Author: NingNing
Upland is an ancient Web3 game. Its narrative keyword is "open metaverse" and the actual game experience is a virtual real estate investment and trading game.
Of course, unlike the traditional Monopoly game, Upland is built on EOS, supporting NFT of identity and assets and tokenization of game achievements. Moreover, Upland has transformed into a "layer 1 metaverse", supporting not only users to create UGC content, but also users to create UGA assets.
Since its launch in 2019, Upland has accumulated more than 3 million registered users, with daily active users remaining at around 30,000 in the past year. There are nearly 300,000 land owners, and a total of more than 6 million NFTs have been sold.
Upland completed an $18 million Series A funding round during the Metaverse bubble in 2021, led by Animoca Brands, and partnered with FIFA and the National Football League Players Association.
Previously, Upland's long-term operating model was similar to that of NBA Top Shot, Blankos Block Party, etc., defining in-game NFT assets as digital collectibles with consumer attributes as the core.
They both allow users to Cash in and Cash out, that is, they support users to use fiat currency (US dollars) to directly recharge the platform to purchase NFTs built into the game. At the same time, they have a built-in closed platform-exclusive NFT secondary market, allowing users to transfer NFTs and withdraw cash.
This business model is no longer sustainable as the Metaverse bubble burst and the NFT market fell into a super cold winter in the past two years. Upland and Blankos Block Party have chosen to take a more Web3 Native path and return to Tokenomics. Interestingly, the supporters behind them are
Animoca and one is Multicoin.
Upland's Tokenomics has chosen a single-coin economic model. $SPARKLET is Upland's only token. $SPARKLET's application scenarios are mainly used as a resource for world construction, codeless NFT casting, and 3D map NFT (cars, decorations, etc.) manufacturing.
$SPARKLET held its TGE in November 2023, with a total supply of 1 billion and a current circulation ratio of ~16%.
There is currently no project on the market that is completely comparable to Upland. It is the first "consumer-oriented" crypto project to land on a leading exchange platform. We have no way to use comparative valuation methods to value its tokens.
However, if the benchmarking conditions are relaxed, it can be benchmarked against Pirate Nation's token $Pirate launched on bitget and coinbase.
In terms of narrative, Upland's consumer crypto project and metaverse narrative are similar to Pirate Nation's full-chain game. In terms of operational data, Upland's number of registered users and daily active users are ahead of Pirate Nation, but it is weaker than Pirate Nation in terms of user life cycle value.
Based on comprehensive analysis and personal subjective judgment, Upland's FDV will be between 0.6 and 0.8 of Pirate Nation's.
