Decentraland

Decentraland began in 2015 as an experiment in recording virtual land and published its first white paper in 2017. The crucial design choice was coordinate ownership: LAND would be an ERC-721 entry, while scenes remained content pointed to by that entry.

MANA supplied the exchange medium and the original auction’s burn mechanism. Its contract kept a holder burn function, so every burn lowers supply permanently. DAO documentation says the owner chain later ended in a destroyed contract, separating MANA from the upgradeable LAND registry.

When the world opened publicly on 20 February 2020, an onchain title system and a working social client arrived together. They were never the same system.

Genesis City has 90,601 LAND coordinates. An Estate wraps several parcels in another ERC-721 and can release them again. MANA can buy assets where sellers accept it, but holding MANA does not allocate a coordinate; renting LAND transfers operator permission for a term, not the NFT.

The DAO counts 1 VP per MANA, 100 per NAME and 2,000 per LAND or Estate parcel, taking a snapshot when a proposal is created. This is influence over a process, not a treasury share redeemable by each voter.

Snapshot stores signed votes offchain. A three-person DAO Committee submits binding Ethereum actions, and the transaction waits 24 hours. The gap between vote and execution is where trusted keys enter.

A second multisig belongs to the five-member Security Advisory Board. It can pause, resume or cancel Committee actions and responds to contract vulnerabilities.

LAND or Estate upgrades require at least three SAB signatures with no dissent. Current guidance also expects community polling, a draft, code, third-party audit and a binding governance vote before Committee or SAB execution.

This makes LAND ownership durable but not frozen forever. The DAO controls the registry’s upgrade path; it explicitly does not control MANA’s extinguished owner powers.

The Foundation says it maintains the desktop client, Marketplace and creator tools and plans to transition responsibilities to the DAO by 2030. Catalyst nodes replicate scenes and assets, but clients also depend on realm selection, communications, discovery and other feature services.

LAND records who may deploy to a coordinate; it cannot guarantee that a particular client renders every scene, that every server stays online or that third-party content is lawful. MANA voting power likewise is not Foundation equity, guaranteed revenue or a service-level agreement.