Decentraland DCL

Decentraland is a virtual reality platform powered by the Ethereum blockchain. Users can create, experience, and monetize content and applications. Land in Decentraland is permanently owned by the community, giving them full control over their creations. Users claim ownership of virtual land on a blockchain-based ledger of parcels. Landowners control what content is published to their portion of land, which is identified by a set of cartesian coordinates (x,y). Contents can range from static 3D scenes to interactive systems such as games. Land is a non-fungible, transferrable, scarce digital asset stored in an Ethereum smart contract. It can be acquired by spending an ERC20 token called MANA. MANA can also be used to make in-world purchases of digital goods and services. People are spending increasingly more time in virtual worlds, for both leisure and work. This occurs predominantly in 2D interfaces such as the web and mobile phones. But a traversable 3D world adds an immersive component as well as adjacency to other content, enabling physical clusters of communities. Unlike other virtual worlds and social networks, Decentraland is not controlled by a centralized organization. There is no single agent with the power to modify the rules of the software, contents of land, economics of the currency, or prevent others from accessing the world.

Who created Decentraland?

The Decentraland Foundation, the organization behind the development of the Decentraland software, was founded by Esteban Ordano and Ariel Meilich in 2015. The Decentraland team held an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) in 2017 raising 86,206 ether (about $26 million at the time) to fund its future operations. The Foundation, which retains 20% of the initial token supply, holds the intellectual property rights and maintains the Decentraland website. Prior to launching its platform, Decentraland launched a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) to turn the management of the project over to its users. Further, the founding team claims the private key that controlled Decentraland’s smart contract has been destroyed.

how to make money with decentraland

The Decentraland application is built to track real estate parcels defined by LAND tokens. The software leverages the Ethereum blockchain to track ownership of this digital land, and it requires users to hold its MANA token within an Ethereum wallet to engage with its ecosystem. Further, developers are free to innovate within Decentraland’s platform by designing the animation and interactions experienced on their virtual real estate.

Architecture

Decentraland has many layered components built using Ethereum smart contracts. The consensus layer maintains a ledger that tracks the ownership of land parcels. Each parcel of LAND has a unique coordinate in the virtual world, an owner and a reference to a description file representing the content within the parcel. The content layer controls what happens within each parcel, and includes various files required to render them:

• Content Files – referencing all static audio and visuals
• Script Files – defining the placement and behavior of the referenced content
• Interaction Definition – peer-to-peer interactions such as gesturing, voice chat, and messaging.

Finally, the real-time layer facilitates social interactions within Decentraland through user avatars, including voice chat and messaging.

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.

Why use MANA?

Users may find Decentraland appealing as a customizable and shared virtual reality space. The Decentraland ecosystem may also be interesting for gamers seeking to earn in-game currency that has monetary value, which could be exchanged for real-life goods and services. Investors may seek to add MANA to their portfolio should they believe in the future of virtual reality and its ability to connect users all over the world.