I used to party hardy in Second Life. One of the ways you could earn Linden Dollars was by going to a dance party and dancing for a while; call it a Linden Dollar faucet. (My L$ are still there, safe and sound.) So when I heard that Binance.us, in order to celebrate its first birthday, was going to hold a part with competitions, free giveaways and music, I knew I had to attend.

Decentraland, if you are not familiar, is like Second Life all over again, a virtual world where people acquire virtual real estate for games or business or what have you. As the name suggests, it is all blockchain-based. The native currency, MANA (market cap ~ $100M USD), is not maintained by Decentraland as L$ are by Linden Labs. Land, goods and everything else exists independently to a large degree - unlike the goods I assembled, like my Iron Man outfit, forever locked within Second Life.

However, getting around Decentraland is a lot like getting around Second Life. Things have improved since the grand opening, but it uses a lot of computer resources to get around.

But back to the party.

Upon arrival, the live DJ's tunes were blasting. As you navigated into the party building, you saw Binance hats and hoodies available. Yes, they were "free" ... but with the price of gas these days, you had to pay $6USD plus for each freebie you acquired. Instructions were nearly impossible to find, and Binance didn't have anyone posted or monitoring the chat to help, to my knowledge. Adding insult to injury, there was a limit of two items per person, but that didn't stop attempts to make more transactions and fees for the failed transactions as well. And something was strange with the transactions, as it seems I and others found two transactions for every attempted one - got two hats, no hoodies.

Finding your way to the second floor, there were people mulling around, dancing a bit, and a "VIP" lounge where you could only enter if you were wearing the hat or hoodie. But there was some disconnect between the browser, the Decentraland marketplace, the blockchain and the Decentraland app where it was taking 5-10 minutes or more for the collectibles to show up within the app to be worn. And once you had the hat or hoodie on and got into the VIP lounge ... nothing special was obvious.

I spent an hour, frustrated, trying to take part in this event. Spent too much in gas for a few "collectible" hats. No communication with anyone from Binance.us. But Decentraland itself was a smoother experience than it was earlier this year.

It was interesting that Binance.us used this environment to try to get new customers, and novices in particular. Getting into Decentraland requires sufficient mastery of Metamask or other tools in the first place. I'd love to know if THEY thought it was a success.