There are those who are spending millions of euros on virtual plots to sell clothes for avatars: this is the Decentraland phenomenon

We have heard the news that The Metaverse Group, a subsidiary of the Tokens.com portal, has spent 618,000 MANA (about 2.16 million euros at the time of purchase) on a virtual land, on an intangible property of 565 square meters (virtual) to sell virtual clothes. That is, on a plot within Decentraland, a kind of Metaverse that can help us understand Facebook's future plans.

And, with this information, many doubts may arise: what are MANAs, what does it mean to spend millions on virtual land and what is Decentraland. Here we are going to understand this new multimillion-dollar phenomenon that takes our relationship with the parallel and digital realities of the network to another level.

The growth of MANA thanks to Facebook

First we are going to know what the MANA currency is. It is worth mentioning that last summer someone spent 1,295,000 MANA in a shopping center, but since we are talking about a volatile currency, at that time this amount did not reach 900,000 euros. And it is that the value of MANA has quadrupled after Zuckerberg and his company now called Meta announced their plans with the Metaverse, where Decentraland is a pioneer.

Decentraland was first launched in 2017, a total of about 2.6 billion MANA tokens were minted. There are currently 1.69 billion MANA in active circulation. It is an Ethereum token that uses the virtual reality platform Decentraland. MANA can be used to pay for virtual land in Decentraland, as well as virtual goods and services.

Buy virtual land: online real estate boom

Now, what does it mean to spend hundreds of thousands of MANA (millions of euros) on a virtual field. This last known purchase was for a set of 116 small plots of 4.88 digital square meters, making a total of 565.78 virtual square meters in total. Those plots are being used to create virtual stores where virtual clothes are sold to dress the avatars. It's like spending money to have stores within the Sims or Second Life, but in this case within Decentraland.

Last April it was known that Decentraland had sold more than 50 million dollars in land, avatars, properties and accessories within virtual cities since its creation.

Buying these virtual lots can be an investment just like buying a property during the real estate boom. Ryan Kunzmann is one of the most well-known investors in Decentraland and he himself told how he spent 15,000 dollars to build 62 plots and that three months later he recovered his investment by selling 8 of them.

Genesis: this is the capital of Decentraland

And now that we know about currency and investments, let's dive deeper into Decentraland and its main city, Genesis. The main objective of Decentraland is to offer a virtual universe that gives its users full ownership of their virtual assets. The virtual reality platform allows you to build your own stages and structures, buy and sell objects and trade with other users.

Each one is free to decide if he wants to play for free or if he prefers to charge other players to access his content and also how he is going to implement this charge. Decentraland does not participate in the monetization of your content and does not guarantee any return profits. In this virtual universe you can play, explore or interact with games and activities. You can also buy plots on which to build your own environments, markets, shops, or apps.

According to its website, Decentraland is not controlled by a centralized organization. There is no single agent with the power to modify the rules of the software or the value of the currency or to prevent certain users from accessing this parallel world.

Genesis City is the city created in 2017 within Decentraland. The virtual city has 900,000 plots. To get an idea of ​​the size of this virtual city, its extension is compared to Washington DC Here you can buy objects and also properties. Just as if you access the Idealista website (for example) to get a house or a plot, on the decentraland website you have a section dedicated to properties. You can search for your land on a map of little squares or you can select to see the list of properties that are for sale. The search can be filtered according to the cheapest land, according to the latest ones for sale or by name.

Proponents of these "metaverses" compare the purchase of virtual properties and land to the battle over domain names in the early days of the Internet. They seek to acquire at a good price a virtual good that they consider will be in great demand in the future. In the case of virtual cities, the center receives more attention from new users (as a real city receives more tourists and visitors). And, therefore, as in life, the central plots of Genesis are the most valued.

Cover image via| easycrypto