if they want, instead of us building the Kusamaverse for the Kusama community. The stack can be applied on Kusama or any other (para)chain in case this community wants to develop their own “verse”. The stack is built in such a way that any chain or token can be used. Users can mint 3D worlds as NFTs on their own chain and stake their own tokens in those worlds (depending on their own tech).

Due to all learnings we've come to the conclusion that the goals set for Milestone 2 will not be achievable in the short term in the manner originally planned. In accordance with the agreement reached with Otar and Raul, we have returned all the allocated funds (8565 KSM) for Milestone 2 (https://kusama.subscan.io/extrinsic/20051137-8). We aim to deliver the final report in October, in close collaboration with Otar and Raul. We will keep the Kusamaverse online until October 18th 2023.

The platform on which the Kusamaverse was built is, in pivoted form, fully open source and available at https://github.com/momentum-xyz

We want to thank everyone from the Dotsama community who was involved for your support, patience, and invaluable input and feedback throughout this journey.