As of 26th July 2020 the total amount of main grid regions in Second Life has dropped under the 25, 000 mark according to the Second Life Grid Survey. Mainly through Private Estates and some Linden Owned regions have been showing signs of decline during the past month.
The total region count has actually been lower than this in previous years like back when there were 23, 298 regions back on 18th March 2018. At the moment there is no need to panic but if trends continue like they are then the decline will sadly get worse before the end of 2020.
The first six months of 2020 there have been signs of positive growth in Second Life and hopefully soon the grid growth will return. See below for the grid numbers counted for January, June and July.
Main Grid size as of 26th July 2020
- Total Main Grid Regions: 24, 947
- Private Estates: 16, 662
- Linden Owned: 8, 285
Main Grid size – 7th June 2020
- Total Main Grid Regions: 25, 160
- Private Estates: 16, 902
- Linden Owned: 8, 258
Main Grid size – 20th January 2020
- Total Main Grid Regions: 24, 147
- Private Estates: 16, 036
- Linden Owned: 8, 111
What To Expect Next ?
- Once the migration to the cloud has been completed in early Autumn then the region capacity will increase again. The lab have not released any dates yet. This will effect the private estate numbers.
- The Bellisseria continent will start to grow again after the cloud move is finished. This will increase the Linden Owned regions.
- Hopefully during 2021 Linden Lab may lower the land costs or do something to help the Second Life community.
How does OpenSim compare ?
If you put the OSgrid and Kitely regions combined together it will surpass Second Life regions by a huge margin. There are now over 1, 572 public accessible opensim grids now. The total OpenSim land area expanded by more than 800 regions. Is everyone switching to OpenSim now ?
There are now roughly 80, 000 regions on OpenSim which is a huge amount. Second Life has 24, 947 regions in total. From the looks of things OpenSim is still growing in terms of regions and active users.
See July 2020 report
I will blog about the grid numbers in October and then again at the end of 2020. Hopefully by then the grid numbers will be positive. If there is any big changes or announcements then I’ll share them on my blog.
Daniel Voyager 