Wondering how to set up a space in the virtual world of Decentraland? How do you swap from ETH Ethereum MANA to Polygon Mana? How do you purchase parcels or estate land in Decentraland? Read on.
Crypto Wallet
You’ll need to have a crypto wallet before you can start. Coinbase, Metamask, Trustwallet, Ledger, Exodus, etc. Next, you’ll need to make sure you have sufficient funds in that wallet. There are several ways to do this, which we won’t get into in this article, but the way we did it was to purchase some Ethereum (ETH), which incurs gas fees. Then we used the “swap” option with our connected wallet to exchange ETH for Decentraland Mana. Many credit cards in the USA still don’t allow funding of crypto wallets, and ours was promptly declined. We had to go down the rabbit hole to figure out that Revolut provides virtual credit cards that can fund your crypto wallets with ease (relatively – there were some initial hiccups with the cards being frozen and declined with several messages to customer support to no avail. Handy tip – try smaller initial deposits and purchases of about $30 worth, before moving on to larger purchases within the same hour. There are verification holds that can charge you double the amount or flag your transaction as being “suspicious” and then you may be stuck waiting 10 days for the money to be unfrozen and re-released into your account. In the end, Revolut was a workable solution, but there are surely more out there). Decentraland and other companies usually connect to other third party payment processors such as Coinbase wallet, Simplex or Moonpay, which is where the transaction occurs with your card or bank account. You’ll need to fulfil KYC requirements to use these.
2 types of Decentraland Mana
Mana is available on the Ethereum Blockchain and the Polygon Blockchain. This can be confusing to many, and it did take us a while to figure out how to swap it. So, we’ve made an easy summary for you:
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- You can only buy Parcels or Estates of Land in Decentraland using Ethereum Mana.
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- You can buy Wearables and other assets using either Ethereum or Polygon Mana, depending on what the seller has set the sale to. The good thing about Polygon Mana is that it doesn’t incur gas fees, to our knowledge.
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- Once you’ve funded your wallet with Ethereum, you can swap ETH for ETH MANA. Then you’re all set to buy your land from the decentraland marketplace! Prices can range from thousands to hundreds of thousands, depending on the current value of the crypto in US Dollars, and the location of the land in relation to popular spots or owners.
Purchasing crypto and swapping from Ethereum (ETH) MANA to Polygon MANA
You’ve funded your account! If you head on over to Decentraland | Account you will see two columns. One will say Ethereum Mana and the other will say Polygon Mana. This is what the screen looks like currently as of this blog writing (Nov 6, 2022)
You can click on “Buy” to buy Mana directly using your credit card, apple pay or google pay. The payment appears to go through a processor named “Transak”. You’ll see fees and the mana exchange rate. The default is set to $1000 but you can add as little as $30 USD. Just change the number under “You pay”. The amount of MANA you receive will vary from day to day or even hour to hour depending on the current value of MANA at that time.
Buying ETH Ethereum Mana or Buying Polygon Mana for Decentraland
Swapping from ETH Ethereum MANA to Polygon MANA on Decentraland
Just click on “Swap” to switch your ETH Ethereum MANA to Polygon Mana. A popup will appear asking you to confirm this swap, and it will show you some information regarding any gas or other fees that you’ll need to pay for the conversion. This is what the screen currently looks like:
Click on Proceed and follow the instructions. Viola! You’re all set. You’ll see your balance for each at the top right hand corner of your profile. Next to your avatar picture.
In this case, we have 8.37 Ethereum MANA and 45 Polygon MANA left in our account.
Buying Parcels or Estates in Decentraland from the Marketplace
So, now that you’ve funded your account, you’re ready to purchase land! It’s as simple as heading over to the marketplace (https://market.decentraland.org/), finding the land you’d like, and click on the land (or other assets, such as clothing and accessories for your avatar – the basic free one you get is really quite simple looking, so it’s fun to browse through what’s available and purchase items. Everything you purchase will show up in your inventory under the “My Assets” tab on the Marketplace main page.
To buy land, scroll down to “Parcels and Estates” and then click on “View All”
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You’ll see a giant map view come up. It shows what is available for sale and the general layout of all the lands in Decentraland. You’ll probably want to switch out of this view and to an easier to scroll/search list view, by click on the list icon at the top right , next to the words “ON SALE”
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This is how your view will look like in list view. Just scroll and purchase what you want. Click on “Estates” if you want lands made up of 2 more more tiles.
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And that’s pretty much it!
Claiming Your ETH Domain
We received our ETH domain name of elitecity.dcl.eth . Once you have your land, you can claim your username, which also gives you this ETH domain name. We aren’t entirely sure what to do with it yet. We then also decided to purchase our own eth domain “elitecityio.eth“. You can purchase yours from here: app.ens.domains – costs start at around US$10.
You’ll have to pay some transaction fees for this ETH domain name from Decentraland, but once you get this domain name it is then tied to your username and land. It cost about 100 Polygon MANA to claim this. Find these options and more under the “My Assets –> Names” tabs. Then click on “Manage”.
Name your individual Parcel or Estate with a unique name
You can name your individual parcels/estates as well by going to “Builder”, then “Names” and clicking the “Edit Link” button next to the parcel you want to manage/modify . We just named our “EliteCity Parcel” for now.
Building on your Land plot in Decentraland
To build on your plot of land in decentraland, just head on over to https://builder.decentraland.org/ and then publish what you create from there!
Hope this has been helpful. Feel free to jump into EliteCity’s Parcel in decentraland, browse the NFTs that are available for sale – all original artwork by EliteCity! Perfect to hang on your virtual walls. Come sit a while and relax. We’re hoping to put some wearables up for sale eventually, and will blog on that process step-by-step afterwards! If you’d like to advertise your NFT or products/services on our land, send us a message.
