‘Decentraland’ – A Beginner’s Guide | Review

Introduction

Decentraland is a decentralized virtual reality platform powered by the Ethereum blockchain, where users will be able to create, experience, and monetize their content and applications.

About

Decentraland is a virtual world that is owned by its users, who can build, explore, play games, socialize and earn money from their creations.

In fact, it is a world that is built around MANA, a blockchain-based token used for trading goods and services provided by users. Users can also navigate Decentraland’s geography and themed districts by using the ATLAS tool and find the best location to develop.

Check out an official tweet from Decentraland:

Latest technical updates are through from the team. Check them out the implementations, enhancements and fixes here: https://t.co/3UkygFTWHI pic.twitter.com/A7C2vRrjFi — Decentraland (@decentraland) November 19, 2019

What Exactly Is MANA?

MANA is Decentraland’s fungible, ERC20 cryptocurrency token. MANA is spent, in exchange for LAND parcels. It can also be used to make in-world purchases of digital goods and services.

Check out the review video on Decentraland by Mohd Shoaib, CEO of Digital Notice

History

The Co-founders of Decentraland are Ari Meilich (Project Lead) and Esteban Ordano (Technical Lead), founded on August 8, 2017, in Beijing, China.

However, Decentraland began as a proof-of-concept for allocating ownership of digital real estate to users on a blockchain. This digital real estate was initially implemented as a pixel on an infinite 2D grid, where each pixel contained metadata identifying the owner and describing the pixel’s color.

The experiment was entitled to Decentraland’s “Stone Age“.

Ariel Meilich stated:

“I was interested in JUR for its potential to help Genesis Content. Decentraland’s ecosystem fund; instead of investing in each project in lump sums, whenever the fund invests, it sets a series of deliverables which, when met, trigger a payout. There will occasionally be disagreements about whether these milestones were effectively met. JUR could become the dispute resolution system to solve these types of issues.” Ariel Meilich

The Team And Advisors Of Decentraland

Ari Meilich – Project Lead (Co-Founder)
Esteban Ordano – Technical Lead (Co-Founder)
Manuel Araoz – Board Member
Yemel Jardi – Board Member
Dario Sneidermanis – Core Developer
Martin Triay – Core Developer
Nicolas Santangelo – Core Developer
Franco Zeoli – Marketing
Mariano Rodriguez – Illustrator
Jake Brukhman – Founder at CoinFund
Luis Cuende – Project Lead at Aragon
Diego Doval – ex CTO at Ning

What Is The Main Attraction Of The Game?

The main attraction of the game is ‘Avatars’ which is also known as ‘Decentraland Avatars’.

So, to create your own Avatar, you need to do the following steps:

Your passport to the Metaverse: You have to customize your look, grab your passport to manage your digital identity, and set off on an adventure.
Claim your name: You have to personalize your avatar with a unique name, that’s how people will recognize you across all of Decentraland. You can keep it simple but have to claim your name before the best ones are taken.
Customize your Avatar: You have to choose the body, face, hairstyle, and wardrobe of your avatar. From trendy kicks to cozy sweaters, hundreds of different customizations give you thousands of unique looks.

So, the first 4000 users that claim their name will be awarded a limited edition wearable for your avatar, built by MyCryptoHeroes.

Every avatar is issued a passport to help manage the users’ digital identity and their virtual belongings.

Here is an example of an Avatar:

Cynthia

“I love building and sharing scenes in Decentraland. When I’m not busy decorating LAND, I like to play games and hang out in the districts!” Cynthia

So, before we go directly to the game, let’s discuss briefly some of the main mission of this virtual world.

What Is LAND?

Decentraland is divided into a limited number of parcels, known as LAND. LAND is the canvas on which you create your experiences. As an owner, you have full creative freedom and any income generated by anything you make goes straight into your pocket.

Moreover, LAND is a non-fungible digital asset maintained in an Ethereum smart contract. It is divided into parcels that are referenced by using unique x,y cartesian coordinates. Each LAND token includes a record of its coordinates, its owner, and a reference to a content description file or parcel manifest that describes and encodes the content that the owner wishes to serve on his or her land.

LAND And The MANA Token

The utility of LAND is based on its adjacency to other attention hubs, its ability to host applications, and also as an identity mechanism. Developers and other content creators will demand LAND so that they can build on top of it and reach their target audience. Although every unclaimed LAND can be purchased at the same exchange rate (1000 MANA = 1 LAND), LAND parcels are distinguishable from each other, potentially trading at different prices on a secondary market due to differences in adjacencies and traffic.

However, MANA used to buy goods and services in the virtual world creates utility value for the token.

How Is Decentraland Different From Other Existing VR Platforms?

The biggest difference between Decentraland and other existing VR platforms is ownership. Instead of a single corporation, users own Decentraland. The team believes that public virtual worlds need to be ruled with open standards, so no central organization imposes their agenda.

In addition to being owned by the users, Decentraland allows these users to completely control their land content. They also get to keep all of their proceeds earned from the value generated by other users. This is unlike other systems where the central organization that runs the platform takes a cut.

How Do Users Buy Their LAND?

Buying LAND is as simple as using MANA, the token for Decentraland. Tiles of LAND measure 10 square meters, which is 33 square feet. There are no limits on how much a user can build upward on the piece of LAND. The only limitations are on the ground and the base of buildings.

