How to describe Decentraland? Is it a blockchain, a game, a currency or a payment network? Fortunately, it’s easy to define what Decentraland actually is. It’s a metaverse, powered by the Ethereum Blockchain.
In the virtual world, users can purchase Virtual Land that they can play on, monetize or build upon. Currently, the Decentraland currency a top-25 cryptocurrency in market capitalization and garnered a marvelous amount of courtesy from investors worldwide.
To kinds of tokens exist in Decentraland; MANA & LAND. MANA is an ERC-20 token and must be burned to attain non-fungible LAND tokens ERC-721. Furthermore, MANA tokens are used to purchase wearables, an array of avatars, names, and much more on its marketplace.
Structure
Decentraland’s protocol contains three layers:
- The first layer is the consensus layer, which helps in tracking LAND ownership and content via smart contracts.
- The second layer is a LAND content layer, rendering content with a decentralised distribution system in the virtual world.
- The third one is a real-time layer, it offers peer-to-peer connections to interact users with each other.
Use Cases
What can users actually do in Decentraland? The options are limitless, here are just a few.
Content Curation
In Decentraland, users gather around zones of common interests. Exposing content near the high-traffic hubs will automatically drive more users to the owners’ content. Decentraland is becoming a productive breeding ground for artists, businesses, application developers, and content creators.
Digital Collectibles
Users can publish, allocate, and collect rare digital assets which have been issued by content creator on the blockchain. The collectables are traded within the metaverse, virtual worlds or online forums. Transaction security and the exchange of assets is guaranteed by smart contracts and blockchain technology.
Applications
The scripting language of Decentraland allows the development of applications, gambling, games, and 3D dynamics scenes. The scripting language can handling a range of competencies. These include loading textures, creating objects, handling physics, sounds, encoding user communications, external calls, and payments. In short, you can develop applications within the 3D physics of the game.
Marketing
Brands usually advertise via billboards in high-traffic land to promote their services, products, and events. At the Time Square, some localities may become virtual versions in New York City. Additionally, brands create collective experiences and position products to engage their audience. Already now we can see users using their land’s thumbnails on the game’s map as Ad-space.
Technical use cases
Another benefit worth mentioning is that there are no theoretical nor technical limitations on how to utilize your Land parcels. Users are free to explore other use cases such as education, professional development and training, therapy, virtual tourism, 3D design, and a range of virtual structures. We can be sure to see many new interesting usages and business models connected to Virtual Real Estate.
Societal
Currently, players gather in online forums, chat groups. A neat feature is that other centralised multiplayer games can anchorage their groups into Decentraland, yielding interoperability.
Conclusion
When we compare Decentraland with other metaverses, Decentraland stands out with its exceptional trading experience and decentralized ownership. To be precise, Decentraland is a blockchain-based metaverse and therefore literally “a world owned by it’s users.”
Patrick Moore, founder of the cryptocurrency information portal CryptoWhat, highlights this development by stating the following. “Even with how nascent this industry is, the serious Decentraland players have managed to create a significant income from buying and selling Nft items”. All in all we have just began our journey into the Decentraland metaverse and we can be sure that applications that we can not yet even dream about will arise.
