Table of content
- Decentraland overview – What is Decentraland?
- Decentraland gameplay
- Decentraland pros and сons
- Decentraland Tokenomics
- Decentraland: How to get started
- Conclusion about Decentraland
- FAQ about Decentraland
The Metaverse, virtual reality, augmented reality, and blockchain have all ganged up for the ultimate mashup, and they’re bringing the popcorn for some near-real experiences that’ll make your grandma’s knitting circle look boring.
With our spotlight on one of those technologies in this blog post, we will dive headfast into how Decentraland is leveraging blockchain, VR/AR, NFTs and the metaverse to deliver a near-world virtual experience.
Shall we?
Decentraland overview – What is Decentraland?
Decentraland is a virtual reality platform that runs on the Ethereum Blockchain and facilitates the creation of digital assets. It offers an immersive virtual experience and enables creators to monetize their content and applications on the blockchain.
As an immersive metaverse-based platform, Decentraland allows users to acquire digital land and tokenized real estate. The users then develop and monetise these portions in different ways. Developing the digital portions of land allows users to control the in-game assets around that piece, manage the policies and the execution of decentralized autonomy.
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A decentralized metaverse eliminates the need for a centralized entity to run things on behalf of users. For example, the community of users determine all upgrades since they all own a stake in the company through holding its native token, Decentraland (MANA).
What is MANA? MANA is an ERC-20 digital asset token that facilitates payment of goods and services across the Decentraland ecosystem. Users can buy MANA using either fiat or cryptocurrency on a cryptocurrency exchange or via their wallets. In addition, the token gives its holders voting rights in the Decentraland DAO. However, the holder has to convert them into wMANA (Wrapped MANA), so as to enable them to commit to the decentralized autonomous organization.
The Decentraland virtual world came into inception in 2015. The metaverse project provides a 3D grid that contains a limited amount of LAND portions. These portions are Decentraland’s in-game non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which users can customize, develop, transfer or trade in exchange for cryptocurrency. As an NFT, each LAND portion has its own unique properties to distinguish it from others. This means each user holds a different land parcel from their counterparts on Decentraland. Ari Meilich, Decentraland’s project lead and Esteban Ordano, the project’s technical lead founded Decentraland in Beijing, China on August 2017.
Decentraland is not a game. However, the platform has incredible gaming features which is the main subject of this blog post. Continue below to understand Decentraland’s gaming features and how to monetize content on the platform
Decentraland Gameplay
A Decentraland Gameplay Analysis
LAND is the primary commodity in Decentraland. Users on the platform use the Land as a canvas where they can idealize and develop digital assets. These assets could be real estate, houses or farms. Once a user purchases and completely owns a portion of Land on decentraland, they get the full freedom to build what they want and take any income from the portion.
But what is LAND? Land on Decentraland is an ERC-20 nonfungible token, which the metaverse-based platform references as unique coordinates on the cartesian plane. Recording the coordinates on the Ethereum blockchain as NFTs allows each LAND token to be unique and manifest its own properties. For this reason, the owner of that portion of LAND can develop in whichever way they want.
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Each LAND portion on the Decentraland metaverse carries a different utility based on its proximity to surrounding attention hubs. These attention hubs determine the LAND’s ability to host applications. If a parcel has high utility, demand for that LAND will be high. Hence, developers and creators demand different LAND tokens depending on their product and their target market.
However, it is still possible to purchase unclaimed LAND parcels from the Decentraland Marketplace at the same exchange rate of 1 LAND, which is equivalent to 1000 MANA. When trading these LAND parcels at the secondary market, they will have different pricing and will have different demands depending on traffic and adjacent property.
Decentraland has two outstanding features, decentralization and a fully immersive experience. Being decentralized has distinguished Decentraland from other existing Virtual Reality platforms by ensuring there is no single central authority to govern the platform. Hence, users have full control over their land, including the content they will build. As a community-centric platform, Decentraland aims to introduce open standards for governance and eliminate centralized agendas.
The other prominent feature is Decentraland’s fully immersive experience which comprises a range of events, art exhibitions, music fares, fashion shows and interactive experiences with leading brands like Netflix. On Decentraland, users can also discover new communities, play games and explore diverse in-game assets. The Decentraland community comprises degens, web 3.0 gaming ethusiastes, creators, developers and investors. It is a vibrant community that is quite engaging and interactive.
Decentraland Pros and Cons
| Pros of Decentraland | Cons of Decentraland |
| Offers a true virtual experience | Emotionless at times |
| Creators are at the forefront of everything | High barrier of entry |
| Incredible virtual headquarters for international brand |
Pros
A true virtual experience
The entire Decentraland environment is a fully immersive experience comprising customizable avatars, LAND scenes and a pool of builder tools to develop your land. Thanks to Decentraland’s open-source model, developers and creators around the world have contributed alot of scenes for users to choose from. Offering an immersive experience ensures players remain engaged and hooked to the platform.
Creators are at the forefront of everything
Creators are at the forefront of Decentraland’s community-centric model. For this reason, the platform empowers the creators to create and develop their own virtual space using the available inbuilt tools. Thereby enhancing creativity and promoting innovation.
Incredible virtual headquarters for international brands
We are living in an era where brands launch products through virtual events, or court cases are held on the Metaverse. Hence, Decentraland has positioned itself as a global hub of leading brands that would want to build a virtual headquarters. Various companies are already utilizing infrastructure on Decentraland for product launches, demonstrations and marketing events.
