2024 Wrapped
It was an exciting year for Passage with our official Closed Alpha launch—and you were a huge part of it!
Here’s what we accomplished together:
⭐ 1st virtual world to run on permissionless GPUs via Akash
⭐ 21 teams onboarded in Closed Alpha
⭐ 446 events hosted
⭐ 3,214 user hours spent in-world
⭐ 7.1M PASG awarded to the open-source community
⭐ Over 45,000 views generated for events like Cosmoverse and Nebular Summit
Passage Platform
Closed Alpha
We officially opened Passage Elite in Closed Alpha with a group of select partners to test the earliest versions of the platform. We’ve onboarded 21 teams with unique cases, from education and Web3 communities to 3D production.
We also hosted hundreds of demos, podcasts, and conversations in Passage with teams from Stakecito and XION to Andromeda and Interchain.FM.
Overall, nearly 450 events were hosted in Passage, with over 3,200 user hours!
As development continued, we introduced new worlds and features like 3D characters and PALS avatar customizations, along with improvements like custom world permissions, media management, and world tagging.
We’ve also created a plugin that enables users to implement Passage features into their own Unreal Engine 5 worlds and prep the world for use on the Passage platform.
Every week, we meet with our community to test out new Passage worlds and features—join us for the next one on January 9.
Akash
Passage performance got a major boost as it became the first virtual world to run on permissionless GPUs from Akash Network. To make this happen, we built a fully custom C++ interface for Unreal Engine on Linux.
Akash’s decentralized cloud-compute helps us to reduce hosting costs by an average of 50%, providing cost savings and flexibility so we can focus on growth and creating features for creators.
The integration is complete on the backend, and 1-click deployment of events on Akash will be available for Closed Beta users in Q1.
“Passage proves what’s possible with decentralized cloud infrastructure. They were able to reduce their cloud spend by up to 70%, with an average cost savings of 50%, while running virtual worlds on the highest-demand NVIDIA GPUs. This is exactly why Akash was built.”
– Greg Osuri, Founder of Akash
Events
We believe Passage experiences serve as a perfect complement to in-person events—enhancing, but not replacing the organic, human element of real life gatherings.
In 2024, we had the opportunity to host virtual side events for some of the largest conferences in Cosmos: Nebular Summit and Cosmoverse.
Leveraging Passage to add a meaningful virtual component racked up over 45,000 views across social media, while offering new opportunities for speakers and attendees who weren’t able to travel to the event.
While we’re passionate about virtual, we also made our way to a few in-person events this year! We traveled to ETHDenver, we spoke on panels at the ATOMDenver side event, then headed to Consensus in Austin, where we presented at Akash Accelerate and made some invaluable connections who are now Passage users!
AADAO Grant
We were thrilled to receive a grant from AADAO to supercharge ATOM use cases in the metaverse.
Following the Cosmoverse side event series which took place in October, we’re focused on the following objectives supported by AADAO’s grant:
- Enabling IBC ATOM payments on the Passage Marketplace, allowing users to mint and trade assets in ATOM
- Launching a collection of NFT avatar customizations, which will be available to purchase in ATOM and can be used in the Passage platform
- Continue building the Cosmos Community Hub, a virtual world dedicated to education and engagement in the Cosmos ecosystem.
Open-Source Community
Launched in February, our growing open-source community has made strides for the Passage Marketplace and blockchain.
The Passage Steering Committee has awarded over 7.1M PASG in bounties to the community, including:
- A new custom indexer
- Archive node for Passage Chain
- NFT Staking for Strange Clan Eggs and other creators
- UI/UX improvements and mobile compatibility for the Marketplace
- PASG airdrop checker website for Strange Clan NFT holders
- Dashboard to provide insights into NFT sales, trends, and performance metrics
The Committee’s next priorities include enabling IBC ATOM as a currency on the Marketplace and allowing users to launch new NFT collections. These bounties are open to proposals, so please get in touch if you’re interested in contributing!
The Steering Committee meets on the second-to-last Wednesday of each month. If you’d like to get involved, hop over to our Discord and join the next meeting on January 22!
You can view the full schedule, meeting notes, and bounties on Github.
PASG
This year, it got easier to acquire, swap, stake, and manage your PASG tokens.
New liquidity pools were launched on Osmosis (AKT/PASG and supercharged PASG/USDC) and Astrovault, while platforms like Pulsar Finance and Staking Rewards provided deeper insights into PASG staking and enhanced portfolio management.
Keplr Wallet added native support for PASG in its browser extension, mobile app, and web dashboard, and Leap Wallet added in-wallet token swaps for PASG.
We also had the first PASG token burn of 11.7 million unclaimed tokens from the Strange Clan airdrop following a governance vote. 49,919,310 tokens were also claimed by Strange Clan NFT holders in January, with a bonus round coming for dedicated stakers in 2025!
Looking Ahead to 2025
In the coming year, we will be opening up Passage for hundreds of new users through the Closed Beta by the end of Q1, followed by public Open Beta later in the year.
The Closed Beta will include new blockchain integrations for using Passage NFTs in Passage worlds, along with new features for accessibility like mobile support and new entry methods.
The Passage Marketplace will unlock new features like NFT staking, an overhauled UI with mobile support, and a host of new creators launching collections!
Cheers to a new year! The future is bright. Stay dragon, fam!
