I know we haven’t done one of these in a while, but I’ll be doing a presentation on OpenSim — and on AI — at this year’s OpenSim Community Conference, so we’ll need some recent stats!

The big news is that OSgrid reported the equivalent of 864,868 standard region equivalents this month — normally, its land area is around 35,000 regions. If it still had 35,000 regions, the total OpenSim land area this month would have been 142,108 — still an impressive number, but not 971,976!

And even with the smaller number, OSgrid would still be the largest grid by land area.

According to OSgrid president Dan Banner, the regions are from someone working on a continental project.

“They were trying to map out North America,” Banner told Hypergrid Business. “I will check with them and see what’s valid or not and clean up if not.”

For the land area chart below, I’m using the 35,000-region land area number for OSgrid, not the 800,000-region land area.

In other OSgrid news, the grid is celebrating its 18th anniversary this year, and there will be an annual fundraiser with an auction next week.

In other OpenSim stats news, total number of registered users went up by more than 2,000 compared to this past January, when I last ran the stats, while the total number of active users went down by a little over 3,000. The reason is probably because I only have 241 active grids on my list right now, down from 300 in January.

There have probably been a ton of new grids added over the past few months that I’m missing, and a bunch that changed their loginURLs or domain names, or who moved their stats page — grids who should be showing up in the stats but aren’t.

If you’re one of those grids, email me at [email protected].

I am now tracking a total of 2,582 public grids, of which 241 were active this month, and 191 published their statistics.

Our stats do not include most of the grids running on DreamGrid, a free easy-to-use version OpenSim, since these tend to be private grids.

OpenSim is a free, open-source, virtual world platform, that’s similar to Second Life and allows people with no technical skills to quickly and cheaply create virtual worlds and teleport to other virtual worlds. Those with technical skills can run OpenSim worlds on their servers for free using either DreamGrid, the official OpenSim installer for those who are more technically inclined, or any other distribution, while commercial hosting starts at less than $5 a region.

A list of OpenSim hosting providers is here. If you offer region rentals and are not on this list, email me!

You can download the recommended Firestorm viewer here and find out where to get content for your OpenSim world or region here.

Hypergrid Business newsletter is now available

Every month on the 15th — right after the stats report comes out — we will be sending out a newsletter with all the OpenSim news from the previous month. You can subscribe here or fill out the form below.

Hypergrid Business content update

As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve scaled back on Hypergrid Business these last couple of years, mostly due to being super busy with AI coverage at my day job. But then someone offered to buy the site from me. And, in an attempt to get the best possible price for it, I looked up its latest traffic and performance stats. Keeping in mind that these are at a time when I’m barely updating it.

• According to Google Analytics, there were 11,129 pageviews over the last 30 days, with 5,119 unique visitors. 
• Over the past year, there were 157K views by 66,041 unique visitors. 
• From 2009 to 2023, monthly traffic went from 5,000 pageviews to over 100,000, over 200,000, and, one month, hit 346,981. 
• The total number of views over that period was 8.7 million. During the first half of 2023, page views hovered between 29K and 39K a month.

So if we have more content on the site, pageviews would probably go back up. Most of the people would be coming for the VR and AR articles, sure, but, in the process, they might learn something about OpenSim.

But then I found a few more positive indicators. Our Google Search Console shows that Goolge is still showing Hypergrid Business links to millions of people, it’s still listed as a Google News source and it’s included in Google Discover.

Also, a few other nice indicators:

What could someone do with a site like this, with all of its history and domain credibility? Well, they could use it as a launch pad for up-to-date content about VR and AI.

And, since the readers are tech-friendly — in fact, OpenSim readers don’t mind being on the raw, bleeding edges of technology! — they probably wouldn’t mind too much if AI was used to help research and create the content, as long as a real human was overseeing the whole process closely.

In fact, someone recently contacted me with a job doing just that, editing a mostly-AI-generated newsletter about AI.

So that’s an option. I could sell it to someone looking to do something like that.

Or I could keep the site and do something interesting.

For example, I’m very curious about how AI will affect content creators. These are people who create images, text, virtual environments, games — and communities! How will AI affect what they’re doing? What new opportunities will they have — and what will be taken over by automation?

As someone who’s been writing for a living all her adult life, this is a deeply personal question to me.

So I think I’ll be using Hypergrid Business to start exploring it. Maybe I’ll set up some automations to pull  in the stats, say, so that these reports take less time to do. Or maybe I’ll pull in information from OpenSimWorld, grid calendars, and social media feeds and do weekly summaries of the top goings-on on the hypergrid. Or maybe grid owners and organizers can use AI to help them generate regular stories about what’s happening in their communities.

