Decentraland (MANA)
What Is Decentraland (MANA)?
Decentraland (MANA) defines itself as a virtual reality platform powered by the Ethereum blockchain that allows users to create, experience, and monetize content and applications.
In this virtual world, users purchase plots of land that they can later navigate, build upon and monetize.
Decentraland was launched following a $24 million initial coin offering (ICO) that was conducted in 2017. The virtual world launched its closed beta in 2019 and opened to the public in February 2020. Since then, users have created a wide range of experiences on their parcels of LAND, including interactive games, sprawling 3D scenes and a variety of other interactive experiences.
Decentraland uses two tokens: MANA and LAND. MANA is an ERC-20 token that must be burned to acquire non-fungible ERC-721 LAND tokens. MANA tokens can also be used to pay for a range of avatars, wearables, names, and more on the Decentraland marketplace.
Who Are the Founders of Decentraland?
Decentraland was co-founded by Ariel Meilich and Esteban Ordano — both of whom have stepped down from major positions at the project, but still work alongside Decentraland as advisors.
Ariel Meilich previously held the role of project lead at Decentraland between 2017 and 2020, and is a serial entrepreneur that has founded several other startups, including an online translation agency and a CRM platform. He also worked as an analyst at Charles River Ventures, a prominent Silicon Valley venture fund.
On the other hand, Esteban Ordano is Decentraland's former tech lead and has a long and varied history in the cryptocurrency space working as a software engineer at BitPay, Inc., an advisor to Matic Network and briefly operated his own smart contract development firm known as Smart Contract Solutions.
Esteban is also credited with co-founding Zeppelin Solutions, an established blockchain technology infrastructure company.
Although Ariel and Estaban are no longer leading the project, the development of Decentraland is still ongoing, with efforts being directed by the recently established Decentraland Foundation.
What Makes Decentraland Unique?
Decentraland is built for content creators, businesses and individuals that are looking for a new artistic medium, business opportunity, or source of entertainment.
In total, the Decentraland gameworld — termed the “Metaverse” — is divided into 90,601 individual parcels of LAND, each of which is represented by an ERC-721 non-fungible token. Each LAND is exactly 16m x 16m (256 square meters) and can be found at a particular coordinate in the Metaverse.
Though LAND holders are free to develop their plot into whatever they choose, much of the Metaverse is broadly divided into several districts, each of which has a different size and theme. These districts were generated through individual crowdsales for MANA tokens, and parcels of LAND in these districts cannot be traded.
As of January 2021, the cyberpunk-themed Aetheria is the largest district — comprising a total of 8,008 LAND.
Decentraland is also one of the growing number of projects to use a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) structure for governance decisions. As a result, MANA toker holders are in control of how the Decentraland world behaves, by proposing and voting on policy updates, the specifics of upcoming LAND auctions and the types of content that are allowed with the Metaverse.
Besides being a creative outlet, many Decentraland users currently monetize their LAND through leasing, advertising and paid experiences. Likewise, other users generate an income by creating and selling items on the Decentraland marketplace for MANA tokens.
How Is the Decentraland Network Secured?
MANA is an ERC-20 token. This means it is based on the Ethereum blockchain.
Ethereum is secured by a massive decentralized network of miners, which work together with thousands of nodes to ensure the Ethereum blockchain and hence the MANA tokens is protected against attacks.
As one of the most battle-tested blockchains in current usage, Ethereum is currently the most popular network for crypto tokens that don’t have their own native blockchain.
How does Decentraland work?
The Decentraland application is built to track real estate parcels defined by LAND tokens.
The software leverages the Ethereum blockchain to track ownership of this digital land, and it requires users to hold its MANA token within an Ethereum wallet to engage with its ecosystem.
Further, developers are free to innovate within Decentraland’s platform by designing the animation and interactions experienced on their virtual real estate.
Architecture
Decentraland has many layered components built using Ethereum smart contracts.
The consensus layer maintains a ledger that tracks the ownership of land parcels. Each parcel of LAND has a unique coordinate in the virtual world, an owner and a reference to a description file representing the content within the parcel.
The content layer controls what happens within each parcel, and includes various files required to render them:
- Content Files : referencing all static audio and visuals
- Script Files : defining the placement and behavior of the referenced content
- Interaction Definition : peer-to-peer interactions such as gesturing, voice chat, and messaging.
Finally, the real-time layer facilitates social interactions within Decentraland through user avatars, including voice chat and messaging.
Marketplace and Builder
- Outside of the gaming environment, the Decentraland team has released a marketplace along with a drag-and-drop editor users can access to build scenes.
- The marketplace enables participants to manage and exchange LAND tokens, priced in MANA. Owners can use the marketplace to transact or transfer parcels and other in-game items such as wearables and unique names.
- Of note, all transactions are settled between Ethereum wallets, and therefore are verified by Ethereum’s network and logged on its blockchain.
- Decentraland’s builder tools authorize owners to curate a unique experience within their LAND parcels. Interactive scenes are designed through its editing tool, where developers can access customization libraries and payment implementations.
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Cryptocurrency