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Evolving GameFi With Upland 🎮💬
Recorded: April 18, 2024 Duration: 0:59:10Space Recording
Full Transcription
Hey guys, thanks for joining.
We're going to kick things off in just a moment.
Hey guys, thanks for joining.
It looks like we just have Dani joining us now from Upland, so we're going to get going
in just a minute.
I'm just going to bring her up.
Dani, if you can just request to speak.
Perfect.
I'll get you up here.
All right, Dani.
You should be able to talk now.
Can you hear me all right?
Yes, perfect.
Wonderful.
Good morning or afternoon in Europe.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Where are you located?
I moved from California to the East Coast, so I'm in sunny Miami.
Sounds gorgeous.
Yeah, probably.
Yes, it is.
We're just getting sunny weather.
I'm just outside of Toronto, but it's definitely not nearly as sunny as your weather.
I grew up in Toronto.
Oh, really?
That's why all the Canadians come in the winter, all the snowbirds, they come to Miami.
Yeah, true.
I didn't realize you were from Canada initially.
That's awesome.
Nice.
Yeah.
Cool stuff.
Well, I'm excited to have this conversation.
Let's just give it a couple more minutes for some people to join, and I'm going to send
out some reminders.
So thanks, everybody, for joining.
We'll get started in probably one or two minutes.
We need some background music while we're waiting.
Yeah, I got to figure out how to do that.
Some people are experts at that.
Looks like we got Yana here now, too.
Yana, thanks for joining.
Yana's from the GEMS team.
Yana, I think, is actually in the GEMS team.
They're usually the experts who know how to get music and stuff going.
But we should be good to actually kick things off now.
And we've got our reminders pushed out, so everyone knows.
I guess, first of all, Yana, maybe you could just start by a quick intro of yourself, like
which maybe it's just an intro of you, but also chat about Upland and maybe your guys'
history in the EOS ecosystem.
Just as quick as you can.
I know there's a lot to dive into, but a TLDR would be great.
Sure.
I'm Yana Brown-Wolf.
I'm chief of staff, also heading our Upland's commercial team.
So marketing, business development, all the fun stuff.
And of course, now with the launch of Sparklet, all the things related to decentralization,
tokenization, the Web3 ecosystem.
Upland is, I think, definitely the largest, but also I think one of the oldest projects
on EOS on the chain, I do believe we're about 85% of transactions on the EOS network.
We're a five-year-old project.
We're celebrating five-year birthday of Upland in June, which is really exciting in Genesis
this week.
And what started out as monopoly on the blockchain, more of an adult strategic property trading
game, really evolved into an ecosystem where we keep on adding more components and building
it into a platform for creators, for developers, for casual players, for strategic players,
really a place in the metaverse for immersive economic and social interactions.
And of course, Upland is, for those of you who haven't tried and should right now download
it, Upland is based on the real world.
So rather than a fantasy world, there's a reflection of the digital assets of the real world.
So we have over, I believe, 30 cities already open around the globe, and you can open your
business or your home in the metaverse in a real-world address.
Amazing.
Thanks for the summary.
You summed that up good.
I was trying to go as fast as I can because we have so many fun questions.
Yeah, and that gave me, was like a lead-in to a couple things or more of like a preview
at some of the things to talk about because I want to talk a little bit about Sparklet
soon and your guys' five-year anniversary.
That's amazing.
Congrats.
But before we do that, let's just talk a bit about GameFi in general.
Like, what do you think maybe some of the biggest challenges that GameFi projects face
right now in terms of the barriers for end users?
And maybe you could talk a bit about how Upland has made the onboarding process easier because
your guys' app is so smooth.
It doesn't even feel like a Web3 app in terms of how you've designed it.
So you guys seem to be, I guess, experts in that regard.
So yeah, maybe just speak to current barriers in place and what we can do to, you know, get
past them.
Yeah, sure.
So I think the most obvious barrier to entry for Web2 and basically mainstream to come
into GameFi and really GameFi to become mainstream is obviously onboarding.
So Upland has from day one been mobile first, whereas many games, although they're more casual
games in nature, are desktop.
