Important Notice for Readers
Before diving into the content of this article, we would like to bring to your attention a significant update regarding Upland. Our partnership has been terminated due to an unfortunate scandal that has recently emerged.
For a detailed understanding of the situation, we highly recommend reviewing the comprehensive information available in this article: Public Warning – Upland Metaverse Game Review.
We believe in the importance of transparency and providing our readers with the most up-to-date and accurate information. Your trust is our top priority, and we thank you for your understanding in this matter. Please proceed with the knowledge of these recent developments.
Upland is one of the new generation games that uses blockchain for the representation of the ownerships from the players. The game is about trading virtual real estate. The properties are a depiction of the real world and exist as NFT tokens on the EOS mainnet. Upland can be compared with Monopoly.
The game environment has its own currency, the UPX token, which is pegged to the real world US-dollar. 1000 UPX are worth 1 USD: When starting the game, you get 3000 UPX as a bonus and can immediately start looking for interesting properties or buildings. If you use our link for hi signing up, you’ll get an extra 3000 UPX. At the moment, San Francisco is the only playable town, but over time there will be added a few other cities.
The CryptoTicker team has tested the game and is fascinated by the easy handling. What we particularly like is that you don’t have to deal with the technical characteristics of blockchain technology. That doesn’t mean we aren’t blockchain lovers, but we’re confident that this will make it easier for non-crypto people to enter the upland world.
A feature of EOS accounts is that you can change the key. In the future, players who are familiar with the blockchain and want to manage their accounts by themselves can take over the from Upland administered account with their own public key.
Let’s have a closer look on Upland
At the moment, the game is only playable on mobile devices in the web browser or in the app. We recommend the app, because of the available push notifications that you can receive, when something happens in your game world.
Download the Upland app and get an extra CryptoTicker bonus of 3000 UPX!
We sign up and confirm our e-mail address. Right at the beginning, we choose the design of our explorer and then start the game.
We’ve chosen the hydrant with a green background. The CryptoTicker extra bonus (3000 UPX) is shown above the map. The increasingly transparent tail to the right of the explorer is its path of movement and its visibility area. The explorer is randomly moving over the virtual city. The number 191 on the top left at the explorer icon shows the buyable properties in its visibility area. The explorers from the other players are also easy to recognize. What the “U” right at the bottom means, will be explained later.
The pins with the numbers show the properties from the other players, that are offered for sale. When we click on the pin, the picture gets bigger and we’re getting to the areas of those properties.
The first icon (from left to right) shows our properties, the second one our collections (will be explained later) and the third one gets us to our map. The fourth one shows us our messages, for example offers that other players are making for our properties, and the fifth one is for managing the player account.
We buy our first property
To get the buyable properties in the visibility area of our explorer shown, we can either zoom in and then click on the light green areas that we can select, or we click on our explorer and then on the house symbol in the middle (a list will be displayed).
Because of us having only 6000 UPX, we are looking for a good deal, so we prefer to use the list.
After scrolling down for some time, we’ve chosen the building 4566 18th ST. With a price of 3700 UPX, it totally fits our budgets. The list can be seen in the screenshot above. Additionally to the price, the monthly yield is also shown. It amounts ~1,4 % ( 17 % p.a.) and is paid in UPX.
When we click on a property, the window shown on the screenshot above appears. By clicking on title and scrolling down, the transaction can be examined on the EOS-blockchain. Here is an example of the property we’ve bought.
Because Upland displays the real world, we’ve taken a look at our house on the google maps satellite image. Soon such a feature will be available directly in the game.
We’ve just again navigated the explorer to our new house to find out if there are maybe some other interesting properties in the surrounding area. Yes, the explorer can be sent to any chosen location on the map and also to the properties of other players or our own ones. When sending it to our own property, we don’t pay anything, but if we navigate it to other players houses, we need to pay them 40 UPX.
For sending it, we click at the object on the map, where we want to go and then press “send”.
This is what the game map looks like if we zoom out to the selection mode. It can be seen that our properties are colored green as well as the pin for them when zooming out. The from the explorer recognized properties that are for sale are colored light green. In the upper left corner, we see a dark green and on the right side 2 grey-blue fields. Dark green means owned by another player and for sale. Grey-blue also means owned by another player but not for sale. The grey fields are standing for properties that aren’t unlocked yet.
