A virtual world based on blockchain technology and financed by an ICO is selling ‘plots of land’ for up to $200,000.
Genesis City, which was launched by Decantraland following an ICO last year, uses distributed ledger technology (DLT) to record the transactions in virtual land. In a recent report, Bloomberg said that Ripio.com, the credit network, paid almost $150,000 for prime ‘real estate’ in the virtual world, next to the main square where visitors first enter
Decantraland plans to expand Genesis City to give visitors the option to “go to a casino, watch live music, attend a workshop, shop with friends, start a business” and more. The company, started by two coders from Argentina, was funded through an ICO that made $26 million in around 30 seconds last year.
The new ‘Second Life’
An auction of plots raised another $28 million for the virtual city, which runs on the Ethereum blockchain. The founders say that the plan is to build a platform that consumers can access once virtual reality achieves mass adoption.
The project is reminiscent of ‘Second Life’, the virtual world that received lots of media attention in the mid-2000s. Though the service has less mainstream attention these days, it was claimed in 2017 that it still has 600,000 active users. Plots of virtual space in ‘Second Life’ currently sell for around $600.
A Washington DC-sized city
Genesis City has some way to go before it is as busy even as Second Life. The developers plan to build the city out over the next few months to be roughly the size of Washington DC – there are a fixed number of plots: 90,000. Meanwhile, the early adopters can be expected to begin experimenting with what the service is capable of. The economy of Genesis City and Decantraland is based on its cryptocurrency, Mana tokens. These were worth two cents each at launch and currently are at around 12 cents each.