Day: December 12, 2018

Decentraland’s Second Land Auction Has Started

Decentraland 14 Feb 2018

Decentraland has announced that the unsold plots of land left over from their first auction are now up for grabs to the highest bidder, between now and Christmas. The virtual parcels of land are 10 metres by 10 metres square, and called, simply, LAND. In the past, prices for LAND have gone as high as US$120,000 each in frenzied bidding wars, the prices being driven up by eager cryptocurrency speculators hoping to make a profit.

In an announcement posted on Dec. 10th, the company states:

The LAND Auction will run until Sunday, December 25th, 2018.

Ever since the first LAND Auction last December, people have been eagerly anticipating the opportunity to claim some of the unsold, unowned LAND remaining in Genesis City. Even with the 34,356 parcels sold last year, there are still over 9,000 up for grabs!

We are extremely excited to kick off this next auction, and want to thank the entire Decentraland community for your continued support and enthusiasm. This is an exciting next step for the platform, and we look forwarding to building something incredible, together.

For additional details, and answers to some of the common questions we’ve received, keep reading!

Where do I access the auction?

The auction will be held right in the Decentraland Marketplace, at market.decentraland.org/auction. It’s also easy to access the auction through our partner’s mobile dApp browsers, like Status, imToken, and Trust!

How do I participate?

Simply create a wallet with MetaMask, Mist, or use a Trezor hard wallet, and ensure that you have sufficient funds in either MANA or one of our partner project’s ERC20 tokens.

You can also use a variety of mobile wallets, like Coinbase Wallet, Trust Wallet, and imToken!

We have two video tutorials showing how to log in, manage your tokens, select the parcels you want to buy, and complete your transaction! Check them out here:

Can I bid for multiple parcels at once?

Yes! In fact, the second auction is a wonderful opportunity to secure an estate, or expand your current holdings to include some of the adjacent unowned space.

Contiguous estates make it possible to host larger, more complicated scenes and experiences. You will be able to purchase up to 20 parcels per transaction.

When will I receive the parcels I buy in the auction?

Once the transaction for your purchase has been processed, you will receive your LAND immediately. The transaction must still be mined by the Ethereum network which may take several minutes, as with any normal LAND transfer on the Decentraland Marketplace.

Virtual land will be sold in the fashion of a Dutch auction:

How is the price for each parcel determined?

We are using a Dutch auction, in which all available parcels are started at the same price of 200,000 MANA. This price is continuously and progressively lowered, until a final price of 1,000 MANA is reached on the last day of the auction. You can read more about how the price is set, and the rate at which it’s lowered in this blogpost.

Only two days into the auction, there’s still lots of LAND available to bid on, as prices are still pretty high (currently, 48,479 MANA each, which works out to US$2,613). Bids can be placed using Decentraland’s own cryptocurrency, MANA, or any of the following ERC20-compliant tokens:

  • Maker (MKR)
  • Dai (DAI)
  • Binance Coin (BNB)
  • Kyber Network (KNC)
  • Zilliqa (ZIL)
  • Riplo Credit Network (RCN)
  • Aelf (ELF)
  • Status (SNT)

(Don’t ask me to explain any of this to you; it’s all just gobblegook acronyms to me!)

As I have warned before, do all your homework before investing a single cent in any cryptocurrency and any blockchain-based virtual world. Caveat Emptor!

Virtual Universe Is a Victim of the Cryptocurrency Market Downturn: The Company Finally Releases a Statement

VU image

After months without any official word about the Virtual Universe project, the company behind the product, Ukledo, posted the following message to their Telegram discussion group:

The Ukledo team wants to bring our followers up to date on the Virtual Universe (VU) project. As we have all undoubtedly seen, the crypto market is currently experiencing a major downturn and many projects are now underwater or completely failed. No one quite knows how long this condition may occur. VU has been affected by this general crypto bear market. Also, the consumer adoption of Virtual Reality is not quite where the market hoped it would be. It’s coming, but not as fast as most of us thought.

Virtual Reality development is an expensive and complex undertaking, even for the simplest of applications. As a result, until the market picks up (both from a consumer adoption and investment perspective) the team is focusing on a shorter term strategy that can create revenues to keep the Company moving forward, and keep your interest and involvement as well. The team is a big believer in the ultimate vision of VU. However, as is often the case with a young startup, timing plays a pivotal role in success.

