In recent weeks, one segment has stood out from the rest in the crypto market. While the price of the main tokens faced correction, the game currencies rose sharply and many of them even registered new historical highs.
That is what we are going to talk about today and study one of the oldest projects in this sector, Descentraland, explaining its characteristics, differentials, risks and expectations for the future.
Although Decentraland has been in the news lately, mainly due to the rise in popularity of the metaverse subject, it has been around for some time now.
Its beginning dates back to June 2015, when a 2D version, named Stone Age, was released. Over the next two years, the project went through two updates, called the Bronze Age and Iron Age, before being officially released in 3D version in 2020. However, it was in 2021 that its popularity increased, due to the growth in interest in the subject NFTs.
One of its main features, and which also made the other game coins stand out from other types of traditional games, was the play to earn mechanism, which allowed the games to be no longer just for entertainment, but also a source of profit generators.
What Decentraland does is provide a virtual reality platform, based on the Ethereum network, where users can create and monetize content and applications, through the acquisition of plots of land, called LANDs, which are non-fungible tokens, ERC-721, and also virtual goods, which are represented by non-fungible tokens, that is, they are transferable and scarce and actually belong to the player.
The acquisition of these lands is done by the game's own ERC-20 token, the Mana, which can also be used to trade digital goods and services within Decentraland.
Once the player has purchased the land, he can do whatever he wants with it, build a store, an amusement park, a resort, a show environment, or simply sell it. Anyway, the possibilities, interaction and experiences are endless.
Each of the lands is exactly 16m x 16m (256 square meters) in size.
Without a doubt, the team is one of the most important aspects for the success of a project. Let's get to know who is behind the creation and development of Decentraland.
The platform was co-founded by Ariel Meilich, who held the role of project leader at Decentraland between 2017 and 2020, and is an entrepreneur who has created a few startups, including an online translation agency and a CRM platform. He also worked as an analyst at Charles River Ventures, a leading Silicon Valley venture fund.
The other founder is Esteban Ordano, former technology leader at Decentraland, who previously worked as a software engineer at BitPay, Inc., was a consultant for Matic Network, and a co-founder of Zeppelin Solutions. The two are no longer leading the project, which is now run by the Decentraland Foundation, but still work alongside Decentraland as consultants.
Decentraland uses two tokens, LAND and MANA, which allow users to interact with the platform.
LAND: Individual ownership of pieces of land is represented by the non-fungible LAND token, which has the format
ERC-721.
MANA: To acquire LAND, users need Decentralando's native ERC-20 token, MANA.
In addition to the acquisition of Lands, with MANA it is possible to purchase goods and services within the platform.
Holders of both tokens can also participate in the governance structure, voting on improvements to the project. To vote, it is necessary to lock the token, which gives rise to wMANA.
Each wMANA provides one unit of voting power, while each Land and each property provides 2,000 units of voting power.
Ticker: MANA
Blockchain: Ethereum
Token Standard: ERC-20
Token Type: utility token
Total supply: 2.193.991.127 MANA
Cirlucate supply: 1.863.372.548 MANA
In June of this year, 259 lots of virtual land in Decentraland were sold for $913,000 to virtual real estate investment company Republic Realm.
The amount was a record and became the most expensive terrain in Decentraland's metaverse to date.
Among the investors are the venture capital companies Animoca Brands and Boost VC.
In October, the price of the MANA token reached more than 300% appreciation.
The run took the price of Decentraland to a record $4.90 at the end of last month.
Decentracand's market capitalization was 500 million at the beginning of 2020 and is currently $6,649,468,464 billion. The volume in the last 24 hours was $2,169,400,124 million and the main MANA trading exchanges are Binance, Coinbase, HitBTC and TokoCrypto.
One of the reasons for the strong appreciation of the MANA token and others linked to blockchain and NFT games was undoubtedly Facebook's announcement of the name change to Meta.
One of the aspects that can make the thesis of investment in blockchain games and other virtual interactions interesting is the increase in the time people spend in digital environments.
The growth of the video game industry is also favorable. Currently, in more than half of American homes there is a video game console.
From 2019 until now, the time spent playing has jumped from an average of 12.7 hours per week to 16.5 hours. This trend of increased permanence of players in the virtual environment can be very positive for projects related to blockchain and metaverse games.
According to Newzoo's Global Games Market Report, the global games market is heading towards the end of 2021 with $180 billion in revenue generated and maintaining that same annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.7%, that could generate more than $218 billion in 2024.
Decentraland is designed for content creators, companies and individuals looking for new sources of entertainment, business opportunities and monetization of creations.
A consolidated growth and adoption of the blockchain, virtual reality and metaverse games sector can indeed benefit decentralized game projects and metaverse applications such as Decentraland.
Currently, users gather, interact, share content and play mostly on large centralized platforms like Facebook.
A decentralized model, however, allows participants to gain multiple benefits, such as taking advantage of transactions that take place on the platform, rather than allowing part or all of the revenue to flow to a single party.
Additionally, a decentralized platform will reduce the risk of censorship and vulnerabilities due to infrastructure failures or security breaches. There may be the great asset of creations like Decentraland and that could make them valuable in the future.
