Decentraland (MANA) is a blockchain and metaverse platform, which allows users to purchase virtual land and participate in a unique virtual community, which seeks to create a unique virtual experience.
The project Decentraland (MANA) is the clearest demonstration that the world of tecnología blockchain It has evolved a lot in recent years. An evolution that has brought this technology to the world of games and virtual worlds.
Blockchain, games and virtual worlds
Before we start digging into what Decentraland is and how it works, let's take a moment to look at how the world of video games has changed since its inception.
First of all, the world of video games has ceased to be a mere technological curiosity to become a multi-billion dollar industry, with over two billion users worldwide growing every year.
This is what has made game designers create increasingly complex systems to the point of developing virtual worlds (metaverses), game platforms in which hundreds of thousands and even millions of people participate and interact. And, like any interaction, these massive games lead to the creation of complex systems to support the gameplay of the game, one of those systems being economic.
For example, EVE Online, is a well-known massive game with about 9 million users, which has set several activity records. The biggest one has to do with its economic system, so complex that the company has had to hire economists to program its performance and regulate it. In fact, the game's virtual currency, ISK, is used by its players as an exchange currency for real businesses.
In a nutshell, there are people who play EVE Online, earn game money and use this money to exchange it for real services without major problems.
This fact is repeated in other areas. You can review games like World of Warcraft, DOTA2 o Fornite and you will see that many players use in-game items, points, or currency as a means of exchanging value in the real world. Although, that is often penalized in such games.
Be that as it may, we can see a familiar pattern in this activity:
If people want to make an exchange of value, they will use any means possible, as long as they have a consensus that the exchange will be done on fair terms.
This same idea was what prompted the use of salt, gold or the role of current fiat money as a money form.
However, the virtual money obtained in these games is highly centralized, which penalizes its usability and fungibility in spaces other than those that the gaming community has created. In short, your coins or items are only valuable to the players of a specific game, for the rest of the people that currency has no value.
But now we have something much better: cryptocurrencies, a decentralized form of value that you can use with anyone anywhere in the world, and that you can exchange as you need.
So, what would happen if we joined the world of games, their virtual worlds and their economy to a blockchain, through a cryptocurrency or own token? That is precisely what Decentraland have created.
Decentraland, the creation of a virtual world with blockchain economy
Decentraland is a project that runs on the blockchain of Ethereum (ETH) and whose purpose is the creation of an open virtual world in which its users can operate just as they do in the physical world. This means that they can socialize, explore and trade in said virtual world, thanks to blockchain technology, with which they can create unique avatars of themselves, make peer-to-peer purchases and payments.
The idea for the creation of Decentraland was formed in the minds of Esteban Ordano and Ariel Meilich in 2015, although the project required two years of development. Between August 16 and 18, 2017, a Initial Coin Offering (ICO) with which an initial financing of 86.206 ethers (about 26 million dollars at the time) was raised in exchange for MANA tokens, the main token of Decentraland. All this money was managed by the Decentraland Foundation, created with the purpose of promoting the development of the platform, for which retained 20% of the initial token offering, Decentraland's intellectual property rights and website.
With the ICO, Decentraland also launched the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) to deliver project management to its users. In this way, it was made clear that the system worked completely autonomously.
How does Decentraland work?
Now, in order to make Decentraland work correctly, the development team has created a structure that is divided into three parts:
- Consensus layer: on which falls the responsibility of tracking all operations of ownership of the game. For example, if a player has created an identity and purchased a virtual piece of land within Decentraland, this layer will create the corresponding blockchain record of such actions.
- Content layer: this layer has the purpose of storing the information that will be used for the rendering of the content in the virtual world. The idea is that each user has in his possession a small part (or all) of the data to be rendered, keeping the system as efficient as possible.
- Real-time interaction layer: this layer is what allows the interaction of users in real time within the platform.
MANA and LAND tokens
Another important point in the operation of Decentraland is that this project has two well-defined working tokens.
The first is the MANA token, which was created as a governance token within the platform and for the purchase and sale of land within it. That is, MANA token holders can participate in the governance of the protocol and can acquire virtual land lots within Decentraland.
This token was created following the standard ERC-20 of Ethereum, so it can be easily integrated into platforms DeFi, DEX and other dApps of Ethereum, allowing a fast exchange of it.
In addition, Decentraland decided that the existence of MANA tokens was limited to a total of 2.194.460.527 tokens. The idea of capping MANA tokens is to make them more valuable as usage of the platform increases.
The second token is LAND, a non-fungible token that follows the standard ERC-721. Each LAND token uniquely identifies the properties of a parcel of land that is owned by a Decentraland user. For example, each piece of land has its unique characteristics, and therefore each LAND token represents all those properties. To acquire LAND tokens, the user must exchange their MANA tokens to LAND tokens, an action that burns MANA tokens, making it more scarce and valuable.
