What is Decentraland and How does it work?
A Virtual World with Immense Potential
Learning Objectives:
- How to use Decentraland
- MANA and LAND
- How to earn money from Decentraland
Introduction:
Decentraland is a virtual reality platform on the Ethereum Blockchain, creating a completely decentralized world: the metaverse. Since its start of development in 2016, Decentraland has grown significantly and provides a space for users to buy and sell digital land, advertise products and services, create games, and much more. This space is finite and defined as a non-fungible digital asset maintained in an Ethereum smart contract. Decentraland also has a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) that provides a backbone for the platform, allowing users to vote on changes or additions to the current state of the virtual space. Decentraland strives to create a space where, unlike Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, the community has control over its contributions.
How To Use Decentraland:
Decentraland has a seemingly straightforward process of onboarding and interacting with the space if you already have a crypto wallet. If you do not have a crypto wallet, features will be unavailable to you, but you can chat, move around the 3D virtual world, and interact with a select amount of NPCs (non-playable characters). When first joining, you customize the character you will be using in this virtual world. There are several options for hairstyle, clothes, and other appearance options to express oneself.
If you do have a crypto wallet, they recommend having a MetaMask wallet, connecting to the world is as easy as creating an account for any other platform. You may either connect to Dencentraland on a browser or use their newly released desktop client. The one difference with the client is lower hardware requirements due to it being ran locally and not limited by the browser. Though, almost any modern computer can run Decentraland smoothly with a lower-end processor, video card, and RAM requirements.
MANA and LAND:
MANA and LAND are parts of Decentraland’s DAO which are managed by smart contracts: an agreement that takes an input and produces an output that affects the Blockchain. MANA is an ERC-20 token you earn in the virtual world and is used to purchase land, customize this land with the builder tool, promote your work, socialize, and the list of activities continues to grow. Along with MANA, LAND is a parcel of the virtual world that people may purchase using MANA. To get MANA, you must have Ether in your crypto wallet. You can then exchange it for MANA in Decentralands Marketplace. Once you have MANA, you can buy parcels of the world, LAND, which you can create, build, or transfer to other users. The exchange rate for MANA and LAND is 1000 to one respectively, that is if it is not being sold on a secondary market. A secondary market takes into account user traffic on the land along with adjacencies. With this information, what you create on your real estate makes LAND have more value than MANA, but if a user isn’t looking to take full advantage of their land, MANA is safer to hold based on trends.
How to Earn Money in Decentraland:
The most popular thing to do on Decentraland is play poker. In the virtual world, many games advertised are considered free-to-play. However, Poker has one caveat: you must buy an item from the marketplace to access the poker tables. This requirement is a hindrance since the lowest cost for an item is about 0.4 Ether or around USD 700 at the time. Having such a high paywall is discouraging, but other options do not require a paywall. The two most popular are GolfCraft and WonderMine. In both of these games, you play minigames relating to their corresponding name. Although both are still in development, they do not have the functionality to cultivate replay value. Decentraland’s limited popular free-to-play options make it a tough sell for players that are looking to stick around. This world requires the player to have money for the intended experience. Understandably, the goals of the metaverse should require money but the beginnings of development should allow players a free trial of some sort. In addition to games, Decentraland and its users provide options for advertising, selling NFTs, and hosting events.
Conclusion:
Decentraland is continuing to develop its idea of the metaverse and is going in a productive direction. They provide people the convenience of joining a virtual world through a browser, and all you need is a crypto wallet. Decentraland’s cryptocurrency, MANA, provides the completely decentralized experience many companies strive to achieve. By using MANA, users can buy LAND and build architecture, advertise, and sell NFTs and in-game items, with the promise of more features to come in the future. Decentraland has created a vibrant and inviting world. And has the potential to grow, but most importantly, it gives users the experience of the evolving metaverse.
Keep In Touch:
Carthago is aiming to build the world’s largest blockchain powered knowledge, data, and analytics hub.
If you’re interested in getting involved and helping to build a blockchain education platform go here!: https://discord.gg/8uGuQqJM2V
If you want to stay tuned for crypto educational resources follow our youtube channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UCLCzWezDeP6576nAC7s2aPw
Follow us on Linkedin:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/carthagoco
And on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/CarthagoMe
