# Esteban Ordano

> Esteban Ordano is a software engineer and founder of Decentraland, a decentralized virtual reality platform powered by the Ethereum blockchain.

- Canonical URL: https://iq.wiki/wiki/esteban-ordano
- Categories: People in crypto
- Tags: Developer, Founder
- Created: 2022-08-24T10:23:28.554Z
- Last updated: 2023-06-30T06:31:09.491Z
- Source: IQ.wiki — the world's largest blockchain and crypto encyclopedia (https://iq.wiki)

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**Esteban Ordano** is a software engineer best known for co-founding [Decentraland](https://iq.wiki/wiki/decentraland), a decentralized virtual reality platform powered by the [Ethereum](https://iq.wiki/wiki/ethereum) [blockchain](https://iq.wiki/wiki/blockchain). [\[1\]](#cite-id-p3ywbei6l7)[\[2\]](#cite-id-7yhvq5qrjak)[\[3\]](#cite-id-wmoovu8f2nr)  
  
  
# Education  
  
Esteban Ordano attended Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires[\[4\]](#cite-id-ngpfzigw158) where he studied Software Engineering, Information Technologies from 2009 to 2014. [\[1\]](#cite-id-p3ywbei6l7)  
  
# Career  
  
Esteban Ordano started his career in 2011 as an Intern at **Infosys**. From October 2011-August 2012, he was the Head of Information Technology at **South American Business Forum**. From 2012-2013, he worked as a Site Reliability Engineering Intern at **Google**. In 2014, he became a Software Engineering Intern at **Google**. [\[1\]](#cite-id-p3ywbei6l7)  
  
From September 2010 to December 2013, Esteban worked as a Project Manager and Technical Leader at **Monits**. From 2010-2014, he was also a Teaching Assistant at **Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires**. From August 2014 to April 2015, he served as a Software Engineer at **BitPay**. [\[1\]](#cite-id-p3ywbei6l7)  
  
## Decentraland  
  
Esteban Ordano co-founded [Decentraland](https://iq.wiki/wiki/decentraland) alongside [Ari Meilich](https://iq.wiki/wiki/ari-meilich) in May 2017. Decentraland is a decentralized virtual reality platform powered by the [Ethereum blockchain](https://iq.wiki/wiki/ethereum) where users can buy and sell digital real estate while exploring, interacting, and playing games within the virtual world. Decentraland was launched following a $24 million [initial coin offering](https://iq.wiki/wiki/initial-coin-offering) (ICO) that was conducted in August 2017. The virtual world launched its closed beta in 2019 and opened to the public in February 2020 [\[3\]](#cite-id-wmoovu8f2nr)  
  
Ordano served as Decentraland’s chief technology officer (CTO) until April 2020 when he stepped back to an advisory role after the platform became a [decentralized autonomous organization](https://iq.wiki/wiki/dao) (DAO). [\[7\]](#cite-id-0f7xb7u6m5jm)  
  
[Decentraland](https://iq.wiki/wiki/decentraland) uses two tokens: MANA and LAND. MANA is an [ERC-20](https://iq.wiki/wiki/erc-20) token that must be burned to acquire non-fungible ERC-721 LAND tokens. MANA is the native currency of Decentraland and it can also be used to pay for a range of avatars, wearables, names, and more on the Decentraland marketplace. [\[5\]](#cite-id-73iz2l8asbs)  
  
> "Decentraland was born out of this idea that you could pick volumes of a space and own them and then everybody will see what you decided to put in the spaces that you owned" - Esteban Ordano [\[6\]](#cite-id-ghimw6xf37)  
  
  
In late October 2021, Decentraland announced its ‘Metaverse Festival’ with headliners like Deadmau5, Flume, and Paris Hilton and it garnered 50,000 attendees. [\[7\]](#cite-id-0f7xb7u6m5jm) In January 2022, Samsung announced it would build a virtual replica of a physical shop in New York in Decentraland. The company claimed it is one of the largest brand land takeovers in Decentraland. [\[8\]](#cite-id-jizizuzfpas)  
  
On his long-term vision for [Decentraland](https://iq.wiki/wiki/decentraland), Esteban stated:  
  
> "The mission of Decentraland is to find new economically sustainable ways to power the social networks and the information systems of the future"  
>   
> "I think we are almost at the peak of the advertising revenue model and how it provided us with a lot of value. And I think that we can do a lot better than placing ads on everything" - Esteban Ordano on his vision for the future of Decentraland. [\[9\]](#cite-id-px9s4grfric)