And that kind of misses the point of the audience, the potential audience of the kind of people
who would be attracted to a lot of these platforms.
I mean, we see even those who signed up through desktop, about 80% of the time our users use
the mobile version.
So being mobile first is super critical in mass adoption.
People live and breathe in their phone.
The other onboarding hurdle, of course, for Web3 is obfuscating the blockchain part.
So again, what Upland has done from day one in the way we designed the platform is allow
for users to have a Web2 sign-up feel, even though they are created in the back end, they
have their EOS wallet in the back end.
But it's very interesting that a lot of our users, even ones who've been in for years on
a platform, they don't even know what blockchain we're on.
And I think that's kind of the point, right?
Because when you sign in to, when you play a game or when you use an app, you don't really
know or care, nor should you, if they're using AWS or Google Cloud.
It really doesn't matter.
And it shouldn't really be the point.
The point should be, you know, your interaction with the game.
And I think that that's a hurdle that with wallets and gas fees and sign-ins, it's still
a problem to onboard a lot of normies, as we call them.
And I think one of the reasons we were able to do it so smoothly is because of how EOS has
architected their network that allows us as the operator to pay for the gas fees for our
users, just like, you know, when I use Uber, Uber pays for the AWS costs.
It doesn't add it as an add-on that I need to pay gas.
The same thing is with EOS and a lot of the other EDM chains don't allow it.
You do need to have gas for every transactions.
And that, of course, makes everything a little more complicated.
Um, those are the, those are the obvious, I would say, um, onboarding hurdles and, uh,
for, for web three gaming, but we've actually had a few interesting kind of like thought
leadership-y, uh, semi, uh, philosophical discussions internally about the space, because
we are seeing a lot of excitement for GameFi and we're, you know, some people and
some KOLs are actually talking about GameFi summer and GameFi generally speaking as one
of the, uh, drivers for the next, you know, bull run and blockchain adoptions.
So we're, we're trying to think, okay, where is this, where is the space now?
And we've noticed one thing that kept on coming up when we're looking, when we're looking at
the space is that there are a lot of web three natives who, um, have kind of been burnt
by, uh, by games that first had their token out and promised the world because through their
token allocation or through their token sales have, you know, have sold, I would say even
hundreds of millions of dollars and had this budget, uh, to build games, had three years of bear
market to build it and still haven't launched anything. And while as Upland took a very different
approach, we took, um, equity money, we didn't have a token out for a few reasons. One of them
being we're a U S company that's regulatory compliant. We wanted to keep on building in the,
in the U S we wanted to serve U S audiences. Over 50% of uplenders are from North America,
meaning U S and Canada, uh, another 25% in EU. So it was very important for us to, uh, uh, to be
regulatory compliance so they can be a part of this economy so they can have, you know, profits
in USD and being able to, uh, to trade in a compliant way. So we didn't have the token for
that reason, but also because, um, the, the economy wasn't developed enough to allow for externalities
for, you know, the external pressures of an, uh, completely decentralized token that is affected
by, uh, the cycles of the market. And it's kind of the, our approach and, and that he done our
co-founder who is really, you know, uh, leading the, the product and the, the R and D has had from day
one of understanding the product develop product development, whether it's the product itself
or a token needs to have first an MVP and then reiterate. And when you raise, uh, you know,
$300 million, a hundred million dollars to build a game, you have a problem that the expectation is
that you don't put out an MVP out there and reiterate on it. You're expected, like you had
three years and $300 million. You're expected to give us a triple A experience. Um, and a lot of
these teams have never built a game before, or even if they had, they've never put like, no one has
built a web three game or platform before that, that, um, that is at that level. So you have on the
one hand, um, a community that invested into, or contributed into a token, into the development
of the platform. The platform is not execute, is not executing, but they're in this catch 22 where
the right way to deliver a product is to deliver an MVP and then continuously reiterate, optimize
and build on top of it. But they can't do that because the disappointment that of, you know,
putting something out there that's not as good as what they promised or what they hyped
is, uh, is also going to cause a problem with their community. So we, from day one,
the product development has always been in that approach. Like that's how you develop,
