Decentraland is a decentralized VR (virtual reality) world that is powered by the Ethereum blockchain. In this virtual world, you can purchase land, build it, monetize, and immerse into the applications and content that is built by other users. What distinguishes Decentraland from other VR projects is its decentralized nature. Land and in-game currency are powered by the Ethereum blockchain which gives users complete ownership and promotes transparency.
What is MANA?
MANA is an ERC-20 token powered by the Ethereum blockchain that is used as a native currency in Decentral Land. Users can currently use MANA to purchase LAND and also pay for goods and services in Decentraland. MANA tokens can be purchased from various centralized exchanges, decentralized exchanges, and swap services.
What is LAND?
LAND is a non-fungible token (NFT) powered by the Ethereum blockchain. Users have the opportunity to permanently own any LAND by purchasing land titles and they are all traceable through the blockchain. They would then have total control on any 3D scenes they would like to build on the LAND. Individual parcels of land can be combined into estates to form larger plots of land. You may purchase LAND from secondary markets such as the Marketplace or OpenSea.
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.
