Decentraland (MANA): Price Updates, Recent Developments, Future Events, Community

• Microsoft invested $69 million into Decentraland, one of the earliest metaverse projects.

• Improving on its metaverse, Decentraland now awards royalties and allows the personalization of stores in its marketplace.

• Decentraland has scheduled its first Metaverse Fashion Week, a four-day event, to start on March 24.

• To improve its metaverse experience, Decentraland has outlined plans to launch a desktop client and VR client mobile app and make NFT wearables.

At its launch in 2017, Decentraland (MANA) proposed that an environment that mimics our daily interactions be built with blockchain technology. This is now known as the metaverse, one of the most talked-about tech concepts.

With Facebook’s Meta rebrand in October 2021, Decentraland enjoyed a surge in the popularity of its metaverse platform. But, while it helped Decentraland cement its place as one of the top metaverse platforms, how has it recently performed?

Price Updates

The native token of the Decentraland ecosystem, MANA, like the entire crypto industry, was under extreme bearish pressure in January, as the Fed pushed to hike interest rates. 

The January price chart of Decentraland (MANA). Source: Tradingview

Since falling as low as $1.74 on January 22, MANA has experienced a major rally, gaining as much as 33% over the last two weeks. After hitting an interday high of $2.71, MANA has fallen down to $2.6049.

The 24-hour price chart of Decentraland (MANA). Source: Tradingview

Decentraland now holds a $4.72 billion market cap, making it the 31st largest crypto.

Recent Developments

Decentraland has attracted a lot of attention from big investors, with Microsoft pumping $69 million into the development of Decentraland’s open source project. 

In addition, Tennis Australia announced a partnership with Decentraland to host the Australian Open. The collaboration saw the virtual recreation of outstanding parts of Melbourne Park in the metaverse for the virtual competition.

Although it has the first-mover advantage among crypto metaverses, Decentraland continues to roll out upgrades for different branches of its metaverse to stay ahead of the pack.

The Decentraland team recently introduced the “My Store” section to the virtual shop, allowing users to customize the appearance of their store’s cover, including the avatar, bio description, and social media links.  

Shortly before rolling out My Store, the Decentraland Team introduced royalties to the platform. By introducing a special smart contract type, Decentraland began issuing royalties to wearable creators for every transaction conducted with their NFTs.

Future Events

With the metaverse now embracing more sectors than ever before, Decentraland has announced that it will host its first Metaverse Fashion Week starting March 24. The four-day event will feature dozens of global brands.

Visitors can virtually experience fashion shows during the event, attend live music sessions at branded after parties, and buy and wear digital clothing directly from catwalk avatars. 

On February 1, Decentraland revealed its plans for the year, dubbed the 2022 Manifesto, creating genuine euphoria in its community. 

To improve its metaverse experience, the team is working on a DAO to allow users to display their NFTs as wearables inside Decentraland. In addition, smart wearables will be accepted on the DAO Wearables Approval flow.

The Decentraland team has announced the creation of a mobile app and a new desktop client for Windows, Linux, and Mac. The apps will create new ways for users to enter and interact in the Decentraland metaverse.

To further improve the experience and performance of its metaverse with wearables, the team confirms that development is currently ongoing on the Decentraland Protocol. It projected the launch of a beta VR client to happen in the second half of this year.

On the Flipside

• While Decentraland has the first-mover advantage, megacorporations have pumped bigger sums into the development of the virtual world.

• In addition, its native token, MANA, is on a steep decline, falling by 56% since November 25.

Community

As an ecosystem built-up almost entirely of play-to-earn games and dApps that support user participation, Decentraland currently has one of the largest, most-involved communities among crypto projects.

American rapper and actor Ice Cube made an official Twitter announcement where he hinted at potential tours guided by him within the Decentraland metaverse!

Forbes writes about the project:

Reacting to the 2022 Manifesto, @DCLBlogger tweeted:

Decentraland is also one of the most active projects on social media, with 506k followers on Twitter, 150.1k members on Discord, and over 16.5k subscribers on Telegram.

Why You Should Care

The Decentraland team continues to lead the space with impressive developments that could further improve the adoption and use cases for its metaverse.