that's how you develop a product. And I think I'm not a, I'm not a hardcore gamer. Um, but
X one are ahead of community and content. Who's, who is a hardcore gamer. Um, and he's, he's here,
maybe he can give a few examples that I don't know, but he was taught, he was talking about,
um, how even in, even in a triple a games and he gave a lot of examples that I hope he'll jump back
in and, and, and share those with you. But even in regular games, it was never okay. We're like the
number one version is the best version. There are a lot of games that the first versions were kind of
sucky. They were MVP ish and they just kept going and releasing every year, a better and better product
until now they're, you know, the, the best game out there. So that's what we're seeing. Um, and
hopefully a lot of the other game fight platforms and games kind of catch up to be, it's okay to have
an MVP reiterate on it, add more features and keep going. That's awesome. No, really? Well,
you kind of summarized everything perfectly. I like that you touched on, not just like the,
the technical barriers, but then also like the, the regulatory, um, side of things is like a,
I think a really big, big barrier just for so many projects. Like you say, like if you do a token
launch and then you've kind of blocked yourself from accessing like a really large community,
like community in North America, then, um, yeah, you, you kind of in a sense have really made it
difficult for yourself to grow. Um, and then also like you're saying, like, I think that's funny how
it's just funny the, um, like the, the mindset in web three of the way products are built is so
backwards from the way most products are traditionally built. And that's just because
the industry is driven on hype and it's, it's not sexy to release just a product and
compared to just, you know, like just okay project compared to raising a bunch of money and saying you
raised a bunch of money. And so, um, I think you guys have done a good job of not putting the,
the whole, the carriage in front of the horse as it was. Right. And, uh, actually created something
that's sustainable. Right. And that can grow. Um, because a lot of projects also just like,
they, they run out of steam because they aren't sustainable because they haven't found that
sustainable model. Um, they've just sort of being operational based on raising money. Right.
Yeah. And it's okay. I mean, because we've been, we try to be with, you know, a quarterly, um,
update on our, on our roadmap and when it's, it's usually done, who presents it. And he's always
giving that, you know, by the way, this is like an MVP of like this specific, you know, like what,
what we did with, with, uh, totems or what we did with car racing. It's like, okay, first we're going
to have a car racing app. That's, it looks cool, but you can't do much with it. Right. Like it's,
it's programmatic, like AI that's racing for you. And we're like, really, do we want to release it
that way? It's kind of sucky, but like, he's like, yes, that's what we're releasing now. And then we
keep on reiterating. And now, you know, now we have already, um, player agency. Now, uh, a quarter
later, we added racing for you for epics. Like, so you just keep on adding things. And as long as
you're trying to be, and as much as transparent and set expectations with the community, it's also
important because you're seeing how the community interacts with the product and that's how you
reiterate, right? Like they always have better ideas than, than we could, you know, sitting with
a whiteboard. So getting that feedback both, uh, verbally, but also through their actions,
like how are they playing? How are they playing the game? What is more popular? Um, we did that
also with our sports legit. So we've had a partnership with a NFL players association for three years
and it was a very popular, but hardcore NFL fan, uh, product. And we saw that most of the users who
came really had to have in-depth knowledge about the NFL in order to, to participate, uh, in, in the
trading and just enjoy that memorabilia. And when we had, um, a product for FIFA that was structured
differently, but it had the same basis of, of legit, we realized that for example, having,
having packs was something that was much more popular with the community because it didn't force
me to think which players specifically I want to buy their card. It allowed also for non-hardcore
fans like myself to participate. So in the third, this year, we actually added a feature for the NFL
PA that you can buy packs as well. And we've seen exponential growth in that. So again, the behavior,
like being able to reiterate based on the behavior of people and how they interact with your product
is super important. Yeah, totally. And you don't need a product that's, um, high fidelity, I guess,
to start to, uh, understand those things. Like, uh, the biggest sort of hurdles for blockchain
projects is understanding, I mean, user behavior, and then also figuring out the technical side of
it, which again, isn't sexy, but, um, is the stuff that actually makes it unique from another game.