There are a lot of possibilities here. I’m looking forward to doing some exploring.

Top 25 grids by active users

When it comes to general-purpose social grids, especially closed grids, the rule of thumb is the busier the better. People looking to make new friends look for grids that already have the most users. Merchants looking to sell content will go to the grids with the most potential customers. Event organizers looking for the biggest audience — you get the idea.

Top 25 most popular grids this month:

1. Wolf Territories Grid: 10,860 active users
2. OSgrid: 4,265 active users
3. Alternate Metaverse: 2,399 active users
4. DigiWorldz: 2,095 active users
5. GBG World: 2,051 active users
6. WaterSplash: 1,650 active users
7. Darkheart’s Playground: 1,570 active users
8. Sciattisi Grid: 1,408 active users
9. Groovy Verse: 1,374 active users
10. Trianon World: 936 active users
11. AvatarLife: 928 active users
12. Neverworld: 926 active users
13. Sanctum Astra: 913 active users
14. AviWorlds: 875 active users
15. Party Destination Grid: 802 active users
16. Littlefield: 800 active users
17. Craft World: 582 active users
18. Gentle Fire Grid: 576 active users
19. BloodMoon: 536 active users
20. ZetaWorlds: 525 active users
21. SpaceGrid: 399 active users
22. Kitely: 395 active users
23. Herederos Grid: 383 active users
24. Astralia: 380 active users
25. Jungle Friends Grid: 356 active users

Online marketplaces for OpenSim content

I don’t currently have the latest Kitely Market stats because I forgot to email Kitely CEO Ilan Tochner and ask for them.

The Kitely Market is the largest collection of legal content available in OpenSim. It is accessible to both hypergrid-enabled and closed, private grids. The instructions for how to configure the Kitely Market for closed grids are here.

New grids

The following grids were added to our database this month: Nitro, Wild Grid, and WoodstockSim.

If you know of any public grid that we’re missing, please email me at [email protected].

Top 40 grids by land area

All region counts on this list are, whenever available, in terms of standard region equivalents. Active user counts include hypergrid visitors whenever possible.

Many school, company, or personal grids do not publish their numbers.

The raw data for this month’s report is here. A list of all active grids is here. And here is a list of all the hypergrid-enabled grids and their hypergrid addresses, sorted by popularity. This is very useful if you are creating a hyperport.

You can see all the historical OpenSim statistics here, including polls and surveys, dating all the way back to 2009.

• OSgrid: 864,868 regions
• Wolf Territories Grid: 33,253 regions
• Kitely: 17,840 regions
• ZetaWorlds: 17,018 regions
• Groovy Verse: 14,097 regions
• DigiWorldz: 3,494 regions
• Neverworld: 2,620 regions
• Discovery Grid: 1,614 regions
• Tag Grid: 1,465 regions
• Friends Grid: 1,184 regions
• ArtDestiny: 1,089 regions
• Craft World: 969 regions
• GBG World: 955 regions
• AviWorlds: 737 regions
• Kinky Haven: 685 regions
• AvatarLife: 600 regions
• Virtual Worlds Zone: 558 regions
• Littlefield: 533 regions
• Darkheart’s Playground: 410 regions
• Furry World: 358 regions
• EdMondo: 309 regions
• Virtual Vista Metaverse: 262 regions
• Migrating Coconuts: 247 regions
• Open Virtual Worlds: 241 regions
• BloodMoon: 226 regions
• MisFitz Grid: 217 regions
• Japan Open Grid: 201 regions
• Counter Earth: 179 regions
• Kater and Friends: 166 regions
• Adreans-World: 164 regions
• SpaceGrid: 160 regions
• Utopia Skye: 150 regions
• XTalent: 149 regions
• GerGrid: 141 regions
• I Love You Grid: 140 regions
• WestWorld Grid: 137 regions
• Outworldz: 134 regions
• Arcadia Asylum: 134 regions
• Logicamp: 133 regions
• Jungle Friends Grid: 124 regions

Do you know of any other grids that are open to the public but that we don’t have in our database? Email me at [email protected].

Hypergrid Business editor and publisher Maria Korolov is a science fiction novelist. During the day, Maria Korolov is an award-winning freelance technology journalist who covers artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and enterprise virtual reality. See her Amazon author page here and follow her on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, and check out her latest videos on the Maria Korolov YouTube channel. Email her at [email protected]. Her first virtual world novella, Krim Times, made the Amazon best-seller list in its category. Her second novella, The Lost King of Krim, is out now. She is also the publisher of MetaStellar, a new online magazine of speculative fiction.

