Be the Blockchain Real Estate Mogul You’ve Always Dreamed Of
There’s been growing hype around hot new cryptocurrency startup, Decentraland.
The Decentraland platform runs on the Ethereum network and aims to create a living, breathing social VR world you can visit in your Virtual Reality headset. In the near future, users will be able put on their Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Windows Mixed Reality and mobile VR headsets to play games, go to casinos, watch live music gigs, attend workshops, shop with friends and start a business.
I’m Michael, Tech Lead of Decentraland’s Aetheria district, the platform’s premiere cyberpunk city. We’ve been working on plans for our district since mid-2017, and draw inspiration from science fiction genre sources like
Ready Player One, Blade Runner, Tron, Snow Crash, Neuromancer and
The Fifth Element.
The Terraform Event
In December of last year, Decentraland ran their Terraform Event; inviting holders of their MANA token to purchase LAND in an auction for their first slice of the VR world. They could also contribute to several districts within Decentraland’s Genesis City during the event.
Over 3,047 unique participants joined in and 70,000 parcels were sold, with Aetheria receiving contributions of over 10,000 parcels to the district. This equated to a hefty total of $25 million USD in digital real estate.
Aetheria District Contributions
We at Aetheria were pleasantly surprised at the final response and the volume of contributions towards our district, and have been working tirelessly on our Initial Development Plan, laying the groundwork for what we hope to build in our corner of Decentraland. The response from the wider community towards our plan has been very positive; we’ve had a number of parties contact us, interested in buying LAND within the Aetheria. Part of our plan is to allow contributors to opt to retain some or all of their contributed LAND for their own private use, allowing them to create the project or business of their dreams within the district’s walls.
Aetheria is community-focused and we want to empower artists and developers to lead district growth with their own innovative builds in the cyberpunk style. We’re hoping to allow this to happen as early as possible, and are aiming to release our registration form soon, so contributors can indicate how they would like to use their contributed LAND. Those opting to keep their LAND for private use will be able to hold it for personal development, or optionally list it on the Decentraland Marketplace after Aetheria’s LAND placement event in a few months. Giving contributors the option to sell their LAND is very important to us, as they can use partial sales of their holdings to fund development of their projects.
Enter the Marketplace
For LAND buyers and sellers outside Aetheria, the Decentraland Marketplace launches today, allowing users to discover which parcels are available for sale via the Atlas — a sizeable visual map displaying the entire Genesis City.
The marketplace will show useful information such as:
- The parcel’s x,y coordinates
- The listed price (in MANA)
- A brief description of the parcel (written by the parcel owner)
- The time left before the offer expires
- Information about the owner (like their public wallet address)
Parcels for sale on the marketplace can be sorted by time, low or high cost to make it easier to sort through available listings. Additionally, users can see all the owned parcels and parcel descriptions available on profile pages for individual sellers.
To improve security, smart contracts have been written to ensure that anyone selling LAND is authorized to sell those parcels, providing assurance that buyers are dealing with legitimate owners. These also support direct swaps of LAND parcels in addition to standard buy / sell orders, as well as direct transfers to another wallet address.
All transactions happen on-chain, requiring users to spend a small amount of Ethereum (ETH) when initially registering for the marketplace service. Every listing or purchase made will also incur a small transaction cost; the gas payment to the Ethereum network. Decentraland itself does not collect or charge trading fees.
What next?
Owners of LAND who have some web development chops can also install Decentraland’s CLI today. This will allow them to start previewing and publishing content on their LAND, in preparation for an official future release of the 3D web client.
You can start trading LAND today at marketplace.decentraland.org. Find out more about the full range of features supported in the official article announcing the marketplace.
Read more about Aetheria and our district’s plans at aetheria.io
