Decentraland (MANA)

Decentraland is a virtual reality platform or metaverse that runs on the Ethereum blockchain.

Decentraland and the metaverse

The aim of Decentraland is to offer a virtual world.
Players can purchase (virtual) plots and add to their experience by installing infrastructure and services.
Recently, it has also become possible to rent plots.
The platform made a big splash during the 2021 bull run.
Boosted by the metaverse’s arrival with great fanfare, Decentraland recorded very strong sales.
For example, on November 23, 2021, a parcel was sold for the record price of 2.4 million dollars.
Decentraland regularly organizes events to raise awareness of the metavers platform.
For example, the team organizes Fashion Week and an annual music festival.
In terms of operation and philosophy, Decentraland is close to another metaverse platform, The Sandbox.
With its potential and positioning at the crossroads of NFT and gaming, the metaverse is an area of great potential in crypto.
According to Coinmarketcap, the metaverse sector has a market capitalization in excess of €30 billion.
The main crypto metavers in terms of capitalization are : Internet Computer (ICP), Stacks (STX), Render (RNDR), Theta Network (THETA) and FLOKI (FLOKI).
These cryptos or tokens have a link with the metaverse, but are not used for the strict operation of a virtual reality platform such as Decentraland or The Sandbox.

What is Decentraland (MANA)?

Technically, Decentraland uses the blockchain (Ethereum), a native token (MANA) and NFTs.
This combination enables Decentraland to operate on a decentralized basis.
Decentraland is one of Ethereum’s many decentralized applications (dApps).
In terms of hosted value (TVL), Decentraland currently ranks 57th with $21 million. What is the MANA token? MANA is Decentraland’s native token, an ERC-20 token running on Ethereum.
At the time of writing, the price of the MANA crypto is €0.58 (as of March 21, 2024).
The MANA token was brought to market in 2017 as part of an ICO (Initial Coin Offering).
For a long time, the MANA price remained in the hundredths of a euro range.
Then, the MANA price took advantage of the 2021 crypto bull run to rise sharply.
The record price for the Decentraland crypto is €5.4, reached on November 25, 2021.
Decentraland’s capitalization is €1.1 billion, positioning the token in the world’s top 100.
To put this into context, Decentraland’s capitalization is close to that of other well-known cryptos such as Chiliz (CHZ), ApeCoin (APE), Tezos (XTZ) and EOS (EOS). Buy MANA safely with Coinhouse.

The development of the Decentraland project has gone through several stages.
It all began in 2015.
Originally, when Decentraland was just a concept, the platform allowed users to buy digital real estate.
This was represented by a pixel on a 2D map.
Each pixel contained information about its owner.
Users could mine, transfer and change the color of « their » pixel.
A still rudimentary concept that corresponded to theStone Age as defined by the Decentraland team.
A turning point came at the end of 2016 with the advent of what Decentraland’s developers call theBronze Age.
The virtual world moved into the third dimension and was divided into plots (or terrains).
Users could then build simple structures on these plots.
The final phase corresponds to theIron Age, which began in 2017 and is still ongoing.
It introduces the possibility of building social experiences associated with the development of a virtual economy.
This Iron Age saw the launch of land tokenization via LAND and MANA tokens.
Eventually, it will also enable developers to create and monetize decentralized applications (dApps).
In addition, the team is working to create :

• Peer-to-peer communication ;
• A scripting system to enable interactive content;
• A fast crypto payment system for transactions in the virtual world.

Ariel Meilich and Esteban Ordano are the two main people behind the development of Decentraland.
They both have extensive experience in the FinTech field.
Esteban Ordano (CEO of Decentraland), for example, created Zeppelin Solutions and then worked for various crypto firms such as Streamium, BitPay, Bitcore, Copay, Insight or MATIC (Polygon).
Ariel Meilich (project manager for Decentraland) has a background in venture capital and data analysis.
He has worked as an analyst at Charles River Ventures and with Amazon and General Electric.
Manuel Araoz and Yemel Jardi are two other board members who have worked for years in crypto.
In addition to the board members, Decentraland benefits from the knowledge of others who specialize in crypto, digital, IT, data transfer and more.
The project’s white paper, for example, involved the following people:

• Jake Brukhman (Founder, CoinFund);
• Luis Cuende (Project Lead, Aragon);
• Simon de la Rouviere (ConsenSys);
• Diego Doval (Founder of n3xt, previously CTO, Ning);
• Michael Bosworth (Google);
• Jesse Walden (Mediachain/Spotify);
• Chris Burniske (ex ARK Invest);
• Guillermo Rauch (CEO, Zeit);
• Joe Urgo (Co-founder, District0x);
• David Wachsman (Wachsman PR);
• Jon Choi (Dropbox);
• Allen Hsu.

