Decentraland

About Decentraland (MANA)

What Is Decentraland (MANA)?

Decentraland is a virtual world where the land, the wearable items and the governance are tokens on Ethereum. MANA is the currency used inside it, while LAND is a non fungible token for a coordinate on the world map, and the core contracts are controlled by a DAO that MANA, LAND and NAME holders vote in. The docs call it "a community-driven virtual space supported by the non-profit Decentraland Foundation," founded in 2015 and opened publicly in 2020.

Official resources:

• Website: https://decentraland.org/
• Documentation: https://docs.decentraland.org/
• Governance: https://decentraland.org/governance/
• White paper: https://decentraland.org/whitepaper.pdf
• Source code: https://github.com/decentraland

Who Founded Decentraland? (History)

Decentraland was created by Ari Meilich and Esteban Ordano, two Argentine computer scientists who began work in 2015, Ordano as chief technology officer and Meilich as chief executive. The project raised more than 24 million dollars in an August 2017 token sale, and its first map, Genesis City, was laid out as 90,601 LAND parcels. The world opened publicly in February 2020, the year both founders stepped back as the project moved to DAO governance. Development now runs through the non profit Decentraland Foundation and DAO funded contributors.

How Decentraland Works

The world is built from scenes creators deploy to parcels they own or rent. Those scenes, along with profiles and wearables, are stored and served by Catalyst, a network of distributed nodes running content storage, query endpoints and real time comms, with clients routed to a node by a realm provider.

Decentraland 2.0 moved the primary experience to a Unity based desktop client, which entered public beta in October 2024. Creators build scenes with the SDK.

Key Ecosystem Components

• LAND, the ERC-721 token for a Genesis City parcel, and Estates grouping parcels
• Wearables and Emotes, avatar items minted by creators
• The Marketplace, where these assets and claimable NAMEs are traded
• Catalyst, the network hosting content and comms, plus the desktop Explorer client and creator SDK

MANA Token Utility

MANA is the medium of exchange inside Decentraland: it buys LAND, Estates, Wearables and Emotes on the Marketplace and is spent to mint NAMEs. It is also the largest input to governance weight: 1 MANA contributes 1 voting power unit, 1 NAME contributes 100, and 1 LAND parcel contributes 2,000, with an Estate worth 2,000 times the parcels it holds, snapshotted when a proposal is created. MANA exists on both Ethereum and Polygon, and the Polygon deployment makes low value wearable trading practical.

What Makes Decentraland Unique?

Decentraland was the first large virtual world to put the deed to the world itself onchain. The DAO owns the LAND and Estate contracts, the wearable registries and a treasury funded partly by a ten year vesting contract of 222,000,000 MANA begun in February 2020. Creators keep 97.5 percent of item sales.

How Decentraland Differs from Similar Projects

The Sandbox is the closest comparison, but its asset pipeline is more curated and its governance more centralized around the operating company. Decentraland's distinguishing choice is deep onchain governance and no company able to unilaterally change the rules, which also makes decisions slower.

Use Cases of Decentraland

People use Decentraland to attend events, to build and monetize scenes on parcels they own, to design and sell wearables and emotes, to rent LAND to other builders, and to vote in the DAO.

How Decentraland Is Secured

Ownership records for MANA, LAND, Estates, NAMEs and wearables live in Ethereum contracts and inherit its proof of stake security, with Polygon for lower cost item transactions. The content layer is separate: scenes and profiles are served by independently operated Catalyst nodes, so no single party controls delivery, and contract upgrades pass through DAO votes.

Risks and Considerations

Voting power scales with holdings, and the 2,000 point weight per parcel gives large landowners outsized influence, a tension raised in DAO proposals. Concurrent user numbers in virtual worlds have been modest relative to expectations, and LAND and wearable values depend on that attention. Fee routing and MANA burn behavior are governance parameters that have changed repeatedly, so older descriptions are unreliable. MANA was among the tokens the SEC named as alleged securities in 2023; those actions were dismissed with prejudice in 2025 with no ruling on classification.

Why Decentraland Matters

Decentraland is the longest running attempt at a virtual world whose property rights and governance are genuinely onchain and whose operator is a non profit rather than an owner. Whatever happens to the metaverse category, its DAO, creator revenue share and Catalyst model are real experiments in decentralized ownership.

Where Can You Buy Decentraland (MANA)?

MANA is listed on most major centralized exchanges and on decentralized exchanges on Ethereum and Polygon. Because the token exists on two networks, confirm which chain an exchange withdraws on before giving an address.

Storage Options After Purchase

MANA is a standard ERC-20 token, so any Ethereum wallet works, including MetaMask and hardware wallets used through it. The same wallet holds LAND, Estates, Wearables and NAMEs, since they are all tokens on one account; connect it to the Decentraland client or governance app to use them.

Related Coins

• The Sandbox (SAND)
• Axie Infinity (AXS)
• Gala (GALA)
• Enjin Coin (ENJ)
• Immutable (IMX)