Decentraland: Will it be "Second Life" in the blockchain era?

Editor's Note: This article comes fromBlue Fox Notes (ID: lanhubiji), reprinted by Odaily with authorization.

Editor's Note: This article comes from

Blue Fox Notes (ID: lanhubiji)

Blue Fox Notes (ID: lanhubiji)

, reprinted by Odaily with authorization.

Decentraland, one of the unusually funded projects during the cryptocurrency boom, is making its debut and may not be financially successful for the original participants so far.

Decentraland is a user-owned virtual world in which people have spent real money on land and other property. (Blue Fox Note: Decentraland was launched on February 20) This project raised $20 million in crowdfunding in 2017.

Today, many token holders are trying to find ways to monetize virtual community tokens by trading them for goods and services. Although it's down from its 2018 highs, the token has more than doubled this year. Decentraland’s virtual land is also skyrocketing, with roughly $1 million worth of land sold in the past ten days, according to NonFungible. This makes Decentraland’s virtual property by far the most traded virtual property on the Ethereum blockchain. (Blue Fox Note: At present, the top three transaction volumes in the NFT field are Decentraland, Gods Unchained, and Cryptovoxels)

“We believe it’s inevitable that people will spend a significant amount of time in virtual worlds,” said Mark Murphy, chief operating officer of Digital Currency Group, an investor in Decentraland and Mana.

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Avatars in Decentraland

For example, the trading volume of virtual assets in Decentraland has exceeded ten times that of CryptoKitties. CryptoKitties is a well-known collectible virtual cat that can breed, and once caused the Ethereum network to be congested.

Decentraland is operated by a newly established decentralized autonomous organization (Blue Fox Notes: DAO). In fact, the software is based on the Ethereum digital ledger. The software has funds to fund developers to develop virtual worlds and owns public lands such as squares and roads. And, because it's just software sitting on a distributed network of servers, it can't be easily shut down, making it somewhat censorship-resistant.

“It’s unprecedented for users to have control over their digital assets,” Ari Meilich, project lead at Decentraland, said in a phone interview. “We think over time, players will gravitate towards games where they are more in control.”

In more than two years of work, the virtual world of Decentraland was launched at a time when altcoins (altcoins are defined as tokens with a small market capitalization compared to Bitcoin) were beginning to rebound. When the cryptocurrency bubble burst in 2018, the prices of many altcoins plummeted, and many projects could not survive.

Meilich said: Decentraland used about half of the crowdfunding funds to pay the salaries of more than 30 developers. Today, tens of thousands of people, including dozens of creative studios, are creating content for virtual worlds, a third of which is built-in.