Latest posts by Maria Korolov (see all)

Earlier this month, the BTC mining hotspot of Irkutsk unveiled the nation’s first-ever year-round ban on crypto mining in the southern part of the oblast.

This move came just months after Moscow imposed a wintertime ban on crypto mining in 10 Russian and Russian-controlled regions until 2031.

Russian Gas Alternative for Irkutsk Bitcoin Miners?

Per the Russian news agency Interfax, the Irkutsk Governor Igor Kobzev has urged major players in the mining market to join forces with oil and gas companies.

He said that the parties should unite to build data centers that use “alternative fuel sources.”

Kobzev made the comments during an April 25 address on the state of affairs in the region. He claimed that the Irkutsk government was “not against mining as a phenomenon.”

However, he reasserted claims that miners need to overcome electricity shortages. And he said his government had a duty to ensure residents and enterprises in the region enjoyed uninterrupted electricity supplies. Kobzev said:

“The regional government is ready to act as a platform to coordinate interaction between mining operators and enterprises working in the oil and gas production sector. There are already successful cases of firms building data centers powered by autonomous generation. These firms use associated gas.”

Russian oil firms have been working with crypto miners on associated gas-related pilots since the start of the current decade.

Some of the nation’s biggest BTC miners and oil firms, including BitRiver and Gazprom Neft, started working together in 2022.

Russia Starting to Feel Crypto Mining Boom Downside?

Russia has seen one of the world’s biggest booms in Bitcoin and altcoin mining in recent years. With many miners forced out of China, Russian miners have claimed that taxing their industry could bring Moscow hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of revenue.

But this growth has taken a toll on many areas’ energy grids. The Ministry of Energy is reportedly mulling issuing three more regional mining bans as networks in some areas begin to suffer.

Other parts of the country claim they have surplus power that they can use to power miners’ rigs.

But Kobzev appears keen to keep miners in southern Irkutsk away from public grids at all costs. He pledged to support associated gas-powered crypto mining initiatives “in every possible way.”

He also said that such a partnership could help improve the Irkutsk environment by reducing flaring.

Could BTC Miners Switch to Russian Gas Power?

When drilling for crude oil, producers often release pockets of natural (associated) gas. If drillers do not have any infrastructure that lets them capture this gas, they must instead burn it using flare stacks.

Many industries are hesitant about using associated gas, as it tends to produce intense but irregular bursts of energy, rather than uninterrupted flows.

Some Russian miners, however, say that they are happy to use this model of energy flow, provided they can pay discounted rates.

Kobzev was optimistic about the said that a failure to stamp out crypto mining-related energy problems could see the capacity deficit in southeastern Siberia hit just shy of 3GW by 2030.

But critics say that efforts to ban crypto mining in southern Irkutsk have instead resulted in a rise in illegal and quasi-legal operations.

Some claim that rising Bitcoin prices have also played a role, with miners now increasingly reluctant to turn off their rigs.

The post Russian Governor Says Gas Solution May Solve Region’s Bitcoin Mining Woes appeared first on Cryptonews.

The state-run news agency TASS reported that the ministry is mulling mining bans in the northern part of Karelia (northwestern Russia), the Penza Oblast (over 600km southeast of Moscow), and part of Khakassia, in Southern Siberia.

Russian Energy Ministry: Three More Areas Want Crypto Mining Bans

A spokesperson for Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak also confirmed that a government commission is likely to pass a ruling on new mining bans sometime in May.

The same spokesperson also mentioned Khakassia, but did not speak about Karelia or Penza.

On January 1, 2025, Moscow banned mining during the winter months in 10 Russian and Russian-controlled regions, including parts of Southern Siberia and the North Caucasus.

On April 7, Moscow imposed its first year-round ban on crypto mining, outlawing the activity until 2031 in the southern part of the Irkutsk Oblast.

Irkutsk is Russia’s first and most prominent Bitcoin (BTC) mining hub. In the Buryatia and Transbaikalia regions, meanwhile, the government has asked miners to turn off their rigs during peak periods of energy consumption.

Andrey Maksimov, the head of the ministry’s Department for the Development of the Electric Power Industry, confirmed that an “expansion” of the ban was “possible.”

Maksimov said that the government authorities in “several regions” had spoken of their “interest in introducing restrictions.”