Right. So I think it's great, great that you guys are figuring that out. And also like what makes
you, um, like, so like perfect for web three is the fact that you have that, um, community side of
things. Like most people would just like wait for a very long time, um, before releasing something.
Um, you guys are really iterating in the open and building a community and listening to your
community, but what they want. And I think that's super powerful. So I love that. Yeah. And I'm,
I'm excited about the community now being more and more on Twitter because it, it allows for a much
better interaction. Uh, we're still, we're still figuring out on Twitter how to answer everyone,
uh, because the, the growth, given the airdrop, which we will probably discuss in a bit, um, has
been insane in the past month. So, but we are seeing that it's a much healthier space than, um,
than discord as an example. So we've moved, we're, we're trying to move a lot of the community
conversations to Twitter because it's more out in the, uh, Twitter and in game chat, which we've
also introduced because it seems, and this is not just for upland. This is a lot of projects that
the people who are on discord every day, um, and are the hardcore players. So for a new player or for
a casual player to come into discord, they feel a little lost and the communication within, in
Twitter, you, one, you, you, you, you are able to really build out in the open and you're forced to
take, uh, also the, the, you know, the comments and the, uh, also all the shit that's thrown at you in
public as well. So that's, I, I feel like that's, that's important. Yeah. It forces us to, to do a lot
more than, um, like we always wanted to, but not necessarily always had the capacity to. Yeah. Yeah.
That's great. Now, a lot of people, you know, it's not fun to take shit, but you know, sometimes
you just gotta, and, uh, you gotta just sort of like set your pride aside and be like, well,
how can we make things better and go from there? Um, cool. Well, uh, one thing I want to chat about
really quickly and then, um, well, this might actually be a good segue into spark, um, uh, and
the airdrop and all that kind of stuff. But, uh, last October you guys announced that there was a
$1.5 million investment from EOS network ventures and that EOS network ventures. And that was part
of your $7 million series, a extension. So I'm just curious, like between that time and now what
have been the biggest sort of highlights, um, and news out of your ecosystem and how have things
sort of grown since that point? Oh, we've done. Oh my God.
I'm sure it's a lot. We've, we've done a lot. Um, obviously the, the major, what, uh, most of
what we've been working on was sparklet, um, both the launch technically from a product
perspective, from a marketing perspective. Um, and it's really, um, you know, growing out
of a web 2.5 into web 0.3, a web 3.0. So, uh, a lot of the effort has been there. We're obviously,
uh, built the, the bridge, which is exciting because I think it is the first EOS bridge to
another network. If I'm, I think you might be right. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and, and, you know,
everything we're building on EOS hopefully can also be, you know, replicated and decentralized
in the future. So other EOS companies can, uh, can enjoy the technology that we've, that
we've built, uh, proprietarily. So, um, a lot of, a lot of focus on sparklet, a lot of focus
on platform. So because we're, um, we have the basic gamification of property trading,
treasure hunting, and a lot of in game, a lot of in game activity, but our vision is,
and always has been to grow more and more as a platform to have more and more platform features.
And that means allowing for both developers and UGC creators to operate on the platform
in a very smooth way. So maybe I'll, I'll explain by, uh, approaching, uh, both these stakeholders
differently. So with developers and the way Upland approached in general, the, uh, our, our third
party developers, if you think of Roblox, or you think of our friends at a sandbox, the way they
approach their platformization working with, with developers is that they built really good, um,
uh, technology to allow developers to build in their world. But it means that if I'm a developer
and I want to build a game in Roblox, I want to build a game in sandbox. I need to use their tools,
which a lot of developers, a lot of developers are doing, but our approach has always been
different. Um, we decided to have REST APIs and allow developers to build on any technology stack
that they want, be it, you know, um, uh, a web, a web game, be it, uh, on, you know, a game engine
and not limit them to any technology. And through the APIs, they can connect to Upland's economy.
So this gives them, for example, visibility because they have, the developers have a structure
that's, we call it dev shop in Upland. And it shows, it shows on the map. There's a pin on it.
