So recently there have been major talks about Decentraland and the Metaverse. With the world growing rapidly, digital real estate seems to be one of the new grooves for many investors. Unless you have been living off the radar you may have heard of these two mysterious projects. If you don’t know what either of these are, don’t worry. By the end of this small article you will have the right knowledge on what Decentraland has to offer and how to buy land on the metaverse.
What is Decentraland?
Decentraland is an open-source 3D platform that allows users to buy and sell digital land.
Built on the Ethereum network, what began as a 2D pixelated grid. Decentraland is a digital platform for a shared, persistent virtual reality that runs on the blockchain. You can explore, create and monetize content with others in an immersive 3D metaverse world. To understand it simply, Decentraland is a lot like virtual reality video games but is more immersive and ‘real’ since it has ownership of assets. From digital skyscrapers and rapid transport systems to movie theatres and hotels, anything that is available in the physical world can be found here. Land in Decentraland can be bought using the cryptocurrency MANA, which facilitates the purchases of Land, as well as virtual goods and services.
Why Buy Digital Real Estate?
To simply understand why people are buying digital real estate is: Each land parcel is a non-fungible token (NFT) which means it is unique and cannot be forged or duplicated, the same as physical land in real life, this means that anybody can buy, sell or rent land at any time, peer-to-peer on the official Decentraland marketplace, or via Opensea, these can also be known as land tokens. With the NFT space growing crazily, from Bored Apes to the finest Dynamic NFT’s, I think it’s fair to say that NFT’s aren’t shying away anytime soon.
All transactions are stored on the Ethereum blockchain as true proof of ownership, so when you buy and own that land token, you officially and unquestionably own that piece of land. Every Decentraland land token has unique coordinates which represent a specific location on the Decentraland map. Proximity to popular areas e.g. roads, plazas, typically determines their value also. Any profits produced from those who use their land to buy/sell are retained by the property owners of this digital world.
Below is some additional information about LAND size and costs.
Total LAND in Decentraland: 90,601 (43689 private land parcels, 33886 district LAND, 9438 roads, 3588 plazas)
Each LAND Size : 16m x 16m square spaces (previously 10m x 10m, changed in February 2019)
Highest ever purchase of LAND : 2,000,000 MANA (source)
Average price per LAND (ETH) : CLICK HERE
Decentraland Mortgages
You can also get mortgages in the virtual world also, which is currently available within the marketplace. This is incredible for the growth of Decentraland and the accessibility it brings to other investors as it is generally as easy as clicking on the parcel you wish to purchase, there will be a request mortgage option. Complete the application. Details include interest rates, amount requested, duration and make a downpayment of 10% of the total land value.
PLEASE NOTE : Failure to repay the mortgage (within the agreed terms + 7 days after loan expiry) will result in you losing the paid amount, and you will not be able to claim the LAND, we advise to do your own research before purchasing anything on Decentraland as always everything comes with a risk.
How to Buy Land in Decentraland?
Land in Decentraland can be bought using the cryptocurrency MANA, which facilitates the purchases of Land, as well as virtual goods and services.
Sign Up
First things first you will need to visit the Decentraland marketplace and either sign in or sign up if you are not a user already. Once signed in, go to ‘Parcels and Estates,’ then click ‘View all.’
Select a parcel / plot of land
The following step is to browse through the available pieces of land and select your preferred choice of land. Buying land directly from the marketplace will allow you to see the neighbouring areas and proximity to famous areas.
Once you have selected your piece of land, proceed to click on it to read about it in more detail, you will be able to see the price of the land and also the owner’s name.
Click Buy to make the purchase.
Connect your wallet to Decentraland marketplace
To make the purchase you will need to ensure that your wallet is connected to your account properly as your land will be sent to your wallet as an NFT once the purchase is successful and completed.
If you don’t have a supported wallet you can download wallets such as MetaMask or Trust Wallet. Your preferred wallet needs to have enough MANA or ETH for you to make the purchase. Especially as gas fees can be an extortion sometimes always ensure you have a few extra tokens.
Confirm your virtual land
Once the purchase is complete, you can confirm your Land on your wallet. If you are using Trust Wallet you can confirm under ‘Collectables’ or for MetaMask is under the NFT’s tab.
Conclusion
With the metaverse showing no sign of slowing down and Decentraland still being in very early stages of development. Its crazy to think where we can be in 10 or 20 years time. With land becoming more and more scarce and after doing lots of research it seems like its not too late to hop into the metaverse and see what all of this talk is about. As always here at Economy Universe we always advise to do your own research.
The metaverse is a network of 3D virtual worlds focused on social connection.
Any PC or Mac running chrome or Firefox. Unfortunately they do not support mobile devices as of yet.
Just like Bored Apes or CryptoPunks, LAND is a non-fungible digital asset. To ensure that the value of LAND parcels remains stable, the amount of land in Decentraland corresponds to the fixed, total amount of MANA.
Without LAND scarcity, many parcels would likely be left abandoned, negatively impacting the quality of content in Decentraland and the user experience.