Decentraland (MANA) is one of the oldest projects aiming to create a digital world tied up with blockchain records and a token economy. It is not a coincidence that MANA broke out to record prices just as the play to earn trend was breaking out in 2021. Starting out with Decentraland will lead you to one of the top performers in the emerging play to earn space.
Decentraland originated in 2017, and was almost lost among all the crypto startups that sold tokens. For years, the project went almost unnoticed, until the rush to play to earn games. By that time, digital land ownership had taken root as a legitimate form of investment.
Decentraland is Ready to Play
Decentraland can be tested immediately even without a wallet, as a browser-based metaverse experience.
The other option is to connect with a wallet, allowing for a link with MetaMask, the only browser extension wallet available for the game.
MANA is Readily Available
The native token of the Decentraland metaverse and game ecosystem is MANA. This asset is based on Ethereum and is easily available through the MetaMask wallet. Owning MANA also requires some Ethereum (ETH) to pay for gas fees.
MANA is readily available from the Coinbase brokerage, the Binance exchange swap mechanism, and is liquid and popular enough to be available through Changelly.
About 1.98B MANA are in circulation, out of an expected total of 2.5B tokens. A significant number of MANA is concentrated inside Binance exchange wallets, making the asset not only a game requirement, but a highly traded form of cryptocurrency investment. MANA has a high liquidity trading score of 808 out of 1,000 based on the CoinMarketCap estimation.
Land Plots are Liquid, but Command High Prices
While Decentraland can be played immediately, owning a virtual land plot may require a relatively high upfront investment.
Floor prices are listed on the OpenSea market at 3.68 ETH, though smaller and cheaper plots are also on auction.
How Decentarland Integrates Play to Earn
MANA earning opportunities cover the most common tools for play to earn. The virtual world offers the opportunity to buy and sell LAND tokens and specific plots, asking for either ETH or MANA.
MANA tokens can also be locked in for lending, for a 1.09% annualized percentage rate if held for a year. MANA can also be locked in liquidity pools on decentralized exchanges like Uniswap. Once earned, MANA can be swapped or traded again for other cryptocurrencies.
Generating and trading skins is also one source of MANA earnings. Buying LAND in one-plot increments and joining the adjacent plots into an estate means the player can build scenes and add value to the Decentraland metaverse. Play2Moon will cover the Decentraland project and game specifics in a longer review.
