Decentraland is one of web3’s most popular virtual worlds. Now Carlton, a member of the Livepeer community excited about the potential of low latency video, plans to make ultra low latency (ULL) video streaming a reality in this expanding metaverse – thanks to a Livepeer Grant.

Video in Decentraland currently faces a 10-20-second delay, known as latency. That means live streams can take up to 20 seconds to reach users, making true real-time interaction between creators and audiences challenging.

Carlton has built a suite of Livepeer-supported components that will fix that by slashing latency to less than one second. Decentraland ULL will draw upon Livepeer’s cutting-edge ultra low latency technology to make real-time streaming possible in Web3’s most popular virtual world. Since the Livepeer network already provides Decentraland builders with video transcoding infrastructure, this project will build on a well-established connection.

While the metaverse hasn’t quite lived up to the early hype, it is quietly gathering real momentum with forecasts this year suggesting the industry could be worth up to $900 billion by 2030.

The big drivers will be gaming platforms, with their hundreds of millions of devotees, and virtual reality training for high-value or high-risk activities.

By helping enable user-friendly, real-time streaming in Decentraland, Carlton is making it less likely the future of the metaverse will be dominated by large, centralized incumbents such as Meta.

There is a huge range of use cases that benefit from reduced latency, among them:

• Live interaction, from video calls to Q&A sessions.

• Events connecting users in the virtual world to those in the physical one.

• The inclusion of a real object in the virtual world.

• Virtual workspaces.

• Virtual learning or training sessions where instructors take questions from students.

• Remote control of real-world devices such as drones.

• Immersive commerce.

• Gaming.

Interactivity is one of the fastest-growing trends in video, with heavy demand from the education and training, gaming, entertainment and academia sectors.

With the incorporation of Livepeer-powered Decentraland ULL, builders and creators will be able to incorporate ultra low latency video into their scenes, opening a host of new ways to interact both within the metaverse and with the physical world. Tests have been smooth and successful (you can check out an early demo here!)

Carlton has collaborated with developers and user communities to ensure that the components behind Decentraland ULL are robust, intuitive to use, fully documented and compliant with Decentraland’s standards.

Feeling inspired? Since the start of 2023, the Livepeer Grants Program has awarded $250,000+ to more than 30 recipients building next-generation video tools and applications. If you have an idea for a transformative video application, apply today and get building!