Decentraland (MANA)

Decentraland is a decentralized virtual reality platform powered by the Ethereum blockchain. Within the Decentraland platform, users can create, experience, and monetize their content and applications.

What is Decentraland?

Decentraland is a virtual reality platform powered by the Ethereum blockchain. Users can create, experience, and monetize content and applications. Land in Decentraland is permanently owned by the community, giving them full control over their creations. Users claim ownership of virtual land on a blockchain-based ledger of parcels. Landowners control what content is published to their portion of land, which is identified by a set of cartesian coordinates (x,y). Contents can range from static 3D scenes to interactive systems such as games

Outstanding features

What is the project trying to achieve?

The land is a non-fungible, transferrable, scarce digital asset stored in an Ethereum smart contract. It can be acquired by spending an ERC20 token called MANA. MANA can also be used to make in-world purchases of digital goods and services. 

People are spending increasingly more time in virtual worlds, for both leisure and work1. This occurs predominantly in 2D interfaces such as the web and mobile phones. But a traversable 3D world adds an immersive component as well as adjacency to other content, enabling physical clusters of communities. 

Unlike other virtual worlds and social networks, Decentraland is not controlled by a centralized organization. There is no single agent with the power to modify the rules of the software, contents of land, the economics of the currency, or prevent others from accessing the world. 

Gameplay

• Decentraland LAND

LAND is an NFT of Decentraland. Anyone can own a LAND by purchasing it and have the right to do with that LAND depending on the needs of the user. Each LAND will have a coordinate address (x, y) and once the player owns the LAND, it will be worth forever unless the player sells it.

Builder in-game

If a player uses MANA to buy LAND, they become a builder who builds and adds scenes or entire environments to LAND. Players do not need to know how to code; Decentraland has a large amount of pre-built scenes that can be applied to any LAND for players to choose what they want. Thanks to Decentraland’s open-source technology, it’s all contributed. There are thousands of scenes to choose from, ranging from the most basic sketches to fully developed forests, buildings, and even mansions.

Marketplace

Players can buy/sell anything on the marketplace, such as items for avatars or even LAND and Estates. Players can also go to the marketplace to buy names or buy a variety of wearable items for their characters.

Decentraland Use Cases

• Applications 

The Decentraland scripting language will allow the development of applications, games, gambling, and dynamic 3D scenes. This scripting language will be designed to handle a wide range of capabilities, including creating objects, loading textures, handling physics, encoding user interactions, sounds, payments, and external calls, among others. 

• Content Curation 

Users in Decentraland will gather around neighbourhoods of shared interest. Being located near high-traffic hubs will drive users to the landowners’ content. 

• Advertising 

Brands may advertise using billboards near, or in, high-traffic land parcels to promote their products, services, and events. Some neighbourhoods may become virtual versions of Times Square in New York City. Additionally, brands may position products and create shared experiences to engage with their audience. 

• Digital Collectibles 

Expect users to publish, distribute, and collect rare digital assets issued on the blockchain by their creators. Just as it occurs today in other virtual worlds or through online forums, these digital assets will be traded inside this world through the scripting system and be backed by the aforementioned naming system.

• Social 

Groups that currently gather in online forums, chat groups, or even other centralized multiplayer games could port their communities into Decentraland. Offline communities could also find in Decentraland a space to gather. 

• Other use cases 

There are no technical specifications as to what could be built in Decentraland. Therefore, other use cases could emerge, such as training and professional development, education, therapy, 3D design, and virtual tourism, among others.

What is unique selling point?

Decentraland is an online space that combines virtual reality with blockchain technology. Unlike most other online games, the player has direct control over the rules in this game. The DAO allows MANA token holders to vote directly on in-game policies. This mechanism affects everything from what types of items are allowed to invest to the DAO’s treasury.

NFT (Non-fungible Token) represents in-game collectables; including clothing, virtual items, and real estate, LAND. Users store these tokens in a wallet and sell them to other users on Decentraland Marketplace. To buy a game item such as clothes, masks, etc., users will need to have some MANA – Decentraland’s original token to trade on the marketplace.

Besides trading items and assets, players can participate in games, activities, and artwork, and interact with other players. In addition, players also have the option of making money from LAND. Each player is completely free to decide their own plot.

The Decentraland protocol is comprised of three layers: 

• Consensus layer: Track land ownership and its content. 
• Land content layer: Download assets using a decentralized distribution system. 
• Real-time layer: Enable users’ world viewers to connect to each other

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