Cons
Emotionless at times
Spending plenty of your time in front of a screen might feel like an emotionless pit with no human connection. Interactions are limited to avatars, which are often text-based or robotic audio. Which might result in a sense of detachment compared to utilizing real-world social interactions.
High barrier to entry
Decentraland has a steep learning curve. Newbiers for example need to understand blockchain technology, tokenization, Ethereum ERC-tokens and digital assets marketplaces for them to succeed in Decentraland. However, once they are comfortable with this technology stack, navigating the platform will be a breeze.
Decentraland Tokenomics
As mentioned earlier, Decentraland Economics has two native tokens; MANA and LAND. In this section, we are going to draw information from the Decentraland Whitepaper and explain how the strategic allocation of both tokens drives the growth of a virtual space.
LAND is a non-fungible portion of the land upon which Decentraland is divided. MANA on the other hand is an ERC-20 token that one burns to claim LAND. Additionally, you can utilize MANA as a payment method when buying goods and services in the Internet marketplace.
What drives demand for land on Decentraland? Each LAND’s utility is determined by its proximity to valuable attention hubs. These attention hubs determine what creators will build on a particular portion. There are two types of LAND on Decentraland, claimed and unclaimed LAND.. Developers pay a standard rate of 1000 MANA tokens to purchase 1 unclaimed LAND. However, claimed land fetches more MANA tokens and the cost depends on their adjacency and traffic. Claimed LAND tokens are traded on the secondary market.
Note that LAND tokens are the standard Decentraland NFTs on the platform. MANA on the other hand serves as the primary Decentraland cryptocurrency.
Decentraland: How to get started with Decentraland?
Step 1: Access the Browser App
Visit the official Decentraland website and press “START EXPLORING’ on the top-right bar of the landing page.
If on Windows, download and play the Beta Version of the Decentraland app. Otherwise, users could also choose to play using the browser version.
After accessing the interactive panel, players have to interact with the blockchain by connecting their Ethereum-supported wallets.
Step 2: Connect your Wallet
Decentraland supports multiple cryptocurrency wallets. These include Coinbase Wallet, WalletConnect, MetaMask and the Fortmatic wallet. Players will choose their ideal wallet, sign up, back up the seed phrase and create a strong password. MetaMask is one of the most popular choices for Web 3.0 gamers. Hence, we will highlight a few steps below for connecting MetaMask to Decentraland:
- Sign up on Metamask to access Decentraland VR experiences
- Download Metamask’s browser extension on Chrome or Brave.
- Navigate to Decentraland.com and locate, Decentraland Browser Version
- Press ‘ PLAY USING WALLET’ and from the screen pop-up,
- Choose your desired wallet. In this case, Metamask. Go ahead and confirm the transaction with the Ethereum blockchain.
Step 3: Set up your Avatar
What is an Avatar? An avatar is a virtual icon or digital figure representing a particular person in either a virtual reality space, a game or an internet forum.
Decentraland provides users with an avatar to represent them on the Decentraland metaverse. Users have a wide array of customization tools that help personalize the avatar according to user preferences.
The first step in setting up and customizing an avatar is changing its gender and colour tone. For you to access other physical attributes, click the top navigation menu. Decentraland allows users to customize the avatar from head to feet. There are different options to choose from and a variety of wearables to accessorize the clothing.
Conclusion about Decentraland
It is evident that Decentraland is a revolutionary virtual reality space within the blockchain ecosystem. Already, the platform has embarked on a pioneering journey to set the benchmark for new interactive virtual games, immersive metaverse experiences and superior alternate dAPPs.
However, several people have come out to bash Decentraland’s high gas fees and the high cost of purchasing wearables. Nonetheless, the platform has an overal intuitive user experience that we gave 9 stars out of 10. Minus 1 due to the high gas fees, which might limit adoption.
Meanwhile, these are normal ups and downs of the metaverse and the problem of high gas fees appears across the entire Ethereum ecosystem. Decentraland has managed to put together a fully blockchain-based metaverse experience with monetization aspects for creators.
FAQ about Decentraland
What is the prediction for Decentraland in 2023?
As per figures on Coinmarketcap, Decentraland (MANA) has a market capitalization of $530 million in Q4 of 2023 and a price range of $0.2 – $0.5. Our price prediction for Decentraland in 2023 is a 10.69% rise to hit $0.304833 by the end of the year.
Is there a future for Decentraland?
Decentraland has a valuable utility in the gaming and virtual reality space. For this reason, we anticipate more adoption of the MANA coin, more builders and creators on Decentraland, as well as an overal increase in the coin’s market capitalization. Hence, Decentraland’s future is optimistic.
What is the prediction for Decentraland in 2024?
According to our estimates, Decentraland (MANA) in 2024 could hit a price of $0.5 if the bulls can manage to test a market capitalization of $1 billion. This means the ecosystem has to X2 in the next 12 – 15 months.
Can MANA reach $100?
Decentraland (MANA) will hit $100 if the market capitalization for Decentraland reaches $106 billion. This means the platform has to grow 200X, which is possible given the nascent stage of the metaverse, the growing innovation around the virtual reality/augmented reality space and the increasing research around hardware that supports immersive experiences.
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