We sincerely appreciate all the support from the community (and the nearly 20,000 users who signed up for a free account). We will do everything in our power in the months ahead to create a strategy that allows us to eventually bring this vision to market. Also, please do not fall prey to scammers who appear to be popping up in this Telegram from time to time.

We have had to reduce marketing/communications (related to budget) but will remain active in the channel for questions/comments.

Thank you,

The Ukledo Team

Well, this is serious, but at least we have a better idea what’s going on. Previous to this company announcement, one member of the Virtual Universe Telegram community (who is not associated with the company) posted this update with only second-hand information about the current state of the company:

I feel everyone’s pain. I’m disappointed that the VU team is not more active on Telegram or any other means of communication. I have talked to someone close to the project. Unfortunately, it’s sounds like the project is struggling to lock in investors in the private sale. They are also seeking the possibility of linking up with some well-established platforms in the space. I am by no means associated with the project. I only know people who are.

…

I also have many questions that have not been answered yet. I don’t believe the team is ready to call it quits yet. That is why there has not been any word on refunds. I can, however, assure you that they have not up and vanished. I will keep everyone posted with news that I receive since it does not seem the team is doing it themselves.

The Virtual Universe project is a reminder that even a beautiful-looking, well-featured demo does not guarantee success in this dire cryptocurrency market. Will the market recover? Who knows. Perhaps it would have been better if Ukledo, the company behind VU, had pursued a more traditional fund-raising route for their virtual world project from the start, rather than making a risky bet on crypto. We’ll have to wait and see what happens. It looks extremely unlikely that Ukledo will be able to stick to their original plan to have a public beta launch of Virtual Universe in January 2019. Those who have purchased VU tokens before their sale was suspended will simply have to wait to see if they will ever get a chance to use their tokens, or if they will become just another worthless cryptocurrency.

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Christmas Came Early! The December Update of Sansar Has Many New Features

Yesterday the Sansar team at Linden Lab put in a long afternoon updating the client software, working into the evening to track down and fix a software bug.

Here are some of the new features of the latest release:

Shooting Guns

This update to the Sansar client is called the Ready, Aim, Fire! release, and for good reason, according to the release notes:

Project PewPew

  • This is a whole suite of APIs and features that will allow for creators to explore gun-play in Sansar!
  • Scripts can now detect VR inputs, mouse clicks and what the player is targeting when any input is hit.
  • Even more script APIs for Ray/shape casting have been added.
  • Grab Points can be toggled to stay held when picked up (so you don’t have to hold your pewpewer the whole time)
  • Check out the new Game.Gun, Game.Target and Selector simple scripts to add these features to your scene!
  • Mouselook mode: allows desktop users to switch to a mode where you do not need to click and hold right-mouse to look around. You can instead hit the ESC key and just move your mouse round.
    • This a toggle-able feature
    • While active it will disable the menu

Here’s a short video by Jogalog showing the new features:

Sitting Down

We finally have a long-awaited feature: the ability to sit down on furniture that has sit points enabled by the creator!

Medhue and Bagnaria Sit Down 12 Dec 2018.png

Sit Points

  • Much like “Grab Points” creators can now designate “Sit Points” on object, while in Edit Mode.
  • This works with Static objects only.
  • Clicking on a sit point will teleport your avatar to the location of the sit point, and the orientation that has been set.

Sansar_SitPoint.gif

New Scene Settings

Scene level settings

  • Free-cam & Teleportation distance limitation options
    • Free-Cam for Desktop users can be turned off in an experience in Edit Mode
    • Teleportation (VR & Desktop) distance can be limited or turned off in an experience in Edit Mode.
  • Available in Scene Settings in Edit Mode

Home Space

There’s also a brand  new home space that appears when you log into Sansar:

Sansar Login 12 Dec 2018.png

Sansar Home Space 12 Dec 2018.png

Sansar Home Space 2 12 Dec 2018.png

Tutorials and Prompts

Also, the controls and the user interface have a new tutorial that will start in the home space when you first log in, and you will also receive one-time prompts as you visit experiences.

Visit Experience 12 Dec 2018.png

For complete details on all the new features in this release, please see the official blog post.

Looks like Christmas came early!