Due to LAND's relationship with MANA, the existence of this token is also limited, and its creation responds to the smart contracts that participate in the internal exchange of MANA for LAND. Also, when you are holding two LAND tokens together (two adjacent parcels) then you are holding an Estate token, this type of token is important because both MANA, LAND and Estate tokens can be used in Decentraland governance.
Categorization of collectibles in Decentraland
Another important point in the operation of Decentraland is its categorization of collectibles:
- Common: for collectibles that have an existence equal to or greater than 100.000 units.
- Rare: for those with an existence of no more than 10.000 units.
- Raro: for those with an existence of no more than 5000 units.
- Epic: for those with an existence of no more than 1000 units.
- Legendary: for those who have an existence of no more than 100 units.
- Mythical: for those with an existence of no more than 10 units.
- Only: for those for whom only that unit exists.
This categorization has been carried out to facilitate the publication and offer of collectibles within the Decentraland Marketplace, thereby creating a positive market dynamic for the entire community.
Project governance
As we already mentioned, Decentraland is governed by a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO). This means that those who decide the course of development of the platform is the community itself through voting and referendums.
To participate in the Decentraland DAO, users must hold MANA, LAND, and Estate tokens to exercise their voting power. As a curiosity, it is worth noting that the Decentraland DAO was created using the technology of Aragon, a platform on Ethereum designed to create DAOs in a very simple way.
To vote on the proposed changes to the protocol, you must have wrapped MANA (Wrapped MANA or wMANA), LAND, and Estate tokens. Each wMANA provides you with a unit of voting power, while each LAND parcel provides 2000 voting power units, and each Estate provides 2000 voting power units for each parcel within it. In order to vote you will need to wrap MANA and create wMANA, for this all you need to do is transfer your MANA to Decentreland's DAO smart contract. Thus, you will be earning a certain level of votes according to your participation in wMANA.
Of course, when you wrap your MANA, you can no longer spend or transfer it and to recover it you must unwrap it, although you will lose your voting power.
On the other hand, you can use your LAND and Estate tokens to vote by doing the same registration in the DAO. But unlike wMANA, these are not locked and you will be able to use them normally even if they are registered.
In addition to the DAO, Decentraland has a Security Advisory Board (SAB) which oversees the security of the platform's smart contracts, reviews governance proposals, responds to bug reports, and has the ability to delay or reject governance proposals that could negatively affect the project. The SAB is made up of five members voted for by the Decentraland community.
With its decentralized design, Decentraland has paved the way for a whole new kind of virtual world. For the first time, the user is the owner of the value they create in the virtual worlds they inhabit, and you can directly transfer it to the tangible world. Whether you're exploring medieval dungeons, racing cars, or simply working your way up to being a landlord, Decentraland is an attempt to build a world in the image of decentralization, and it's much more than just a video game.
Execution of Decentraland
Decentraland is built on advanced Web technologies such as WebGL and Web3., so all you need to run Decentraland is a recent web browser (Firefox, Chrome, Chromium, Brave, Opera, Edge Chromium) and a computer with an operating system capable of offering you the use of hardware acceleration to be able to use this system.
For example, a team with these characteristics could easily meet your needs to run Decentraland:
- CPU: i3 (Gen 2 or higher) or AMD equivalent.
- RAM memory: 4 GB minimum (8 GB recommended)
- Updated web browser
- Graphics: NVIDIA GT 730 or better (AMD equivalent or better)
- Windows with updated graphics drivers (Mac OS or GNU / Linux updated)
- Vulkan and WebGL support
- MetaMask (for Ethereum interaction)
- Internet connection of 10 Mb download. (more is better)
If you meet these requirements you will be able to run Decentraland on your PC. But don't worry, because you can test the system and find out how the game works on your computer. In this way, if you encounter a problem, check that you meet the requirements and try again.
Future of Decentraland
Decentraland has quickly become a very flashy game, and in fact, other companies are trying to replicate its success. However, the idea of blockchain-powered metaverses is just nascent. And, despite this, giants like Enjin (creator of Minecraft) has pounced with everything he has to make these the future of the industry.
With that being said, the future of Decentraland as a game and as a currency is pretty rosy. In fact, the community has improved the gaming experience and the earnings for participating in it. On the other hand, the level of security of its smart contracts gives us the assurance that we are dealing with a well-thought-out project.
In the meantime, we will continue to see how blockchain metaverses evolve. Even if it doesn't surprise us that the next AAA game will come with integrated cryptocurrency features.
All this with one purpose: to make it possible for players to earn money, maintain, migrate and trade their collectibles. Of course, this will also make game companies find a more active way to earn revenue in an industry as wild as this one.