Decentraland is one of the biggest and fasted growing Crypto Games out there. It is essentially a crypto based virtual world created in 2016 by a group of developers in Argentina. Back in 2018, players were profiting more than 500% buying property that doesn’t actually physically exist from Decentraland. It’s built on the Ethereum Blockchain and it is essentially a game of virtual worlds where you can buy land and sell them in the future for a higher price.
What is Decentraland?
Controlled Via DAO, Decentraland is a crypto game with a virtual world where you can buy and sell virtual land and estates. Have you ever played Second life or Minecraft, the UX of Decentraland is very similar to these games.
The core of the game is to be able to create creative things. Players can create scenes, artworks, challenges using their simple builder tool. As we know players can buy and sell virtual properties and these are documented in the Ethereum Blockchain to make the transactions easy and prevent frauds and scams.
Players can create almost anything they want from casinos, game parlors, buildings, skyscrapers to anything they can dream of.
What is Land in Decentraland?
Similar to the real world Real Estate Terms, Land in Decentraland is simply called “LAND”. The land can include the virtual properties and the creations of the players. Each land is 16X16 meters and each land is an NFT.
What is an NFT? – NFT’s are digital tokens that are non-fungible meaning, they cannot be duplicated, replicated or replaced. They can be anything from an Original Artwork, music, videos or any digital asset that which is tokenized and turned into an NFT, will posses the qualities of an NFT. Thus, the digital asset or the Artwork will have it’s ownership recorded in the Blockchain network and due to this, fraudulent activities and scams can be prevented.
Therefore, here in Decentraland, each LAND is an NFT. Which means that, your land will have a unique token ID and it can be sold in the marketplace for the price that you desire.
In Decentraland, LAND can be bought using their official cryptocurrency called MANA. You can easily buy MANA from the traditional Crypto currency exchanges like Coinbase or even from MetaMask. On average, one parcel of LAND in Decentraland approximately costs 6,900 MANA which is equivalent to $5700 Dollars USD. As of August, 2021, the price of MANA was $0.84.
You may wonder how do players make money from Virtual properties in Decentraland and the core idea itself is NFT. Because each LAND in Decentraland is an NFT. Here the idea of scarcity comes into play and this is the reason why, when a player buys a land, there is a high probability for him to sell his land for a higher price in the future because the land is scarce and if you can figure out, what kind of and which land is a profitable investment, you can make good money from Decentraland.
Of course, this requires, a bit of research and you’ll probably have to play the game and understand it’s mechanics and how the market really works.
How do you buy land in Decentraland?
Buying land in Decentraland is actually pretty simple and I will walk you through the whole process .
Firstly, you’ll need a Crypto Wallet in order for you to be able to purchase land in Decentraland.
Creating a Crypto Wallet – MetaMask
A crypto wallet is essentially a wallet that is used for buying, selling and storing crypto currencies.
One of the best and most flexible crypto wallets is MetaMask. Metamask is a very famous crypto wallet in the blockchain community because it is used by almost every blockchain companies out there including Decentraland. It’s one of the best wallets out there so be sure to have an account with Metamask.
1. First Step is go to Metamask.com and first install their Official Chrome Plugin. Depending upon which browser you use, MetaMask also has a plugin for Firefox. Although, I recommend using Chrome, but if you use Firefox, you can still use Metamask from that browser.
2. Go to their website (Metamask.com) and Click on “Get Chrome Extension”.
3. Next click on “Add to Chrome”
4. Click on “Add Extension”.
5. MetaMask is now Installed on your Chrome Browser.
6. The next step is to create an account with MetaMask.
7. You should see a MetaMask logo icon in the top right corner of your browser.
8. Click on that icon and select “Try it now”.
9. Hit “Continue”.
10. Create a password for your MetaMask account and click on “Create”.
11. Click Next and Accept the terms and conditions.
12. Create a password for your MetaMask account and click on “Create”.
13. Next you will be given a Secret Backup phrase of 12 words. Remember to store this phrase safely and keep it very secure. Click on “Reveal Secret Words”. This phase will be used for recovery if you ever forget your main account password.
14. After you have safely stored and written down the backup phrase safely in a secure location, you will be asked to rewrite them in the correct order.
15. Once you’ve verified your secret phrase, Click on “Confirm”.
16. Congrats!, you’ve successfully created your MetaMask account. Now the account is fully integrated within your browser and it can be used to connect with Decentraland.
Getting a Decentraland Account and Passport
Decentraland Passports are essentially like real life passports that are used to identify your character and it can be used to verify your identity when logging in into Decentraland.
Creating a Decentraland account is also pretty simple and straightforward. Now that you have a MetaMask account, it’s just a matter couple of minutes before you finally get your account on Decentraland.
1. Go to Decentraland’s official website and click on “Start Exploring Button”.
2. Click on the Play Button and choose the MetaMask option to connect your MetaMask wallet with Decentaland.
3. Next Click on the sign button in the MetaMask Wallet extension.
4. Now you will come across the character avatar customization page.
5. Click on Done after you have created your avatar and give a name to your Avatar.
6. Click Next and Accept the Terms and Conditions.
7. Initially, you will be guided by the game to go through the tutorials before you can fully explore the game.
8. Also note, you’ll need to put some money into your MetaMask account. This can be done by directly buying Crypto Currency from your MetaMask account or using an Crypto Currency Wallet such as Coinbase. Both options are great and Coinbase is also a great way to buy Crypto Currencies.
9. After you’ve transferred some money in the form of Crypto Currency, specifically Ethereum into your MetaMask account and also you’ve completed the tutorial. You are now free to do any thing. Next step is to finally now buy land in Decentraland.
Buying land in Decentraland.
By now, I assume that you have a fully functional MetaMask account and a Deccentraland account. You’ve completed the basic tutorial and now you can proceed towards buying land in Decentraland.
In the bottom right corner of the screen, you’ll see a option called “Builder”. Click on that.
Choose the “LAND” Option from the left and Decentraland will display all your owned lands in the game. Essentially, at this point you don’t own any land so it will prompt you to buy land.
Click on the “Buy Land” option.
You will be taken to the Official Marketplace of Decentraland. Here you might have to reconnect to Decentraland again. If needs be, reconnect to Decentraland using your Metamask account and you’ll see your profile there in marketplace.
Once connected, you can browse though lands in Decentraland. You’ll find lots of listings and essentially, all the square blocks in the picture above are lands. They all come with a price and you can buy them.
After you’ve selected which Land you want to buy, you can now bid on it depending upon what price the owner of the land wants to sell it for.
Conclusion
So there you have it, this is how you essentially buy land in Decentraland. It’s a very simple process and often times, you’ll be using Ethereum to buy land. However, it’s a good option to exchange your ETH for MANA coin and buy land with MANA coin. As MANA coin is the official Crypto Currency for Decentraland.
