Decentraland's Catalyst: Using WebRTC for Live Metaverse Interactions

Decentraland, a decentralized virtual world platform built on Ethereum blockchain, faced performance bottlenecks when using peer-to-peer messaging transport for live metaverse interactions. To solve this issue while maintaining operator independence, the team developed Catalyst, a transport layer abstraction that supports multiple WebRTC transport options. By utilizing LiveKit's open-source server or LiveKit Cloud, Decentraland improved user experience with real-time voice chat and reduced latency for interactions in large groups. This allowed users to engage in spontaneous conversations and live events within the platform.