However, Maksimov did not specify whether the regions had asked Moscow to impose year-round or seasonal bans.

The official left the door open for Moscow to impose other restrictions, suggesting that the ministry has not decided if further bans truly are the best course of action.

Industrial miners in Karelia, meanwhile, have also suggested that tariffs and increased tax bills could work more effectively than bans.

Industrial Miners Want Taxes and Tariffs, Not Bans

In a separate report, TASS quoted Sergei Maksakov, the chairman of the economics, taxes, and finances committee at the Karelia Chamber of Commerce and Industry, as saying:

“We need some fine-tuning. Categorical methods, like bans, are not the best way. Mining can be limited using differentiated electricity tariffs. We can also partially, perhaps, ask miners to give up their capacities.”

Maksakov added that before changing legislation that affects businesses, Moscow should speak to industrial miners “to reach a consensus.” He concluded:

“The first thing that needs to be done is to discuss these decisions with businesses, not in a narrow circle. And the second issue is regulatory. Economically speaking, we need to ensure that the wolves are fed while the sheep are kept safe.”

The post Russian Energy Ministry May Ban Crypto Mining in Three More Regions appeared first on Cryptonews.

The total land area of OpenSim’s public grids jumped by more than 33,000 region equivalents this month, with the addition of a large new grid to our list. However, the total number of active users was down by nearly 1,500, due to several grids not reporting stats this month. Missing grids included Fire and Ice, The City, and Little Big City.

The big new grid was Simation Grid, with a reported 25,408 region equivalents. OpenSim’s architecture makes it easy for grid owners to launch with plenty of space. Or it could be a stats mistake — the grid’s website says “Standard Region Equivalents: 25408 Km2” — and if it is actually giving the area in square kilometers, than it has 387,693 total regions, which would make it larger than all the other OpenSim grids put together. I couldn’t find any contact information on the grid’s website, and some of the pages seem to be placeholders, so if you’re the owner of Simation Grid and are reading this, and if I got your numbers wrong — please email me at maria@hypergridbusiness.com and I’ll update this article!

We are now tracking a total of 2,675 public grids, of which 318 are active and 258 published their statistics this month. If you have a stats page that we’re not tracking, please email me at maria@hypergridbusiness.com — that way, your grid will be mentioned in this report every month, for additional visibility with both search engines and users.

This month, OSgrid was the largest grid by land area, with 33,554 standard region equivalents, while Wolf Territories Grid was the most active, with 6,540 unique logins over the past 30 days.

Our stats do not include most of the grids running on DreamGrid, a free easy-to-use version OpenSim, since these tend to be private grids.

OpenSim is a free, open-source, virtual world platform, that’s similar to Second Life and allows people with no technical skills to quickly and cheaply create virtual worlds and teleport to other virtual worlds. Those with technical skills can run OpenSim worlds on their servers for free using either DreamGrid, the official OpenSim installer for those who are more technically inclined, or any other distribution, while commercial hosting starts at less than $5 a region.

A list of OpenSim hosting providers is here. Download the recommended Firestorm viewer here and find out where to get content for your OpenSim world or region here.

Hypergrid Business newsletter is now available

Every month on the 15th — right after the stats report comes out — we will be sending out a newsletter with all the OpenSim news from the previous month. You can subscribe here or fill out the form below.

Top 25 grids by active users

When it comes to general-purpose social grids, especially closed grids, the rule of thumb is the busier the better. People looking to make new friends look for grids that already have the most users. Merchants looking to sell content will go to the grids with the most potential customers. Event organizers looking for the biggest audience — you get the idea.

Top 25 most popular grids this month:

1. Wolf Territories Grid: 6,540 active users
2. OSgrid: 5,168 active users
3. GBG World: 2,333 active users
4. DigiWorldz: 2,163 active users
5. Alternate Metaverse: 1,967 active users
6. Vida Dupla: 1,838 active users
7. Darkheart’s Playground: 1,718 active users
8. WaterSplash: 1,521 active users
9. Trianon World: 1,108 active users
10. AviWorlds: 1,028 active users
11. AviVerse AlterEgo: 987 active users
12. Neverworld: 962 active users
13. Littlefield: 935 active users
14. Party Destination Grid: 840 active users
15. AvatarLife: 837 active users
16. Moonrose: 825 active users
17. Astralia: 771 active users
18. Craft World: 744 active users
19. Herederos Grid: 582 active users
20. Virtual Vista Metaverse: 545 active users
21. Gentle Fire Grid: 537 active users
22. ZetaWorlds: 524 active users
23. Groovy Verse: 522 active users
24. Kitely: 462 active users
25. Barefoot Dreamers: 438 active users

The biggest change on this list was the addition of Virtual Vista Metaverse, a new grid in our database, which had a strong launch.

