Decentraland; (MANA) Before you buy
Decentraland we’ve all heard of it, a Community driven project with no direct road-map due to.. Well it being run by the Community of course, you can check out Decentraland’s website yourself to see the current proposals that are being made. However ! Recently a passed proposal gives the Decentraland Foundation the authority to create this concreate roadmap we need. This proposal was passed two months ago, and has not yet been released. One of my favorite proposals that had passed was to bring more content creators & influencers into Decentraland to do NFT drops & advertisements. It seems like a big money grab imo. One fun thing they are doing is Within a year we should see in-game XP, thanks to a proposal called Project G. We should see more proposals being passed such as the ability to sit down, shake hands etc.
Let’s talk Concerns right off the bat before we move into it, My first concern is competition ! One hilarious example is literally the Co-Founder of Decentraland making his own Crypto Token called Big Time, Long term It looks like this is a similar approach Decentraland wants to take revealed on it’s focus via play-to-earn. What’s even more interesting is Big Time was able to bring over a few developers from Decentraland onto their side. Which isn’t all that surprising considering Decentralands founders had been absent when It came to actual operations.
( cough ) old boomers just wanting to make money and don’t actually care.
What’s interesting is that over a phone call Esteban Ordeno the Founder had said the reason why they launched the project on Eth is because there wasn’t any other smart-contract crypto currencies at the time. The way he said this made it seem like he wished he launched it on a different blockchain instead, which it’s too late to make that switch now.
Another risk we could see is regulation, Crypto Ratings Council gave MANA a 3.75/5 on the security scale meaning MANA is close to being like Company Stock in the eyes of US Regulators. However MANA is listed on several US Exchanges which shows that we shouldn’t be too worried. Since the exchanges wouldn’t take the risk of listing MANA in the first place. However as I speak about further below, the communities vote on allowing Decentraland foundation the opportunity to create a roadmap increases this risk of regulation. Also obviously we see the decentralized gambling that’s offered could pose a risk for regulation. I’ve ran a gambling website before and to MY understanding, the type of gambling that’s happening in Decentraland is illegal in the US. More Importantly Online Gambling involving Crypto Currency is something singled out by the Financial Action Task Force, this requires these Online Gambling Crypto Currency’s to Collect KYC.
Okay let’s move on and don’t forget Decentraland is still very early & the reason why it has potential is because in the moment it has the highest treasury in the Crypto Metaverse Market.
Decentraland- founded in 2015, developed by a for-profit company called metaverse holdings limited, which is based in china but registered in the caiman islands, Development is coordinated by decentraland foundation non-profit based in California, Decentraland describes itself as the first virtual world owned by its users, Currently having 90,000 parcels of land, each is a unique NFT on ETH blockchain. Currently the cheapest plot of land is $10,000 USD.. So you have fun thinking anyone can just enter this scene, nope gotta be rich..
We have individual parcels, estates consisting of multiple parcels, districts which contain parcels with similar themes, and plazas which are untradeable plazas which act as hubs and are owned by the community. Below is a screenshot of the marketplace where you can buy parcels, you can also buy wearables, & names for in-game avatars. Naturally these are NFT’s.
When it comes to building on decentraland its very easy & requires no technical ability to use, Similar to roblox with them having the added benefit of it not costing $10,000 to build on a plot of digital land..
Everything is purchased using MANA, you can use MANA to buy whatever NFT’s you’d like & you can even go as far as gambling with your MANA in Casinos. People use MANA to buy tickets for concerts, art galleries & even private parties.
MANA holders can even choose to vote on any changes made to decentralands virtual world, including modifications to land permeators, adjustments to marketplace fees, and the approval of wearable NFT collections.
One of the most recent big updates on decentraland was the opening stages of decentralands integration to polygon, Ethereums leading layer-2 scaling solution. decentraland recently completed this integration with the help of WalletConnect, making it possible to use MANA in the virtual world with 0 gas fees.
In June, Sotheby’s opened a virtual gallery in decentraland which is huge because It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewelry, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries.