There's excite, there's a community excitement, um, and visibility around the dev shop. And when I,
it's a great user experience because the user maintains their Upland identity, there's no need
for like an additional sign in. So they can read the Upland identity, which creates, um, a user in
their app and it's connected to the Upland economy. So in the, in the different games or the different
services that are third-party devs in Upland, they can, uh, you know, have escrow of, uh, Upland's,
or they can, uh, see what your, what NFTs you have, whether it's, uh, properties or other type
of NFTs. And that's their way to monetize as an example, like create passes, create, um, legits,
uh, that are game items in their game, but being able to do that in Upland in, uh, kind of like a
no code minting for them. So this allows developers who are both games and services,
but traditionally web two developers that we've seen use blockchain, use the Upland economy that's
already established and all the liquidity that Upland, that Upland offers in its economy, both
internally and through, uh, uh, later on, you know, Tilia, the U S D onboarding and offboarding,
uh, and crypto onboarding and offboarding without having to deal with any of that, simply plugging
in, plugging in your game, and then you're part of this economy. So this is the, this is our developer
strategy. And as, as I mentioned before about our approach for product development, um, we,
we started with, you know, identity mapping, then we developed on the, uh, the ability to connect,
to connect wallets. And now we've introduced leaderboards and addition and legits that they
can, that will become items in those games. So we keep on adding in conversation with our,
with the developers who are building an Upland, uh, okay, what do you need to make your game better
or your service? Um, how can, what other, what other things, uh, can we create for you like leaderboards
to make your lives easier, to give more visibility to the community, et cetera. Um, so the platform,
the platform aspect is definitely working with, with developers in that, in that way. The second
thing we've, we're working hard is increasing our capacity to allow for more UDC. So a lot of times,
and we see this in, in web three in general, like the platform itself works with different IPs,
whether it's its own or in partnership with, uh, you know, I don't know, um, uh, uh, an established
brand to create NFTs and virtual goods that are, uh, that are branded and created by the platform.
Our goal and our vision is that we don't have to do that is that our users who are creators or brands
themselves can come in and have a self-service, no code, no blockchain minting, um, services that
allow them to bring on what they, what they want to mint, uh, onto the staging platform, get it approved
as quickly as possible and create those items on their own using sparklet, of course, as the gas or
the energy to, to create those and being part of the economy. And then having a very healthy economy
where users sell these items to each other. So I stopped both working on sparklet, but definitely
working on different features to make it much more easier for creators. And of course, increase capacity,
because, um, let me, let me tell you in the backend, uh, anything that requires human intervention of
let's say approving items, uh, is bound to be backlogged. And we had to work very hard and are still working
very hard and putting a lot of resources in making those, uh, making those processes as automated as
possible. And in the future also, uh, using a lot of AI partnerships, like the one we have with CADEM
to allow it to be even, even smoother. That's awesome. Yeah. I keep thinking as you're talking
about how, like you guys are the perfect example of like one of my favorite use cases for, for blockchain
that I think is often overlooked. And that's just like composability of the, you know, end user
or the user experience, like between platforms that would normally be separate from each other.
Right. And you guys are really, like really showcasing how blockchain can be used to tie
those experiences together. Right. And make things, like I say, just more composable. I think people
often really over overlook just the power in that beyond cryptocurrencies and all that kind of stuff,
stuff, just the, the end user still being the same user, no matter what platform they're on.
And, uh, yeah, that's super cool. Do you go, do you want to talk, talk a little bit more maybe about,
um, Spark, uh, and just give us the, I guess the TLDR on, uh, Spark's significance, um, and, uh,
the related initiatives to it, all that kind of stuff. Cause we've mentioned it a lot, but we haven't,
um, I think really explained it in too much in depth yet. Sure. So first of all,
we announced about two weeks ago that Spark, uh, is being rebranded into Sparklet on both platforms.
So also when we launched the, uh, new EO smart contracts for, for Spark, it will be denominated
in Sparklet. So you can think about it like dollars and cents. Sparklet is the sense for the, um,
for Spark. Um, so nothing, nothing on the EO size changes other than the denomination,
which is one to 1000. Um, so I will refer to Spark as Sparklet. Sounds good.