Live MANA courses.

Decentraland is a particular crypto application that brings two technologies into play: virtual reality and blockchain.
Virtual reality allows players to explore Genesis City and take part in various experiences.
The blockchain, on the other hand, is used to record transactions in a secure, decentralized way.
Decentraland’s blockchain architecture involves three levels (or layers):

• Land Content, which holds plot information and characteristics in a file that can be downloaded from BitTorrent or IPFS ;
• Consensus, which takes charge of executing the smart contract associated with the parcel held (the land and its characteristics are referenced via the hash of the parcel file);
• Real-time to connect players to each other.

When players wish to interact with each other, the request starts from the real-time layer, arrives at the Land Content level, goes to the consensus layer and then works backwards.

Decentraland features two tokens launched during the last phase of development, known as the Iron Age.
The first token is called LAND.
It’s an ERC-721 token running on Ethereum.
This token standard corresponds to NFT, non-fungible tokens.
A LAND token corresponds to a parcel.
The second token is MANA, the platform’s native token.
Its standard is ERC-20, and it also works on Ethereum.
The MANA token is mainly used to purchase land and services.
Plot prices depend on the market.
The Decentraland marketplace lists all land for sale.
For example, at the time of writing, the cheapest LAND is on sale for 1,050 MANA, equivalent to €580.
The MANA token also enables you to participate in Decentraland ‘s decentralized governance (DAO).
Decentraland’s DAO is based on Aragon, an Ethereum platform designed to facilitate the creation of autonomous organizations.
Each MANA and LAND token carries one vote.
Voting takes place via the wrapped version of the MANA and LAND tokens, i.e. wMANA and wLAND.
Each LAND gives 2,000 units of voting power.
In addition to the DAO, Decentraland has created a Security Advisory Board(SAB).
The SAB serves to :

• Monitor the security of the platform’s smart contracts;
• Examine voting proposals ;
• Respond to bug reports.

The SAB is made up of 5 members who are experts or people appointed by the Decentraland community. How can MANA be staked? Staking allows you to generate passive income.
Once you’ve purchased MANA tokens, you can « stake » them, i.e. lock them in for a predefined period to help validate the network.
It is possible to stake MANA on certain exchanges or dedicated staking sites.

The number of MANA tokens is limited to 2,805,886,393 tokens.
The token cannot be mined.
The only way to acquire MANA tokens is via exchange platforms.
MANA tokens are available on most centralized exchanges, as well as on DEXs such as Uniswap.
There are currently 1,908,319,865 tokens in circulation.
Decentraland carries out regular burns to limit the number of MANA tokens in circulation.
The tokens linked to the 2.5% transaction fee are thus burned, i.e. removed from circulation. TECHNICAL DATA

• Enhanced user experience:
  • User interface update: Decentraland is working on improvements to the user interface to make navigation and interaction in the metaverse more intuitive and accessible, even for new users.
• Expanding the NFT ecosystem:
  • Launch of new NFT collections: Decentraland plans to introduce unique new NFT collections, including digital clothing, accessories and artworks, reinforcing the metaverse’s virtual economy.
  • Partnerships with artists and brands: the platform collaborates with designers and brands to launch exclusive NFTs, attracting new users and collectors.
• Development of decentralized governance:
  • Strengthening the DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization): Decentraland plans to increase community participation in platform governance, allowing users to vote on updates and new features.
  • Launch of new governance proposals: new proposals to improve Decentraland’s infrastructure and functionality will be put in place, with an emphasis on community involvement.
• Virtual events and collaborations:
  • Virtual festivals and concerts: Decentraland continues to partner with musicians, artists and brands to organize virtual events, reinforcing the popularity of the metaverse.
  • Partnerships with educational and cultural institutions: the platform collaborates with museums, galleries and universities to create immersive educational and cultural experiences in the metaverse.
• Expansion of technical infrastructure:
  • Optimizing platform performance: efforts are underway to improve the speed, fluidity and capacity of the platform to handle a greater number of users simultaneously.
  • Development of new creative features: Decentraland is working on enhanced creative tools to enable users to build even more complex and immersive environments and experiences.

1. Go to your Coinhouse application and log in to your personal space or create your account.
2. Go to the buy/sell section.
3. Select the amount you wish to invest, and the currency of your choice (in this case MANA).
   You can buy MANA by exchanging USDC.
4. Once your transaction has been validated, you ‘ll find your MANAs in your portfolio.