To get started, users have to choose/select the size of their scene:

Mini (1×1): 16x16m – about 20 items max
Standard (2×2): 32x32m – about 80 items max
Big (2×3): 32x48m – about 120 items max
Custom: Up to 32 parcels

Project Updates Of Decentraland

The team is busy gearing up for the Creator Contest (December 2—15, 2019) but some tech news are mentioned below:

Version 6.4.3 of the SDK has been released, including a lot of bug fixes, mainly for animations and performance,
Asset bundles: optimization to improve scene loading times, while using the CPU a lot less,
Third-person view camera: working prototype to launch early next week,
Raycasting performance issue fixed,
SpatialOS prototype,
Defining a new version of the Content Service, avoiding several API calls, making it faster and easier for users to get content,
Content migration to asset bundles.

Collecting Rare Items In Decentraland

All collectible items are linked to a contract in the Blockchain.
When a user owns a collectible item, it has all the immutable information stored in that contract including the total item supply.
Nobody can ever mint a single additional copy of that same item.

Some collectibles examples are mentioned below:

Name: Bumble Bee Category: Costume Rarity: Epic Max supply: 1000

Name: Frankie Category: Costume Rarity: Legendary Max supply: 100

Name: Bride of Frankie Category: Costume Rarity: Mythic Max supply: 10

Name: Skeleton Category: Costume Rarity: Mythic Max supply: 10

Name: Star Skull Mask Category: Mask Rarity: Legendary Max supply: 100

Smart Items

Smart Items allow the users to easily add interactive elements without the need for code. They just drag and drop items and then configure their behavior.

By using Smart Items, they can create an interactive scene or scenes if they are feeling energetic.

With a total prize pool of $50,000 USD up for grabs, this is one competition that a user don’t want to miss:

First Place: 200,000 MANA + LANDs
Second Place: 150,000 MANA + LANDs
Third Place: 100,000 MANA + LANDs
Fourth Place: 50,000 MANA + LANDs
Fifth Place: 25,000 MANA + LANDs
6th to 10th Place: 10,000 MANA + LANDs
11th to 45th Place: LAND

MANA awards above 50,000 MANA are subject to an irrevocable 6-month vesting schedule.

How Decentraland is Transforming Since It Started?

As Decentraland was known as the “Stone Age” earlier, the land was modeled in the form of a simple grid and pixels were allocated to users through a proof-of-work algorithm which was similar to Bitcoin.

Then, the project entered the “Bronze Age,” with land modeled in 3D space, a torrent and Blockchain full node, and features like the Unity Browser and World Editor. After that, the MANA Contribution Period took place. Those who bought MANA were able to claim pieces of LAND, then interact with other MANA owners.

Now, the Terraform Event is ongoing, which is the first chance for users to claim land, as is the Beta launch for the “Iron Age.”

So, now, the “Iron Age” is adding multiplayer support, along with LIVE chats and Avatars. It allows scripting and custom items on owned land. Finally, the “Silicon Age” is the full-fledged 3D world with complete VR support and customizes the laws of physics. At this point, Decentraland is living within the blockchain.

News On Decentraland

On July 5, 2019, it has been reported by Crypto Storm:

“Decentraland (MANA), one of the most promising projects in the cryptocurrency market is getting ready for the upcoming World Explorer. After a year and a half of work, the team behind Decentraland announced the release of the Decentraland World Explorer.”

The source added:

“The team behind Decentraland has been working through the last months in order to be able to deal with different challenges that the development of the project was dealing with. At the moment, app distribution for mobile, console, and VR is taking place through gated app stores that are yet far from the open economy that the team wants to eventually reach.”

Views And Opinions About Decentraland

There are some Founders and Leaders of various Projects, whose views and opinions are mentioned below:

Adam Draper, the Founder, and MD of Boost VC, said:

“I think it was fantastic! As an investor in VR and Crypto, this was so much fun to see where creators are starting to overlap the technologies. Some of the experiences were super impressive, and I’m excited for all the next-generation content built on Decentraland!” Adam Draper

Jupiter Hadley, the Founder of Indie Game Jams, said:

“There were a lot of really, really cool places. It was great to take my time exploring each scene. It feels like everyone is creating a giant world together and I think that a world that contains all of these scenes will look wild!” Jupiter Hadley

Ethan Kim, the Co-Founder, and Partner at Hashed, said:

“I wanted to see the game developers’ creativity and imagination which could be very different from that of traditional games. The concept of each game was fascinating. After polishing the quality and optimizing technology, Decentraland could be a new way to enjoy virtual life.” Ethan Kim

Riorio, the Founder of DCL Plazas, said:

“I was looking not only for dynamic scenes but also for innovation in the ways in which users can interact and immerse themselves within a scene. The overall quality of entries was high and didn’t fail to meet expectations.” Riorio

The Launch Partners Of Decentraland

Binance
Dapper
Trust Wallet
MyCryptoHeroes
Crypto.com
Matic
Huobi
Dapp.com
imToken
Coinbase Wallet

Conclusion

Thus, Decentraland is a distributed platform for a shared virtual world that enables developers to build and monetize applications on top of it. The scarcity of land, on top of which applications can be built, creates hubs that capture user attention, which drives revenue to content creators.

For more details, you can visit the official website here: https://decentraland.org/

Source: decentraland.org | blockonomi.com

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