For the sake of, for the sake of our discussion and to, uh, to, to make sure the rebranding is
actually getting through. Perfect. Awesome. So, uh, Spark has been in Upland as a utility token
that really powers value creation. It's been in Upland for the past two years. So Upland has two,
uh, virtual currency. The first one is Upland, which is the stable, the stable in game currency,
uh, which, which is used to, uh, for the, for marketplace and marketplace interaction and Spark,
which is a utility token that powers creation in Upland. What does that mean? For example,
you can think about it as energy or gas. So in Upland, if a creator, uh, has, uh, a UGC factory,
they are making outdoor items for people's properties. We have endless examples. They
are super cool and polished. I suggest you all go and, um, and, and check these out in Upland.
And the community has created incredible things. I just bought for my Tokyo property, um, a mat with
like, you know, those, those Japanese cats, for example, created by, created by a user. I'm like,
oh my God, it's so cool. I must have it. Just like you like decorating your house. So, um, the way,
the way the, the creator, um, has made the, made these items is that they, they use the Upland,
no code minting and the gas that they use is staking Spark in game in order to create those items.
Okay. Um, the, also obviously most used, uh, way, the, the way to use Spark that's most popular
is construction of buildings in Upland. So different structures in Upland on your property,
um, is you need Spark staked in order to construct it. And it's nominated in Spark hours. Um, what's
happening now is that the legits that we have with legits can be, uh, let's say they can be avatar
wearables. They can be, um, just passes and cards that can manifest as indoor items in the future,
but those would require Sparklet and to be spent in order to build them. And we've, we've gamified
the process of the no code minting by having a factory and you stake Sparklet in your factory. And
that basically creates the, the, the, creates the items. So that's Sparklet. It's been around for
two years. It has over 130,000 holders in Upland. It's not externally tradable. So, and it's not
transferable within Upland. Um, we also have data that over 93% of those who purchase Spark have used
it for its utility in app. And this is, this is prelaunch. This is just the Upland, the Upland
community. Now, um, as I mentioned at the beginning in the intro, Upland is a Silicon Valley based
company, uh, registered in the U S. Uh, so we've always been regulatory compliant, kind of believing
that you can build in web three in the U S, but waiting for that regulatory clarity. And in the
meantime, you know, building what we, what we can without an, an externally traded token,
what has changed in October is, uh, the ripple ruling. So not getting in too much to the legalities
of the ripple ruling, but, uh, the most, the most important aspect in it, when the court was trying
to determine, um, is XRP a security, they said XRP is not a security in and of itself.
It, when it's sold in programmatic exchanges, which means an exchange that you don't know who
you're selling to, could be decentralized or centralized. It doesn't matter, but you don't
know who the buyer, who the buyer is. That is not, um, an investment contract because there is utility to
that token. You don't, we don't know why the end, the end purchaser bought this, if they bought this,
um, as an investment or they bought it for it, for its utility. But the court did say that the sale of
XRP directly to investors. So whether it's VCs, hedge funds, et cetera, uh, especially in pre-sales
that absolutely constitutes an, as an, uh, as an investment contract and violates the, uh, violates
the, uh, uh, SEC, um, ruling. So when we worked with our lawyers and it kind of like looked at our
ruling, all of a sudden there was, okay, there is now a regulatory path. There is some clarity from
the courts, sad that it's not from legislation, but okay. Regulatory, um, clarity from the courts,
that Upland never sold spark or sparklet to investors. Never. It was always sold for its utility
in app for our community, which means that we can take the same existing, you know, two year old
token and just make it externally tradable and put it on, put it on, uh, put it on exchanges or, uh,
just allow users to withdraw it to their, uh, to, uh, to their wall, to their external wallets.
And that would allow, um, that would not violate the, uh, the regulatory framework asset forth by the
courts. So this gave us a path and we've structured the, uh, uh, sparklet as such. So we had, uh, a
community vote on a white paper. Uh, I believe it was over 87% voted in favor of, uh, having spark,
uh, having sparklet, uh, external to, to the app. And that's what we've been working on until then.
