On August 18 2017, virtual reality (VR) real estate platform, Decentralized executed an ICO that will be remembered for a very long time. In the ICO which lasted for just about 35 seconds, raising over $35 million in Ether, out of about 10,000 potential investors lined up to grab some of the native tokens, MANA, due to the overwhelming response to the project, almost 7,000 transactions did not go through. A development that the project’s Lead Developer describes as “a lot of disappointment”.
Genesis City Auction
Having come through a very successful tone sale and subsequent platform development and establishment, the project is now embarking on its first land auction in VR, the Decentraland Genesis City Auction. An event that is slated to take place in December 2017. This will be the very first allocation of adjacently designated parcels of land in an organised manner that will maximize the benefits of social interaction and purpose-designed traffic management. It is a process that will maximize investments and motivate revenue generation for landowners.
Ahead of the event, token holders have been offered the opportunity to stake their tokens by locking them in on the Decentralized platform. This process is designed to serve multiple purposes that include:
- Avoidance of a repeat of what happened during the August 18 token sale, where several interested investors could not participate due to the speed at which the tokens sold out.
- To help the platform obtain an idea of how big the initial city will be.
Registration is on
Staking can be done by going through a properly designed registration process which will remain open until early December. Users can participate by using MetaMask or Mist at terraform.decentraland.org.
A community member, Dave Clancy has already put together some great tutorials to help users navigate the process:
A platform with extended value
As a virtual reality world where users can buy and build on parcels of land, with property contents ranging from static 3D scenes to dynamic applications, a property owner on Decentraland can host other users on his/her land and determine how the world interacts with them. This feature and several others are the value attachments that has endeared the project to seasoned investors who are bent on retaining ownership of land in this VR ecosystem.
As fast as the opportunity flies, this innovation remains one of the beauties of the blockchain where real estate is truly decentralized and property owners reserve full rights and control over what is theirs. Also, the technically organised structure of the project ensures that every parcel is viable and powered to generate automated revenue for their owners.