What is Decentraland (MANA)?
Description
Metaverse has become a 2021-2022 trend in the cryptocurrency market, and one of the most prominent projects on the market is Decentraland and the cryptocurrency MANA. What is MANA cryptocurrency, how to use it, and what kind of market it is.
Decentraland is a virtual reality platform, a Metaverse based on the Ethereum blockchain. Within the Decentraland metaverse, users create and monetize products of intellectual creation.
What is MANA crypto?
MANA is the Decentraland platform's cryptocurrency used to buy and sell NFTs within the Metaverse. Define MANA isn't only a cryptocurrency service; it's also the right to vote in the decentralized Metaverse community.
The history of its creation Decentraland Foundation
The Decentraland Foundation was established in Argentina in 2015. It was founded by Ari Meilich, an analyst at Charles River Ventures, and Esteban Ordano, a programmer at BitPay. The Decentraland Foundation is where the Decentraland Metaverse project was created. Of course, in the early days, the functionality and versatility of the project couldn't match those of today. At that time, the software simply sent out images of a two-dimensional pixel map to users, where pixels were painted in certain colors based on metadata, allowing them to be identified. As can be seen from the logic, the basic idea was already to sell virtual spaces with the right to assign unique ownership rights to purchasers.
The beta version of the Decentraland Metaverse was launched in 2017. Now the interior of the virtual project was already fully 3-D. As expected, the developers began to debug the mechanism for selling ownership rights to virtual real estate – in this case, virtual plots of land. It's noteworthy that virtual land plots were initially sold for $20, but in a few years, during the NFT boom of 2020–2021, the most attractive properties in the Decentraland world already cost over $100,000.
The ICO (Initial Coin/Token Offering) stage in 2017 was also a milestone in the project's history. On that day (!), the company managed to sell $24 million worth of tokens to investors. All the coins were sold in a record time of just 30 seconds. Most of the proceeds were used to develop the project, while the developers kept only 20% as remuneration.
The final version of the meta-universe was introduced to the world in 2020. Decentraland is currently the most recognizable and sought-after Metaverse. We should say it straight: the projects from Meta and other development companies are just attempting to copy the pioneers of the Decentraland Foundation.
A history of MANA cryptocurrency
Decentraland's own cryptocurrency MANA is an ERC-20 utility token, which is natural since the project is based on the Ethereum blockchain. The company initially issued 2.8 billion tokens, but as of now (January 2022), 2.14 billion remain in circulation. The reduction in the number of coins happens due to a process called token burning.
So, for example, in 2017–2018, when paying for land in the Decentraland Metaverse with MANA, which counts in LAND (non-fungible tokens of ERC-721 standard, i.e., NFT), the user gave the coins back to the company. And after these tokens were returned to the creator, the company destroyed them to maintain the correct market balance. Admittedly, this is the right mechanism to regulate the market because the creator has already made a profit.
At the time of writing (January 2022), MANA ranks 32nd in terms of market capitalization at $5.7 billion. During its existence since September 2017, the cryptocurrency has risen from its low of $0.007883 (13 October 2017) to an all-time high of $5.9 (25 November 2021) for 1 MANA. The exchange rate is now hovering around the $3.1 mark.
We should also mention one very important characteristic of MANA that is noted and highlighted by all crypto analysts and experienced traders – MANA's rate is subject to the same fluctuations as the market leaders. The MANA price fluctuation chart on days of high market volatility is almost identical to BTC and ETH charts.
Facts about Decentraland and MANA
The advantages and uniqueness of the Decentraland Metaverse and its derivative, the MANA cryptocurrency, is the subject of long discussions. So, not to waste hours listing them, it is only right to highlight the main and more significant points in the life of the project and the events related to it:
- Samsung added support for Decentraland to its Samsung Blockchain wallet app in 2020, the same year that the official version of the meta-universe was released.
- Atari has been Decentraland's partner since 2021. So, not only has the American gaming giant invested heavily in the project's development, but it also owns part of the virtual land, where it has developed and launched virtual casinos. Users play with both real and virtual money in those casinos.
- World-renowned auctioneer Sotheby's has created a virtual replica of its headquarters in Decentraland, where it has digitally placed its complete art collections.
- Decentraland's investors include FBG Capital, Kenetic Capital, Hashed, CoinFund, and Digital Currency Group.
- In October 2021, the world's first four-day Metaverse music festival took place in the Metaverse.
How does Decentraland work?
Decentraland stands out by having the world's first virtual representation of an existing country – Barbados bought a certain amount of gameland and created its official embassy on it with staff and operating regulations.
This Metaverse has its own NFT marketplace, OpenSea. It's in great demand among many users around the world.
The project is fully controlled by its members, who participate in Decentraland DAO and influence the project's development by voting for certain proposals. In other words, it is a universe built according to its inhabitants' wishes.
The funds invested in MANA at the beginning (in September 2017) have multiplied many times, with a benefit of 7,954%.
Decentraland added support for Polygon in autumn 2021.
Decentraland is the first and currently most popular working and developing Metaverse. NASA, Coca-Cola, and Playboy have invested heavily in Decentraland.
Conclusion
The exciting worlds of metaverses are the future that is already here. Every year, the field of virtual social environments attracts enormous investments and multiplies user audiences. The leader here is Decentraland, undisputed and with a colossal advantage. As practice shows, the leader is followed by leaders from other fields. This can also be seen in the examples of investment in the project from various business sectors, from Atari to Playboy.
Having gained the most powerful product in the era of cryptocurrencies, the developers created their own coin, MANA. Last year it made its all-time high. Now there is a slight decline, but every trader knows that price charts are wave-based, which means that new highs are yet to come. We should also consider the fact that the currency is only a little over 4.5 years old.
Understanding the importance of metaverse development processes and the prospects of virtual products, cryptocurrency trading platform EXEX provides its clients with advantageous MANA trading terms with high leverage and an automatic risk management system.
