TL;DR Breakdown:
- MANA is up by almost 260% in the last 2 weeks.
- The sudden price hike was triggered by Facebook’s rebrand announcement to support metaverse developments.
- Decentraland’s exposure to the growing NFT market and its increasing community indicates a strong future for MANA.
MANA is not one of the most popular tokens in the crypto industry. In terms of market cap, it’s ranked #41 on Coinmarketcap. However, this little-known Ethereum based token is up by almost 260% in the past two weeks. Why is that? It’s because of the recent popularity of the metaverse.
MANA is the native digital token of Decentraland, a metaverse platform powered by the Ethereum blockchain. In Decentraland, users can buy and sell virtual properties and land through MANA. The ownership of these virtual properties is transferred as NFTs.
Decentraland was launched back in 2017, but its popularity started to take off earlier this year due to the growing trend of NFT. However, its recent rocketing upward trend was triggered by the Facebook rebrand.
The metaverse is a term that’s been around for more than a decade. But it really achieved mass popularity only two weeks ago, when Facebook announced that the company is changing its name to ‘Meta’ to help develop the metaverse, a truly immersive form of social media through VR and AR.
The ongoing popularity of the metaverse brought more users to the Decentraland platform, thus increasing the trading volume and market cap of MANA.
To put this into a better perspective, before the day of the Facebook rebrand announcement, MANA was trading well below $1. Within just 2 days of the announcement, it reached a new all-time high price of $4.11. This was almost a 400% jump in 48 hours.
Why is Decentraland Unique?
Decentraland describes itself as a metaverse platform for content creators, investors, and general individuals, who are looking for a unique medium of networking and entertainment.
The virtual game world of Decentraland is divided into 90,601 distinct parcels of Land. These lands are represented as NFTs, which can be traded among the users through the MANA token.
Each of these lands is located at a specific coordinate in Decentraland’s virtual world. Owners of these virtual lands can decorate their plots with different themes and virtual objects.
Decetraland is not just a game, but an actual world or a society itself. Any policy updates on the platform are voted on by MANA holders. The holders can vote on specific conditions of a land auction, what types of content should be allowed in the platform, what upgrades are significant and so on.
Users can also monetize their owned lands through advertising or leasing.
What’s the future for MANA?
As with any cryptocurrency, we can’t predict how MANA prices will hold up in the long term because of the volatility of the market. However, Decentraland will continue to attract more new users due to the growing interest in NFT and metaverse, which is good news for the investors.
Facebook has already announced that its metaverse platforms will support NFT. So, NFT adoption and trading will most likely continue to grow in the future. This will provide wide exposure to metaverse platforms like Decntraland.
MANA’s purpose perfectly fits Facebook’s goal of bringing the metaverse to life and helping people connect through growing virtual communities and businesses. So, Decentraland’s progressive governance model, a committed community, and its wider exposure to the booming NFT market do indicate a bullish future for MANA. Future developments in the metaverse will definitely boost the token, as well as the entire Decentraland ecosystem.
MANA is currently trading at $2.84, at the time of writing.
