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Upland, which is trying to make a metaverse through virtual real estate mapped to the real world, has expanded to new cities and reported that it has 2.5 million registered users.
During its annual Genesis Week conference in Las Vegas last week, Upland said it has added Las Vegas and Rio de Janeiro as cities where players can buy virtual real estate.
In addition to new city launches, Upland premiered its most highly-anticipated feature to date: cars, which use non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to unlock new possibilities for players to monetize assets, services, and enjoy engaging experiences.
The launches are supported by the meteoric growth of the platform, which has increased registered users by 546% year-over-year and lay the foundation for further developments that advance Upland’s mission of rebuilding the world.
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Founded in June 2019 in Silicon Valley, Upland has grown substantially each year in its evolution from a property trading game to a feature-rich metaverse destination focused on an entrepreneur and creator driven economy. In its fastest growth since May 2021, the number of properties minted on the platform has increased by over 300% as registered users hit 2.5 million in May 2022.
Upland is focused on creating more opportunities for developers and hosted its inaugural Hackathon during Genesis week. This was the first of many opportunities for developers to create a Web3 experience leveraging the Upland developer tools and application programming interfaces (APIs).
To support and encourage a strong developer community, Upland awarded a $50,000 grant to the most creative project to help the developer fully realize the concept in the metaverse.
Upland is continuing its path towards the open metaverse economy, where all stakeholders have the opportunity to create value and enjoy the fruits of the platform’s prosperity. With the introduction of the new developer program, Uplanders can not only collect, craft, interact with, and trade their digital assets, but can also build new experiences on top of the metaverses.
Upland has officially launched the metaverse’s first car experience: Metaverse Motors (MV Motors). The debut of car NFTs has unlocked a new economy where players can buy, collect, trade, sell and even manufacture a variety of automobiles.
With various cars and trucks arriving in Upland, the community will drive and benefit from the web3 economy through various business and fun activities. This includes entrepreneurial activities like manufacturing of cars, operating showrooms, providing rideshare, offering and cargo transportation. Other ways to earn will be around competitions such as participating in car racing through the open cities of Upland, training drivers and modding cars.
Sin City has come to Upland. Users can now buy, sell and trade virtual properties based on real-world addresses of Las Vegas. The city opened on the platform during a live, in-person event at the Sahara Hotel where Uplanders could experience in real life the competition to purchase the virtual properties in Vegas that they recently had an opportunity to visit in person.
Rio de Janeiro is officially the first international city to launch in Upland. In addition to adding a brand new team of developers in this metaverse-curious country, Rio de Janeiro is the beginning of international expansion in virtual properties mapped to their real-world counterparts, and new partnerships in Brazil and beyond.
Rio de Janeiro and Las Vegas join the 18 cities that have already opened with over 230,000-plus
virtual landowners from all around the world that enjoy Upland’s metaverse. Over three million NFTs have been purchased by players, and places like Los Angeles, San Francisco, the Bronx, Chicago, New Orleans, and Manhattan have been sold out due to high demand for virtual land since the beginning of this year.
Each day, Uplanders sell and trade virtual properties, build houses, complete property collections, and participate in treasure hunts and city tours. With the addition of cars and user-owned shops, a multitude of events for and by its community, Upland continues to fulfill its promise of “Play. Earn. Connect.”
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