Online marketplaces for OpenSim content

There are currently 20,965 product listings in Kitely Market containing 41,073 product variations, 35,835 of which are exportable.

Kitely Market has delivered orders to 628 OpenSim grids to date.

As you can see in the above chart, nearly all the growth in Kitely Market has been in content that can be exported to other grids — that is the green area on the graph. The red area, of non-exportable content, has stayed level for the past eight years.

The Kitely Market is the largest collection of legal content available in OpenSim. It is accessible to both hypergrid-enabled and closed, private grids. The instructions for how to configure the Kitely Market for closed grids are here.

Kitely has recently upgraded its version of OpenSim to allow for faster start-up times and better compatibility with scripts imported from Second Life.

New grids

The following grids were added to our database this month: Agartha, AmaziWorld, Casperia Prime, Gridworld, HG Safari Grid, Nosso Lar, Sciattisi Grid, Simation Grid, Steg, and Tenth Dimension.

If you know of any public grid that we’re missing, please email me at maria@hypergridbusiness.com.

Suspended grids

The following nine grids were marked suspended this month: Eenhgrid, Hermopolis Chimera, Kantarobasta Grid, Kindred Spirits World, Pseudospace, Rocket World, Royal Grid, Starfleet, and  Tropicana Grid.

If they don’t reappear online again soon, they will be marked as closed in future reports.

Sometimes, a grid changes its login URI or website address — if that’s the case, email me and let me know and I’ll update my database.

Top 40 grids by land area

All region counts on this list are, whenever available, in terms of standard region equivalents. Active user counts include hypergrid visitors whenever possible.

Many school, company, or personal grids do not publish their numbers.

The raw data for this month’s report is here. A list of all active grids is here. And here is a list of all the hypergrid-enabled grids and their hypergrid addresses, sorted by popularity. This is very useful if you are creating a hyperport.

You can see all the historical OpenSim statistics here, including polls and surveys, dating all the way back to 2009.

• OSgrid: 33,554 regions
• Wolf Territories Grid: 29,276 regions
• Simation Grid: 25,408 regions
• Kitely: 18,108 regions
• ZetaWorlds: 12,932 regions
• Alternate Metaverse: 10,437 regions
• Groovy Verse: 8,201 regions
• Discovery Grid: 4,945 regions
• DigiWorldz: 3,527 regions
• Virtual Vista Metaverse: 3,260 regions
• Tag Grid: 1,464 regions
• Shoalwater Bay: 1,072 regions
• Friends Grid: 1,040 regions
• GBG World: 957 regions
• Virtual Worlds Grid: 915 regions
• ArtDestiny: 900 regions
• AviWorlds: 841 regions
• Craft World: 673 regions
• Kinky Haven: 669 regions
• AvatarLife: 594 regions
• Littlefield: 513 regions
• GorGrid: 430 regions
• Furry World: 373 regions
• Virtual Worlds Zone: 364 regions
• Neverworld: 348 regions
• DreamNation: 308 regions
• Nemesis 3D: 305 regions
• EdMondo: 300 regions
• Insight Concepts: 240 regions
• Open Virtual Worlds: 229 regions
• Darkheart’s Playground: 218 regions
• Japan Open Grid: 188 regions
• Counter Earth: 186 regions
• Kater and Friends: 185 regions
• MisFitz Grid: 183 regions
• Adreans-World: 173 regions
• OpenSim Fest: 140 regions
• WestWorld Grid: 135 regions
• XTalent: 133 regions
• GerGrid: 132 regions

Do you know of any other grids that are open to the public but that we don’t have in our database? Email me at maria@hypergridbusiness.com.

Hypergrid Business editor and publisher Maria Korolov is a science fiction novelist. During the day, Maria Korolov is an award-winning freelance technology journalist who covers artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and enterprise virtual reality. See her Amazon author page here and follow her on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, and check out her latest videos on the Maria Korolov YouTube channel. Email her at maria@hypergridbusiness.com. Her first virtual world novella, Krim Times, made the Amazon best-seller list in its category. Her second novella, The Lost King of Krim, is out now. She is also the publisher of MetaStellar, a new online magazine of speculative fiction.

Latest posts by Maria Korolov (see all)