Decentraland(MANA)

Decentraland (MANA) is one of those cryptocurrencies that has seen immense growth and popularity in recent years thanks to the renewed "metaverse" mania. Built as a decentralized virtual reality platform, Decentraland is a virtual world with its own cryptocurrency, MANA, powered by the Ethereum blockchain as well as NFT parcels called LAND.  Decentraland users can create, experience, and monetize their content and applications in the shared virtual world.

The Decentraland Foundation, the entity behind the development of Decentraland, was founded in 2015 by Ariel Meilich, project lead, and Esteban Ordano, tech lead. The Decentraland platform went live on Ethereum in 2017, following an initial coin offering (ICO) of $26 million for future operations, with MANA coined as its official cryptocurrency. The network launched its closed beta in 2019 and opened to the public in February 2020. Prior to its launch, Decentraland created the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) to hand over the management and governance of the project to its users, ensuring no single entity has control over the platform.

Decentraland aims to combine blockchain technology and augmented reality to create a 3D virtual world where users can develop their avatars, communicate, engage and take part in commerce — all via traditional web browsers.

MANA price

According to our MANA/USD live price chart, the token saw a noticeable price spike in Q3 of 2020 — going from under $0.05 to over $0.13. 

The rally for MANA price continued into 2021, and by April of the year, MANA was trading above $1.6 MANA's price did correct with the broader market during mid-2021, and it traded below $0.40 at one point.

However, as the market sentiment grew bullish in autumn of 2021 with BTC price soaring to an all-time high of $69,000, Decentraland’s token saw elevated trading volumes. MANA's price rallied in line with its metaverse competitors The Sandbox (SAND) and Enjin Coin (ENJ), going from $0.8 on Oct. 16 to $5.9 on Nov. 25, with a gain of 670%. With this, MANA price set a new all-time high and reached a fully diluted valuation of $12 billion. 

The crypto market witnessed another severe crash near the end of 2021, continuing this nosedive into 2022 with MANA losing a big portion of its gains alongside other major cryptocurrencies like BTC and ETH.

How MANA works

The Decentraland platform utilizes the Ethereum blockchain and its native token, MANA, allows users to buy and sell digital land while exploring, creating, and playing games in its virtual world. Over the course of time, the platform has incorporated in-game payments, peer-to-peer communication, and interactive apps. 

Decentraland uses two different tokens for its ecosystem:

MANA: An ERC-20 token, MANA, can be used for ecosystem governance, making transactions within the metaverse, and buying LAND and other virtual goods. Based on the Ethereum blockchain, the token is secured by an extensive decentralized network of miners that work together with a large number of nodes to secure the blockchain. MANA requires an Ethereum-supported wallet to interact and experience the full potential of Decentraland’s 3D virtual reality game world.

LAND: An ERC-721 non-fungible token (NFT), LAND, is used to identify and maintain a ledger of land parcels representing digital real estate within the virtual world.

To safeguard digital property, Decentraland uses the consensus layer, which maintains a ledger and tracks the ownership of each land parcel, using an Ethereum-based smart contract. The Decentraland gameworld is divided into a total of 90,601 independent parcels of LAND, each assigned a unique coordinate, owner, and what the landowner serves. 

While keeping track of each parcel of LAND is key, it is also important to ensure players and users have a smooth communication line and building experience, Decentraland’s content layer uses 3 rendering files to distribute the content needed to render the world: 

Content files: References to 3D meshes, textures, audio files, and any other related content required to render the parcel. 

Scripting entry points: Specifies how the content is placed, its behavior, and animations within the parcel.

P2P interactions: As the title suggests it creates a means of interaction such as messaging, voice chat, and sharing coordinates. 

Decentraland also offers a marketplace where players and creators alike can buy, sell or transfer wearable items, accessories, unique names, avatars, or any other in-game virtual asset.

MANA news, updates, and highlights

Global tech giant Samsung added support for VR platform Decentraland on its blockchain wallet app on July 21, 2020. Samsung launched this crypto wallet back in 2019 for its signature phone Galaxy S10.

In July. 2020 comic artist Jose Delbo, who has worked for both Marvel and DC kicked off a week-long exhibition in Decentraland. Jose, credited for creating Wonder Woman for DC comics released a number of digital images in the VR world for viewers at the in-game gallery called MakersPlace, with each proof of ownership recorded using blockchain technology.

In late November 2021, a digital plot in the Decentraland Metaverse was sold for a whopping $2.43 million or 618,000 MANA tokens — more than what most homes go for in NYC, and San Francisco. The prior record for the most expensive virtual plot was around $913,000.

Frequently asked questions about MANA

• Can you mine or stake MANA?

You can't mine MANA since it is not a proof-of-work token, but you can stake MANA on various platforms to earn passive income.

• What are some of the best MANA wallets?

A digital wallet is a must for MANA since it keeps all your digital assets and in-game progress safe. You can choose to experience Decentraland without it but you will miss out on daily rewards, not be able to participate in events, and much more. MetaMask is one of the recommended digital wallets by Decentraland, with Trust Wallet and Ledger being viable secondary options. If you are leaning more toward cold wallets, Ledger Nano S, Ledger Nano X, and Trezor One are fantastic options.

• What can you do with MANA?

MANA is an ERC-20 token that can be used to purchase LAND, estates, avatars, unique names, wearables, or any other good that the game has to offer in the virtual world.

• How to buy MANA?

You can buy MANA on exchanges like HitBTC, Nexo, and OKX with MANA/BTC, MANA/ETH, and MANA/USDT trading pairs. You can also buy MANA using fiat currency with on-ramp services.