Upland: Property Tycoon On-Chain

This Naavik deep dive, published October 17, 2022, analyses Upland, a virtual property trading game in which players buy and sell plots of land on a map of the real world, with ownership secured on the EOS blockchain. It covers the game's assets (UPX, Spark, properties, Block Explorers, Legits), its game design across property, metaventures and events, its economy, and its roadmap. The document reports 2.4M cumulative mobile downloads, with the US, Brazil and UK as the top three countries, and cumulative mobile revenues of $11.1M, 63% of which come from the US. It cites 194K 30-day monthly active wallets on DappRadar at the time of writing.

The document describes UPX as non-tradable on open markets, which it says ties its value to player engagement rather than speculation. It identifies the cold start problem in buying a first property as the biggest critique, and notes that metaventures and events feel tangential to core property gameplay. It also reports that metaventure trading volume is barely 4% of property trading volume.

The document notes that among properties offered for sale by players, only 8% are sold for USD, which it attributes mainly to USD transactions not being allowed on mobile. It concludes that the non-tradable UPX and Spark design has helped the business model remain sustainable through market cycles.