What if you could build a virtual house, casino or even an entire virtual district through your desktop and could escape into this utopian world just like the OASIS in the blockbuster movie- Ready Player one?
To make this a reality, break into Decentraland.
What is Decentraland?
Decentraland is a shared, open-standard virtual reality platform, where users can construct and design a virtual world which is set up entirely over the Ethereum blockchain platform. Pretty much like owning a second life virtually.
You can build decoupled 3D scenes, land estates, deploy live scene previews and build virtual communities ecosystems termed as Minimum Viable Products or maybe a comic book store selling digital booklets to your virtual neighbors! Cosmic imaginations!
A virtual Casino. Source: Decentraland
The project was kick-started in 2015 with Project Lead Ari Meilich and Tech Lead Esteban Ordano and is head quartered at Buenos Aires.
Users can buy “land” or “parcels” (i.e. 1Land = 1Parcel) by paying in Mana coins- the ERC20 tokens serving as the cryptocurrency in the virtual world.
LAND is a non-fungible digital asset (just like CryptoKitties or CryptoPunks) maintained in Ethereum smart contract as an ERC 721 non-fungible token (NFT) – which makes it unique and scarce in the sense that it can be traded only over the Decentraland MarketPlace. A Land token is referred with its respective (x,y) Cartesian coordinates, its owner and a description of its content called as Manifest file.
Currently there are approx 90,000 parcels of land available. Each land is a tile 10m X 10m large which can be built upwards without any limit. All of them are built and owned by different users and not by the company.
Below is a bird’s-eye view of the virtual land as designed inside Decentraland:
Key:
| Tiny blue blocks | Land up for sale |
| Tiny grey blocks | Owned land blocks |
| Large Green blocks | Genesis Plaza- The gateway or entry point- owned by nobody |
Stepping inside your Virtual reality (VR)
Currently, 1 Land/ Parcel = 12,999 MANA
or, 1 Land = $ 1000 approx
All parcels are the same with just one variable different- their location. The visual, audio, and three dimensional content of Decentraland will be stored in IPFS.
To build a scene in Decentraland you’re required to install plethora of software tools such as the CLI tools, Node.js and more. The VR platform uses A-Frame, a webVR framework, which enables users to leverage scripting API so that people can build interactive scenes as well as play games simultaneously inside the virtual world.
The SDK provided by the platform helps you to test, manage or deploy 3D content in Decentraland even before buying a Land, as the developing and testing tasks can be done offline as well.
Decentraland can be visited using a VR Headset (Head Mounted Display, or HMD), or using a 2D view on your PC or laptop.
All the transactions and modifications made by a land owner are encoded and validated by the Ethereum smart contracts.
The complete market history of trade of parcels inside Decentraland can be accessed here.
Ages in Decentraland
Decentraland has made every possible effort to clone the real world into their platform in the form of “Ages” exhibiting their Roadmap.
So far, Decentraland has successfully experienced and executed the Stone Age and Bronze Age.
However, the next in the pipeline, viz. Iron Age still owns clouds of woolliness over it. It is anticipated to implement a peer-to-peer communications, a scripting system to enable interactive content, and a system of fast cryptocurrency payments for in-world transactions. A greater understanding can be extracted from the whitepapers.
Use Cases and What's New in Decentraland?
Since its inception, Decentraland developers have shown enormous zeal to design and fabricate incredible virtual experiences inside their virtual community.
The most recent being- CryptoBeasties, which lets you collect and trade blockchain-based Beasties gaming card. The pre-sale is already up and running until October 23, 2018.
Agora can also be viewed as a pragmatic model for blockchain-based voting mechanism. With Agora community members can now create a token-based off-chain voting ecosystem inside the network itself. This paves way for future real-world decentralized voting scenarios being migrated over Decentraland.
XOM-8: Scarpyard Escape, CryptoCarz are some recent decentralized gaming experiences delivered over the first blockchain-based gaming platform.
Racing virtually!
Besides, highway-traffic parcels can be used to promote and advertize brands and services. Some neighborhoods may become virtual versions of Times Square in New York City!
Digital assets such as avatars or other resources can be published, distributed and traded inside the world.
Will Decentraland become the future of Marketplace?
Decentraland witnessed a constructive start with $26 million raised during the company’s ICO process. With current market cap at $78,538,330 USD and an exponential jump since mid-September, the future of Mana seems well-lit. The historic land sale which fetched a deal of $180,000 for a single Land block- also grabbed eyeballs towards this "metaverse". However, the decentralized cosmos still needs to cross the final optimization phase in order to solve any real-world problem besides just being a leisure platform.