What Is Decentraland (MANA)? The Virtual World Token

Decentraland (MANA) is a virtual world on Ethereum where people own plots of land and avatar items as tokens, and MANA is the coin they spend and vote with. Holders of those tokens steer it through a DAO, a group run by its members' votes. About 2.19 billion MANA existed at the early-November close.

Decentraland's DAO publishes a treasury file whose MANA balances were still dated September 2024. On the chain, its main wallet held about a third less MANA than that file showed. Another 118 million MANA from a 2020 grant sat in a vesting contract for the DAO. Nobody can cancel that grant, because the only address with that power is an empty contract no one controls.

What Do People Use Decentraland For?

Decentraland is used for meeting people at live events in a shared virtual world, and for building things there and selling them. Its own documentation says the idea dates from 2015 and the world launched publicly in 2020. It runs as a desktop app and as a mobile app for iOS and Android.

The docs pitch it first as a place to hang out, with film screenings, live music and meetups every week. You can walk around and join events without paying anything.

Ownership is what sets it apart from a game server. Land comes as LAND parcels, each a separate token on Ethereum, and avatar names come as NAMEs. Creators design Wearables and Emotes, the clothes and moves your avatar shows off, and sell them on Decentraland's Marketplace. Smart contracts, programs that run on a blockchain by fixed rules, record who owns each one.

MANA is the coin behind that trade. Decentraland's Marketplace guide says sellers set their prices in MANA. The main docs say creators keep 97.5% of their earnings while 2.5% of every Marketplace sale funds community projects through the DAO. You don't need MANA to start, though, because the docs say you can pay for many items by card.

Is Decentraland MANA Dead?

Not by what its contracts show, though the coin has had a rough 2026.

People registered about 2,200 new NAMEs on Ethereum between the end of 2025 and the early-November close, taking the total to 44,532. Estates, which merge several LAND parcels into one token, rose from 6,259 to 6,522 over the same months. The LAND contract held 92,598 parcels at both dates.

Those are counts of tokens, so they track building and buying on the chain. They can't tell you how many people log in on a given night.

The price is the harder part of the answer. MANA closed early November at about $0.071, down about 41% from its close at the end of 2025. Its 2026 closes up to then ran from about $0.062 in June to about $0.17 in January.

Quiet is the fairer word for it. The world's contracts gained names and estates in 2026, and the coin carried the damage.

How Much MANA Does the Decentraland DAO Hold?

The three wallets in the DAO's treasury file held about 29.5 million MANA at the early-November close, and a 2020 grant contract held about 118 million more for it.

In the treasury data the DAO publishes, the MANA rows carried September 2024 dates. On the chain the same wallets held about 35% less. The main wallet began 2026 with about 50.6 million MANA, so its balance has moved both ways since the file's date.

The opening carries no primary link for MANA, since Decentraland's own site and its main coin-data pages fail our sourcing rules, so the balances here come from the chain and the DAO's own file.

Decentraland's DAO documentation says any transfer of the DAO's MANA "can only be done with the approval of MANA, NAMES and LAND holders." A committee then carries out approved proposals from a multisig, a wallet that needs several signatures.

Decentraland's DAO fund page says the DAO was granted 222 million MANA through a contract that vests over ten years from February 2020. Under a crypto vesting schedule, tokens become the holder's a little at a time, and this one vests MANA every second.

About 149 million had vested, matching the two-thirds of the ten years that had passed, and the DAO had claimed about 104 million.

The contract lets its owner revoke it, cancelling whatever hasn't vested and taking those coins back. In March 2020 ownership passed to the address of a contract that was created in November 2018 and destroyed itself under two minutes later. No one holds a key to an address like that, so the grant keeps vesting until February 2030.

These numbers cover the three wallets in the DAO's file and the grant contract, and the DAO may hold MANA elsewhere.

How Many Decentraland Coins Are There?

About 2.19 billion MANA existed on Ethereum at the early-November close, the same total as at the end of 2025. MANA is an ERC-20 token, the Ethereum standard for interchangeable coins, and a second version runs on Polygon. Every transfer of the Ethereum version pays a network fee called gas in ETH.

The contract sets no maximum supply. Its code can mint new MANA and pause all transfers, and minting was never switched off. Both powers run through the token's 2017 sale contract, which owns it, and that sale contract's owner is the same empty address that owns the DAO's grant contract.

The same DAO documentation says this leaves no contract or wallet "with the permissions to modify or pause the MANA supply." The chain backs that up. The empty address took over the sale contract in January 2019, and an address with no code and no key can't send the transaction needed to use any of those powers.

The sale contract's code also includes a continuous sale that never started. If its owner had switched it on, the code would have allowed new MANA up to 8% of the supply each year.

Holders can still burn their own MANA, which lowers the total for good, and with minting out of reach that's the only way the number can change.

The DAO's grant comes out of that 2.19 billion too. Its 72.8 million unvested MANA is about 3.3% of the supply and already sits in the grant contract, so vesting moves those coins to the DAO without creating new ones.

How to Buy MANA Safely

Phemex has no live MANA perpetual. Its MANA/USDT futures contract stopped trading on 13 August 2026, under a delisting notice dated 10 August.

A second notice dated 9 October 2026 put the MANA/USDT spot pair on the delisting list. Margin trading in it ended on 13 October, and the notice said spot trading would end at a later date. MANA/USDC wasn't named in that notice and was still listed at the early-November close.

1. On Phemex, read the October notice before you buy, and check which MANA spot pairs are still open.

2. Set up a non-custodial wallet that supports Ethereum, one where you hold the keys yourself, and keep its recovery phrase offline.

3. Add MANA to the wallet by its Ethereum contract address. Decentraland's DAO documentation links the official MANA contract, so check that the address your wallet shows matches it.

4. Keep a little ETH in the same wallet for network fees, because MANA can't pay them.

5. Send a small test amount first, then move the rest.

6. Never type your recovery phrase into a website or a chat, whoever asks for it.

Phemex's futures market lists other major coins. Futures use leverage, and a leveraged position is closed automatically if losses push its margin below a set minimum.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Decentraland safe?

MANA's Ethereum contract is hard to tamper with, since no one can mint new MANA there or pause its transfers. The address that holds those powers is an empty contract. The bigger risks sit with you, such as fake sites, phishing messages and a lost recovery phrase.

How do you buy land in Decentraland?

You buy it on Decentraland's Marketplace, where you pick a parcel or an Estate on the map. Then you pay with Ethereum MANA or by card and confirm in your wallet. Sellers set their own prices in MANA, and you can also bid on land that isn't for sale.

Is Decentraland a good investment?

That depends on your view of the world's future, and the record is mixed. MANA fell about 41% in 2026 to early November, while NAME and Estate counts rose. Phemex has no live MANA perpetual, and its MANA/USDT spot pair is on a delisting notice.

Bottom Line

Decentraland's token is sturdier than its price chart suggests, and its treasury is harder to read than it should be. No one can print Ethereum MANA, freeze it or take back the DAO's grant, because every one of those powers ends at an address that can't act. What the DAO holds is another matter.

Its own file trailed its wallets by more than two years, so the chain is the place to check before you trust any number about Decentraland's money.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice. Cryptocurrency trading involves substantial risk. Always do your own research before making investment decisions.