To this day, many believe that the idea of the metaverse was born in the mind of Mark Zuckerberg, which is not true. What Meta’s CEO did was pitch the concept to billions of people; and also created hype which became the perfect excuse for companies that were trying to raise funding without giving too much explanation about what they thought they were doing with the money or how they would get it. But the Facebook metaverse as such doesn’t exist yet—regardless of Oculus’ advances—and we won’t see one anytime soon either. However, there is a platform that is revolutionizing the concept of living in virtuality, and it is called Decentraland.
Decentraland This project was born in Argentina and in a few years has become the most important virtual platform on a global level. It’s a game, a community, and in turn a business; has events, attracted the attention of the most important and influential brands and personalities in the world; It’s an open platform open source and decentralized, which lives on the Ethereum blockchain; it has its own (crypto)currency and NFTs, avatars, parcels, cities, shops, embassies and everything you can imagine. After all, this is a metaverse. No more, no less.
But Decentraland It wasn’t always the 3D world we know today, which we can explore using our own character and interacting with other users. Long before virtual cities, malls, mini-games, market where we buy, sell or trade a piece of land or endless collectibles, music festivals, fashion weeks or any other feature that distinguishes the platform today, there was a group of enthusiasts who challenged technological limits materialize your vision of the metaverse.
Decentraland took his first steps with bitcoin
although today Decentraland is a project that lives on the Ethereum blockchain, it has taken its first steps with bitcoin. In 2015, a group of Argentine engineers led by Stephen Ordano, Manuel Araoz D Ermel Jardi set out to create a decentralized virtual world.
First prototype that already used the name DecentralandIt was pretty rudimentary. It consisted of a 2D community map website with colored pixels; where each user could connect to his computer and start mining “land”, one pixel at a time. And since everyone was looking at the same map, each person could choose a color to represent the pixels they mined.
The project stalled for just over a year, until renewed interest in virtual reality helped spark the idea. The second prototype was developed at the end of 2016 and already consisted of a 3D map created using the Unity graphics engine; but the big novelty was that it was based on its own blockchain. To do this, the developers have made fork from a bitcoin node. So instead of using transactions to send or receive an amount of cryptocurrency, they created a method to send digital messages.
In addition, users could create scenes in a 3D browser and serialize them for later upload to the blockchain. But what was even more interesting was that Decentraland it did not deviate from its fundamentals and retained the concept of mining from the original version.
First explosion and general reform
In a recent interview onWhy didn’t I pay attention to you??, Santi Siri podcast, Yermel Jardi detailed the beginning Decentraland and explained how the first explosion of the metaverse happened made in Argentina.
“A few months later [del lanzamiento del segundo prototipo] a youtuber from London picks up a project and explains it a lot better than we could possibly do, and we start to get contributors, people who wanted to contribute. 3D modelers, programmers, designers,” Giardi explained, adding: “There we felt that the project could reach a new level, and we started a process in which we said that having our own blockchain did not make much sense, and we started see Ethereum. as our base platform.
Thus, at the beginning of 2017 and already with another key figure as Ariel Meilichreform began, gradually transforming Decentraland in what is today. 2019 saw a big jump with the launch of the closed beta, and in February 2020 it became available to everyone.
Decentraland has its own cryptocurrency, MANNA, which is used for various transactions in the metaverse. But its use has expanded beyond its original function as the token has also been listed exchanges like Binance and Ripio. This means that anyone, even if they do not use the platform, can buy MANA as an investment vehicle or tradejust as it happens with Bitcoin, Ethereum or other crypto assets.
In addition, the platform was one of the first – or perhaps the first – to explore the world of durable goods. even when the NFT expression as such did not exist. This is thanks to the creation of the LAND token, which is used to represent the over 90,000 16 x 16 meter parcels that make up this virtual world.
Another issue that is also important to note is that Decentraland is run through a Decentralized Autonomous Organization or DAO. “Through the DAO, you control the policies created to determine how the world behaves, such as what types of items are allowed (or not), content moderation, LAND rules, and auctions, among other things,” they explain on their website. Web site.
Artists, celebrities, brands and governments want to be in Decentraland
Growth Decentraland has been consistent since its release to the general public. The fact that anyone can explore this metaverse and interact with its core features using just their favorite web browser makes it easy to adapt. In addition, it is not necessary to connect to the game with wallet cryptocurrencies, although the experience as a guest is more limited.
But amid the platform’s impressive evolution over the past year, some challenges stand out in particular. On the one hand, holding a music festival Metaverse Festival— last October, featuring a long list of artists led by deadmow5. Meanwhile in March of this year Metaverse Fashion Week; yes, a fashion week with events spread over different districts and with the presence of international brands such as Tommy Hilfiger D Dolce and Gabbana.
Did not escape the fever of virtuality and sports. Australian Openthe first Grand Slam in the world tennis circuit calendar, also reached Decentraland at the beginning of 2022. This famous event launched the NFT Series and organized events around the digital version of the Rod Laver Arena, its legendary stadium.
As expected, it was not long before criticism of these events appeared. Some argue that anger is over Decentraland it’s only because of the opportunism of brands or celebrities who want to take advantage hype for the metaverse. However, there are those who claim that much of the interest in this virtual world is genuine and that it has created an attractive and highly profitable business.
In accordance with CoinDeskThe casino, operated by Decentral Games, generated $7.5 million in revenue between late 2021 and early 2022; with about 6,000 daily active users, it has already established itself as one of the main attractions of the metaverse. Meanwhile in November Reuters reported that Tokens.com purchased a land plot of 116 plots for 618,000 MANA, which is equivalent to almost $2,500,000.
And while this may sound ridiculous to many, the real estate market seems to be more than determined to explore what virtual platforms are. Decentraland they are willing to offer.
But the craziest thing that has happened so far is without a doubt the opening of the Barbados embassy. Yes, friends, the Caribbean island has become the first nation in the world to have a diplomatic dependency in the metaverse. The initiative belongs to Gabriel Abed, the current Ambassador of Barbados to the United Arab Emirates. “It will change the way the world works. The embassy is a trifle. The most important thing is what governments can do together when land is no longer physical land and restrictions are no longer part of the equation,” he said. Bloomberg.
The metaverse is here
As Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg continue to spend billions of dollars a year building their vision of the metaverse, Decentraland He had already taken several bodies ahead of him with far fewer resources. This does not mean that the Argentine-born offer is perfect (which it clearly isn’t), nor does it mean that better alternatives cannot emerge. But it shows that it already exists. functional version of life in virtuality that it has developed by leaps and bounds in a very short time and that it still has room to grow.
Manuel Araoz, one of the creators Decentraland, recently published an article explaining his vision for the platform over the next five years. There he mentioned his idea of becoming de facto standard of the open metaverse, but to do so, they must focus on three key issues: accessibility, ease of learning, and comfort. In the last point, he specifically mentioned optimizing the virtual world so that the interest of users is maintained over time. Thus, he singled out two sections: improving tools for building houses and social interactions.
In addition, he aimed to take advantage of the coming five years to establish his position and excel in this space, even as large technology companies begin to explore it. “The Metaverse must remain free, open, global and sovereign.”sentenced.
Source: Hiper Textual