The clock in the upper right corner tells us how long it takes until we get our profit payouts from our properties. Those UPX aren’t credited to our account immediately, we need to collect them with a click.
At the bottom left we can see a compass icon. We can use it for navigating quickly to our explorer, showing or hiding the pin icon or displaying interesting places. New places will be added continuously. These interesting places are marked with a pin icon with a star on it. On the top, left we see another static explorer icon with a progress bar. We’ll now explain what this means.
The Upland visa
As soon as we start the game, we are playing as an Upland visitor and we have to renew our visa at least every 7 days. This is free. When we don’t follow this rule, we’ll lose our entire Upland account balance. If we make it to a UPX amount of 10.000 tokens, we are considered as a citizen of Upland or an Uplander. Our properties are also included in these 10.000 tokens. As we mentioned at the beginning of this article, the “U” icon at the bottom right is for citizens of Upland. Once we are an Uplander, we never need to renew our visa again and get a lot of other features in the game.
The 10.000 UPX mark can be reached by waiting until our properties generate enough rental income or we can buy UPX with fiat money. Of course, it’s way faster when we buy the tokens with fiat. Because the game is at the moment at its beginning, the offers are quite high. The trading volume isn’t that big. But who buys at the beginning, has advantages later. It needs to be said that it will be probably more easy in the future to reach 10.000 UPX to be an Uplander as it is now.
Collections
With collections, we are able to increase our interest rate. Click on the second icon left at the upper bar. For the first collection we need to own one property. Click “edit” and then on the desired property. At the moment we only own the one mentioned above, so we can only choose this one. At “boost” we can see the interest rate multiplier.
The first collection, multiplies the interest rate on properties with 1.1. So we get 18,7 % a year for the property in our first collection. Additionally, we get an 800 UPX direct payment. The bonus for further collections will be even bigger. Of course, the properties fitting in a collection are harder to find than the normal ones.
We sell a property
For selling a property, we need to be a citizen of Upland (Uplander). We click on the property, then press “sell” and choose a price. Now it is available for other players to buy.
Making an offer
To make other players an offer we also need to be an Uplander. To make an offer, just click on a property and then press “offer”. The owner now gets a message and can accept or deny your price.
Monetization
At the moment Upland is still negotiating with regulators to implement fiat money. When they give green light, we can soon offer our properties against fiat money on a marketplace. This is expected to happen within the next few weeks.
Also important
Additionally to the frequent unlock of properties, there are over and over again offers and extensions making the game even more interesting. Mid-February plots for the first airport in the game, the San Francisco International Airport, were given away. To switch between the cities, the explorers need to head to the airport. The owner of the airport plot then gets a 40 UPX fee.
At the beginning of march, an extensive update named Mojito rolled out in the game. It added treasures to it, which makes it even more fun.
Strategy
Because there are nearly endless moves and possibilities, you may ask how you can start the game right. It is a good idea to focus on the collections in the beginning. Try to get one after another to increase your income. The most obvious thing is to buy the properties that are in areas of interest in the future. Because if other players then send their explorer to those buildings, they need to pay you a fee.
Of course, the game is about becoming as rich as possible. The more UPX you got, the better it is. You may now think: “but couldn’t I just buy a huge amount of tokens with fiat?”. That’s correct, but it’s not just about the amount of UPX you own, it is also about how much you’ve invested for them. The return of investment (ROI) is defining success.
The story and development of Upland
The founders of the project are the friends Dirk Lueth, Mani Honigstein and Idan Zuckerman. They had the idea on an evening while playing Monopoly and watching “Stranger Things” on Netflix simultaneously. Dirk, who comes from Frankfurt, was also a big blockchain-enthusiast. They combined those 3 elements and Upland was born.
Upland is one of the projects, which are funded by the EOS VC fund. The EOS VC fund is managed by Block.one and the FinLab plc. It was created after the EOS ICO when Block.one raised 4 Billion US-Dollars. An amount of 1.000.000.000 $ ran in the fund.
Summarizing links
If you got questions about the game, join the English speaking Upland telegram group!
Click here to get to the always updated Upland blog.
Get 3.000 UPX extra for signing up with the CryptoTicker link!
Have fun becoming a real estate giant!
