A Decentraland clone is a virtual world where land, avatar items and names are NFTs that users trade on a built-in marketplace. This guide explains how Decentraland's assets, marketplace, rentals and DAO work, what went wrong after the 2021 boom and which parts a new virtual world should copy.
Decentraland's marketplace is the most developed part of the project, and its user numbers show the risk of selling land before a world has residents.
Decentraland's asset types
Decentraland published its white paper and sold its token in 2017, and the world opened to the public in 2020. A DAO governs the project, and its assets live on two chains: Ethereum and Polygon.
- LAND. The map, called Genesis City, is a fixed grid of 90,601 parcels, each an ERC-721 token on Ethereum. The supply never grows, so land is scarce by design.
- Estates. An owner can merge neighboring parcels into an Estate, a separate ERC-721 token that holds the parcels inside it.
- Wearables and emotes. Community creators make avatar clothing and animations, and most are minted on Polygon, so buying them does not cost Ethereum mainnet gas. A curation committee reviews each new collection before it goes on sale.
- NAMEs. A NAME is a unique username issued as an ENS subdomain under
dcl.eth, and NAMEs trade as NFTs. A NAME owner can also publish a separate 3D space called a World at an address such asmyworld.dcl.eth. - MANA. MANA is the ERC-20 token for purchases, and MANA and LAND both give voting power in the DAO.
How the Decentraland marketplace works
The Decentraland marketplace lists LAND, Estates, wearables, emotes and NAMEs. Sellers set a price in MANA and an end date for each listing. Buyers can buy, place a bid on an item that is not for sale, or rent land. Buyers without crypto can pay for wearables, emotes and NAMEs by card or bank transfer, depending on their country.
The marketplace shows information about the world. The Atlas view shows every parcel, Estate, road, district and plaza on a color-coded map, and buyers can filter wearables by category and rarity. OpenSea cannot show map position or road access, so a virtual world gains from its own marketplace.
Fees and creator earnings
Decentraland's documentation lists these figures:
- Every marketplace sale carries a 2.5% fee, which goes to the DAO treasury.
- Wearable and emote creators keep 97.5% of primary sales and receive a 2.5% royalty on resales.
- Publishing a wearable or emote costs a fee of 25 US dollars per item, though the Decentraland Foundation has paid part of it during promotions.
The fees live in the marketplace smart contracts, and only a DAO vote can change them.
The DAO
Proposals open on governance.decentraland.org, and votes take place on Snapshot, a voting tool with no gas cost. A committee then carries out approved actions on Ethereum through a multisig wallet, and a Security Advisory Board oversees that committee. The Decentraland documentation describes each role.
What went wrong
Land prices rose sharply in the 2021 metaverse boom, driven by speculation and brand announcements. Reports in 2022 showed very few people in the world at the same time, and prices fell. Three problems caused the gap:
- Land sold before people had a reason to visit. A scarce asset with no users holds its price only while buyers expect users to arrive.
- Empty parcels. Owners who held land for resale left large parts of the map unbuilt, and visitors found the world empty.
- Performance and access. A heavy browser client and wallet setup kept casual visitors away.
Decentraland has since released a new desktop client, as part of its "Decentraland 2.0" white paper from 2024, and mobile apps for iOS and Android followed.
What a Decentraland clone should copy and change
| Element | Copy? | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Fixed land grid as ERC-721 | Yes, with changes | Release land in phases tied to real use |
| Wearables on a low-fee chain | Yes | Cheap items should never cost mainnet gas |
| Names as ENS subdomains | Yes | Users get an identity that works outside the world |
| Marketplace with a world map | Yes | Map views and neighbor filters give buyers data that general marketplaces lack |
| Land rentals | Yes | Builders use land without paying speculative purchase prices |
| Sale of the whole map at launch | No | Speculators buy the land and leave it unbuilt |
Building blocks of a Decentraland clone
- LAND and Estate contracts, where each token ID encodes the parcel's x and y coordinates and operator permissions let owners allow builders to deploy scenes.
- Item contracts for wearables, with a curation step before minting.
- A marketplace with map search, bids and rentals.
- A content server that links each parcel to the scene code deployed on it.
- Optional DAO contracts for governance.
The metaverse development guide covers building the world itself, and the metaverse avatar development guide covers avatars. Among games like Decentraland, Polkacity used a different model and sold city assets with an income promise, which the Polkacity guide covers.
Land rentals and operator permissions
Rentals. A rental lets a builder or a brand use land for a period without buying it. In Decentraland, the owner lists the land with a daily price in MANA and a set of allowed periods, such as 7 or 30 days, and the tenant pays the full amount upfront. During the rental, the owner cannot sell the land but keeps its voting power.
When the period ends, the deploy rights do not return to the owner automatically, so the owner must send a "claim back" transaction to recover them. A new build can end permissions automatically at the end date instead. Rentals put idle land to use and give owners income without a sale.
Operator permissions. A land contract should separate ownership from the right to change the content, so an owner can let a studio build on the parcels without giving up the NFT. The marketplace must show these permissions clearly and, at the time of sale, remove them or warn the buyer about them. Otherwise a buyer can receive land on which a stranger still holds deploy rights.
Effort
A small team needs about three to five months on one chain to build the land, Estate and item contracts and a map-based marketplace with bids and rentals. This estimate assumes that the world client already exists, and it is not a quote. The world itself, its content servers and its client are much larger projects.
Frequently asked questions
Why not list land on OpenSea instead?
You can, and Decentraland LAND does trade on OpenSea. A dedicated marketplace adds map browsing, neighbor data, rentals and in-world context, and it lets you set your own fees.
Should land supply in a Decentraland clone be fixed?
A fixed cap supports land prices but encourages speculation. Releasing land in phases tied to active users keeps the world populated.
Which chain should a virtual world use?
Valuable assets that trade rarely can live on Ethereum, while cheap items that trade often belong on a Layer 2 network or a sidechain. Decentraland keeps LAND on Ethereum and most wearables on Polygon for that reason.
What fee does the Decentraland marketplace charge?
Decentraland's documentation lists a 2.5% fee on marketplace sales, paid to the DAO treasury. Creators of wearables and emotes also receive a 2.5% royalty when their items resell.