The Decentraland platform and its little-known cryptocurrency MANA

Decentraland - what is it?

Decentraland is a developer-led virtual reality community built and powered by the Ethereum blockchain technology. The users of this platform take an active part in DAO (Decentralised Autonomous Organization) schemes. This is the first gaming platform in the world, which is entirely provided for the use of its users.

Unlike other online games, on this platform users are allowed to exercise control and dictate their own rules of the game. Due to the fact that the project works on the basis of DAO technologies, the owners of NFT tokens have the right to vote in the internal organisational policy of the game. Such voting rights are widespread, ranging from permitted items to investments in project coffers.

The Decentraland community has been around for over seven years. The team completed and released the first game development called Stone Age in June 2015. At that time, the virtual world was a grid of pixels that were distributed among themselves by proof-of-work algorithms. A little later, the game took on a new guise - 3D.

Who created Decentraland?

The Decentraland platform team consists of project leader Ariel Meilich and technical leader Estaban Ordano.

Ari Meilich was the director of the enterprise from 2017 to 2020, but in addition to managing this project, he simultaneously developed other startups: a CRM platform and online translation programs. Meilich also worked as an analyst in Silicon Valley, at the popular venture capital fund Charles River Ventures.

As for Estaban Ordano, he was famous for quite a long time in the crypto-currency field. This includes working as a programmer-engineer at BitPay Inc., a consultant at Matic Network, a co-founder of a blockchain technology company, and the head of his personal company creating Smart Contract Solutions.

Both executives also developed the Stremium and Bitcore platforms.

Even though Ari and Estaban are no longer in leadership roles on the Decentraland platform, they are still active advisors and are still collaborating with the project as the development process continues to this day.

The essence of the Decentraland game

Decentraland is a virtual community that provides users with the opportunity to buy, create plots of land and build on them, develop applications and content, engage in creativity, as well as monetize their stay on the platform with unique NFT tokens.

The Decentraland “Metaverse” is in total divided into over 90,000 so-called LANDs that can be bought and sold between players using the MANA utility token represented by the non-fungible ERC-721 token. Plot owners personally manage and fill their square meters of land, for example:

• launch new applications;
• place your own game on your site;
• develop a website;
• share artworks, etc.

LAND plots are equal to each other and are limited to 33x33 squares (width and length) or 16x16 meters (100 square meters), but at the same time they have no restrictions on height. Several such plots can form a whole “district”, which brings together owners who are interested in one topic. Management is decentralised, only MANA holders have the right to make any changes. The LAND plots themselves cannot be sold with such a merger. To date, Decentraland's largest area is the cyberpunk Aetheria, with over 10,000 LANDs.

The developers say that there are no boundaries in the game, they exist only in the minds of the participants. The versatility of the game's plot is impressive, as players can visit casinos, exhibitions, seminars, go shopping, as well as relax at a resort with friends, listen to live music, start building a business, test and buy cars, and many more interesting events that take place in a virtual 360-degree world.

Users control the property of the game (LAND): a virtual wardrobe and collectible objects. Then they successfully save profits on personal electronic wallets and generate it for other players on the platform. For example, you will need to buy some item, then you will need a unique cryptocoin of the Decentraland platform - MANA.

What is Mana Cryptocurrency?

MANA is an internal cryptocoin of the Decentraland project, which has ERC-20 tokenization, which means it is reliably protected by Ethereum algorithms. As you know, Ethereum is insured by a large decentralised mining network that works with thousands of blocks to ensure that its users are protected from attacks by hackers and malware. At the moment, there is no more reliable blockchain network for cryptocurrency tokens that have not acquired their own block algorithms.

The MANA cryptocurrency is traded on many well-known exchanges, used to buy LAND (land) and as payment for virtual features and goods in the game. When you purchase a piece of land, the platform takes a certain amount of cryptocurrency from you. Initially, one piece of land cost 1000 MANA, but due to the development of secondary markets, the price has varied over the years and at the moment the cost of one simple LAND is 11,750, while more top-end zones are sold for millions. A couple of years ago, the most expensive purchase of a plot took place for $175,578 (2,000,000 MANA), and then land was bought for $215,200, which was an absolute record in the history of the game.

In addition, one MANA token is equivalent to one vote in the DAO's project management proposals.

All MANA coins were divided into shares:

• 40% — sold during the initial offering of coins in 2017;
• 20% — reserve for community stimulation;
• 20% — given to the development team;
• 20%  — belong to the Decentraland platform.

The maximum amount of emission is 2.19 billion MANA, today there are 1.83 billion coins in circulation. But the market capitalization is 1.53 billion US dollars.

How and where MANA cryptocurrency can be bought?

It makes sense to note that already in many social networks, as well as well-known blogs, the Decentraland crypto is gaining rapid popularity and the number of platform participants is increasing daily. As a result, virtual reality is attracting many investors.

Users can purchase MANA assets by selling their unique in-game collectibles on the Decentraland Marketplace platform. The DAO platform also has such cryptocoins in its arsenal, they contribute to the financing of certain decisions and financial transactions.

Also, tokens can be purchased on the most popular trading exchanges:

• Binance;
• OKEx;
• Huobi;
• Bittrex;
• Kucoin;
• Poloniex;
• UEX;
• upbit;
• dragonex;
• Bancor Network;
• Gate.io
• Liqui;
• FTX;
• Ethfinex;
• CoinTiger;
• Kyber network.

When it comes to storing MANA tokens, there are many different ways. We strongly recommend that you use hardware wallets like Ledger Nano S, MyEtherWallet, MetaMask and Trezor. Thanks to these wallets, your funds will be under reliable protection not only online, but also offline.

MANA cryptocurrency forecast and prospects of the Decentraland project

Today Decentraland exchange rate is $3.33 (0.00007561 BTC and 0.001065 ETH). This virtual platform allows users to own their own piece of land and do whatever they want on it.

Decentraland is a unique project in a yet little-known market. The huge popularity of the life simulator among the players is the key to the success of the entire platform.

It is still very early to draw conclusions about how the platform will eventually gain a foothold — it will be a 3D world or a blockchain space. But one way or another, if Decentraland gets support among a huge number of users, the whole world will acquire a completely new ecosystem of gaming space in tandem with the digital market.