There are those who buy and sell properties in the real world and make a serious living off of it: Real Estate Agents who do real estate. However, crypto has made it so that you can do virtual real estate and buy and sell properties through Web3.0 protocols.
Decentraland is probably the first crypto asset to make this possible.
Decentraland is a virtual reality platform built on top of the Ethereum blockchain. This can be compared to a game like Skyrim, MySims, Fallout where you can purchase plots of land that you can continue to develop through things such as building and monetizing.
Decentraland has NFTs called LAND, which are divided into parcels(areas of land). They are built on x-y coordinates and are permanently owned by community members who’ve purchased MANA. Lands are sometimes further organized into Districts, themed communities.
Decentraland also has NFTs called Estate, which are the combination of multiple LAND parcels. This can help Estate owners manage larger LAND holdings and building establishing larger land in general.
MANA is a token used to buy land in Decentraland, which also allows the community to own everything and establishes a DAO.
Dao -
A DAO is powered by smart contracts(blockchain code) and allows community members to vote on changes to the existing protocol of Decentraland. These are the main changes that members can vote on:
Adding catalyst nodes that run the virtual world of Decentraland
Adding a list of locations in the virtual world that are very interesting and popular that users can search up when interacting with Decentraland
Banning usernames that are inappropriate and profane
Fund community grants
There’s also the ability to change LAND and ESTATE smart contracts, but this is carried out by groups of trusted and elected people to ensure the security of the Decentraland protocol: Security Advisory Board and DAO Committee. Here’s the process to modify the smart contracts:
Polling and discussing with the community about the proposed changes
Editing the code after the community’s approval
Having the code be reviewed and audited
Showing the audited code to the community for approval
DAO Committee or Security Advisory Board will implement the audited code
governance.decentraland.org is where you can add your own proposals in changing the Decentraland protocol.
These are the different Smart Contracts in Decentraland:
LAND Contract
Estate Contract
POIs(Proof of Interest) - Advertise the more popular locations in the virtual world of Decentraland
Names - mints NFTs with unique avatar names
Banned names
Catalyst Nodes - Nodes that provide content and connections needed to keep Decentraland up and running.
Wearable Contracts
MarketPlace
Grants - Grants are used for community building, education, 3D content, and making improvements to Decentraland
MarketPlace -
You have to set up your wallet through an application such as Metamask to buy and sell these items.
In the Marketplace you can sell parcels, Estates, wearables, and unique names. You can set your own price for these in MANA and set an expiration date.
Buy everything that is in the first bullet point
Transfer parcel and Estates to other users
Explore the world to see who owns what and what wearables are available and the names that exist
Use land.decentraland.org to name your parcels and Estates with a public description and grant permission to others to edit your parcels.
There is the Land Manger which allows you to:
Name your parcels and Estates and give them a public description
Merge parcels into Estates
Reverse the process of Estates into separate parcels
Transfer your parcel and Estates to other users
Grant permission to others to edit your parcels
Create your own Land -
There are two main routes when creating your own parcels and Estates:
The Builder:
A simple visual editor that is run on your browser and doesn’t need to have anything installed. Also, there is no code necessary for using this. These are the things you can manipulate for when using The Builder:
Size
Ground Texture
Items
Boundaries and limitations in land position
Name and Publish scene of your parcel and Estates
NFTs
SDK(Software Developer Kit): This is an option where you develop your parcels and land through your own code. You have to run a command line and Node.js in order to use Decentraland’s SDK.
3D Models: These types of models can be used in the virtual world by importing gITF formatted files. There are many features that can be included in these models. gITF(GL Transmission Format) is an open project by Khronos. The file name either ends in .gtlf or .glb. These files can be opened up in a text editor and can be read like JSON files. It is recommended to use .gtlf files when working on the scene and .glb when uploading it.
These are the different features you can mess with is:
Animations
Colliders
Meshes
Materials
With Facebook recently changing it's name to "Meta", it is becoming more clear that the Metaverse is going to be more of a thing in the future with protocols such as Decentraland.