Sotheby’s move might be why Boson protocol decided to blow $700k on land parcels to build a virtual mall, & why a virtual property developer called public realm bought its own parcels for $990k shortly afterwards. Just a bunch of old rich people expanding themselves of course ! FOMO
Community Grants
The Decentraland DAO possesses a MANA fund that has been set aside to help sponsor and facilitate the continual growth of the Decentraland platform. One avenue used by the DAO to achieve these goals is a grants program that was voted in place by the DAO. Successful grants can obtain up to $240 thousand dollars in MANA
This grants program allows any member of the community to request funding to help reimburse their efforts in community building and education, creating 3D content for the world, or implementing new features and improvements to the platform.
Grants can be requested by completing a proposal form within the DAO. If approved by the community, then the DAO Committee will execute the transfer of funds to the grant beneficiary by means of a one-time transfer, or a vesting contract.
Grant categories
Grant requests can fall under one of four broad categories: Community, Content Creator, Platform Contributor, or Gaming. These four categories represent areas of Decentraland that benefit most from community contributions.
In August, the Decentraland foundation announced archipelago, a protocol that splits Decentraland into multiple areas rather than multiple servers. Understanding the significance of this requires a bit of context. Prior to the archipelago, each Decentraland server held a maximum of 100 users. Now, this would make its virtual world feel empty as those 100 users would often be spread out. With archipelago, select areas in Decentraland will basically be hosted on their own servers, and users will automatically switch servers when moving between these areas.
At the end of August decentraland announced its first five in-game quests
In September, decentraland announced its play-to-earn incubator.
In October decentraland held a Metaverse festival which featured deadmouse, paris hilton and other famous folks most boomers don’t care about. We have been seeing hundreds of events pop up lately on this platform, which is attracting thousands of new avatars onto the platform. However I’m not impressed, leading players such as Fortnite hosting events with 45.5+Million live players watching concerts such as the Travis Scott one.
On October 29th, Facebook announced it’s Meta rebrand and all the Metaverse crypto tokens went wild. You can see this on the charts yourself, prices spiked only during this announcement before that this token was mainly unheard of, Metaverse platforms like roblox since 2006, are still leading.
Amount of MANA in decentralands trust has doubled from less than $10 million MANA to 20 million MANA since march this year. This suggests that there is significant institutional demand for decentraland.
According to non-fungable.com
The NFT trading volume has exploded, going back to November we had seen around $50,000,000.00 in sales, meanwhile now in the month of December we see close to $100Million
Look no further to visit Las Vegas for your gambling needs, The Flamingos - Decentralands First Mega Casino
An offering in Vegas City in partnership with Decentral Games.
Anyone can gamble on decentralands virtual decentralized casinos, which attracts thousands of MANA holders ever month, and I see this number growing. Which this could most defiantly rise the price of MANA in the long term if we see no regulators come in.
Price of MANA-
Currently we see lots of competitors & relative to the other tokens MANA is currently overvalued for the time being. At the time of this post MANA is at $3, and its main spike price to $5 occurred on Facebooks announcement & name change to Meta. Moreover, MANA seems to be seeing some sell pressure coming from it’s community treasury and this brings us to the decentraland DAO, MANA holders can vote since Feb.2020, When the decentraland DAO was created its treasury came preloaded with 222Million MANA which was around 10% of MANAs original supply, to ensure the community doesn’t overspend the MANA, the DAO came with a 10 year vesting schedule. Over 100Million dollars worth of MANA has been unlocked so far, which means $100Mill is allowed to be spent with over $400Million left in the chamber.
The reason why this hasn’t all been spent yet is because initially before we got the update, in order to cast a vote you had to pay high gas fees. Now we take most of this voting activity off-chain this is due using snapshot a governance platform i’m sure you have heard of before, almost every DAO in crypto uses snapshot in other words snapshot allows “on-chain” voting with no transaction fees.
In conclusion, MANA is mostly a Community driven project with MANA holder’s being given the opportunity to vote on proposals and where it should move forward, I personally don’t like MANA for what it is right now. I mean if I want to own a piece of digital land I have to pay $10,000. Meanwhile other alternatives exist such as roblox which already has Hundreds of Millions of active monthly players & creating a piece of digital land is basically free. If your plan was to enter MANA in hopes on making money, unless you are rich or a developer this is a token I wouldn’t really get involved into heavily in the moment. Most of the hype behind the project is because it is just because it is Blockchain based & has NFT’s etc. Of course I will be publishing more Part’s about MANA as updates are happening frequently.
Enjoy the rest of your day, this is not financial or legal advice. I’m just a ArcticFox with a BowTie.