This version of Perplexed is going to continue this week’s trend of chatting about metaverse coins. Most folks have heard about the metaverse by now, but there’s still a handful of questions and curiosities about this technologically mediated space.
So let’s clear those up and get started with the history of decentraland, and then cycle back and discuss the core coin for the Decentraland metaverse, MANA.
Decentraland’s History
The story begins with Esteban Ordano and Ariel Meilich who foundered the Decentraland Foundation and the software, in 2015 The team held an initial coin offering (ICO) in 2017 and raised 86,206 ether (roughly $26 million) for its operations. The Foundation, which still holds 20% of its initial token supply, holds the intellectual property rights and maintains the Decentraland core website.
Before it launched its platform, Decentraland launched a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) and handed project management over to the users. The founding team also claimed that the private key controlling Decentraland’s smart contract has been destroyed. If you remember from crypto 101—if you own the private key, you own the contents. Apparently, they don’t own the key anymore.
As with most things related to blockchain and decentralized finance there’s more to it than just a video game.
It touts itself as one of the first projects aiming to build a new kind of world—in this case, a decentralized internet. Here you would own your own digital assets and have an opportunity to grow them. Also, you can explore and communicate with folks from all over the globe and get yourself involved in social virtual-reality experiences.
The goal is to create an open-source system for users to build whatever they want in the space from stores, casinos, to anything else they can imagine.
The key to this is the MANA coin.
It’s coin setup is called MANA for its commerce coin—the one you use to interact with in the metaverse in general—and perhaps unsurprisingly, LAND—which is a non-fungible token (NFT) used to define ownership of land parcels representing virtual real estate.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because it is. Decentraland is the first among metaverses and others have followed suit with this model.
MANA is presently worth $2.66. It has a market valuation of a little over $4 billion and is presently 41st in size by market cap.
What can you do with MANA?
On the platform MANA is used for a number of actions and purchases include:
Opening a Wallet – Signing up for Decentraland means your digital wallet is connected to the platform. The wallet stores all digital assets in the cloud rather than on a local device.
Getting Swag – Buying items in the marketplace. All of these are NFTs, generally. Users can buy different hairstyles, eye colors, external accessories, flags, surfboards, and well. You get it. It makes your avatar completely customizable with wearable downloadable content in the form of non-fungible tokens.
Property Investments – This is one of the principle uses of MANA in Decentraland. The virtual real estate market in Decentraland has hundreds of parcels for sale, and business is apparently booming.
“Metaverse Group, a virtual real estate company, recently bought an “estate” (multiple pieces of land connected together) for about $2.4 million. This was seen as the largest sale of virtual land in the Decentraland’s history,“ according to NASDAQ.com.
Regardless, these properties can and will be leased out to users or event organizers for a fee.
Making Cash – This goes without saying. Decentraland offers a hundred different ways to make money from starting your own NFT Etsy to becoming a metaverse slumlord complete with an NFT rat infestation. When the market hits the skids you can pick up items and land on the cheap, and then auction them off later in the marketplace.
Getting a mortgage – You can put a down payment in MANA and request a mortgage on LAND you already own. Users can submit a small amount at the beginning and pay it off at an interest rate. Weird.
Speculative trading – You can buy MANA just like any other crypto, and make a speculative gain off of its development as the metaverse expands. You don’t even need to be involved with Decentraland to make some cash off of it.
Governance – MANA is a governance coin. Changes to the underlying software of the metaverse is enacted through a collection of smart contracts, which give holders the ability to vote on policy, land auctions and subsidies for developments.
Marketplace and Builder
Outside of the gaming environment, the Decentraland team has released a marketplace along with a drag-and-drop editor users can access to build scenes.
The marketplace enables participants to manage and exchange LAND tokens, priced in MANA. Owners can use the marketplace to transact or transfer parcels and other in-game items such as wearables and unique names.
Of note, all transactions are settled between Ethereum wallets, and therefore are verified by Ethereum’s network and logged on its blockchain.
Decentraland’s builder tools authorize owners to curate a unique experience within their LAND parcels. Interactive scenes are designed through its editing tool, where developers can access customization libraries and payment implementations.
—Joseph Morton
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