That's fantastic. Really cool. Um, that you guys have that clarity around the regulatory side of
things. And, um, yeah, I think really smart in the way that you guys have executed it. I'm also a
pretty strong believer that, you know, it is possible to, to build in web three and these more,
um, you know, regular, uh, like gray areas, I guess these areas that haven't really given enough
clarity. Um, but you just have to work within the constraints and sometimes constraints are a good
thing. Um, even if it's frustrating. So, uh, yeah, that's awesome. And, uh, the other thing I was
thinking there is just that, uh, you know, someone was saying to me recently that the unfortunate thing
is laws reactive, right? Like something happens and then the law reacts to that. And that's where
the guidelines come in place. So, um, it takes those scenarios like the ripple thing to, you know,
open the floodgates for a lot of projects to know where those lines are. So that's really exciting
for you guys. Um, congrats. Thank you. And we still have, uh, we still have going on for another
seven days, our first chapter of our sparklet airdrop for social engagement. So anyone who
hasn't signed onto it yet can participate and then we'll be able to claim their sparklet, uh,
in Upland and start experiencing this economy and the power of sparklet internally for that. Um,
on their, on their own with, with airdrop, uh, I think there's one other utility for, for sparklet
that I didn't mention that is super, super important, especially for people who are not
necessarily builders or, um, very engaged in the platform. And that is one of our second, uh, second
layer slash third-party developers actually developed, um, an exchange, the spark up X,
up X exchange where you can help other players who need spark in order to build things in Upland,
build structures for now. Um, and you can stake for them in exchange for an exchange for up X. So
you're, you can participate in the, in the economy with your, with your spark, even if you're not a
builder or a creator yourself. That's cool. Yeah. I like that model. Um, that's really similar to,
uh, like a lot of these, uh, Yoast and then, you know, sister chains of Yoast have the rec system,
the resource exchange. And I think it's just a cool model. I mean, something you can't really do in
the real world too much. Like you can't have an excess amount of resources and then loan them out
to other people. Um, yeah, definitely, definitely. So we, we actually constructed it, um, with this in
mind, but what's interesting is that it also created a community vibe and kind of like a social,
a social movement. So I just saw, um, uh, uh, uh, reporter, uh, Lisa, who was looking into looking
into Upland and she has spark and she just wrote on Twitter, I have this extra spark who, who needs
me to help them, uh, to stake, to stake my spark under, under construction. And you had all these
comments of people. It's like, this is my address. This is what I'm building. Like, please help me.
Or you have, uh, communities and, Ooh, I don't want to give it away because we're announcing next
week something, uh, really cool, like a cool, uh, third party devs coming to Upland. I'm going to give
just a promo and not actually reveal. But, uh, one of the, one of the things that they, that they told
us is, okay, we want to have, um, uh, a presence in every city and Upland, like help us help, like,
which properties should we, uh, should we buy? And they're like, okay, how long is it going to
take us to, to construct this? And I'm like, you know what, how about you go to our community?
Who's going to be your community, uh, that you want to bring in, bring into your game
through your Upland presence and tell them, listen, whoever stakes spark on helping us can, uh, construct
our, uh, structures and build our presence in Upland will raffle off, um, some of the items
that are in game to people who help us out. So all of a sudden it's also, it's a community thing,
but it's also a marketing tool for third party devs to, uh, to interact with the community. So
these are, you know, the unexpected consequences of, uh, of, of different products that are really
exciting when you have a strong community. Yeah. I love that. That's so cool. Um,
awesome. Well, uh, I guess one of the thing I was going to mention is while you're speaking of the,
uh, the social engagement side of things, um, uh, everybody who's listening right now,
make sure you take a moment to go and follow up land, um, and, uh, follow us as well while you're
at it, follow Danny and stay in the loop on more stuff like this. Um, maybe, uh, Danny,
you could speak if there's anything else to talk about, about your social engagement and airdrop
thing, maybe talk to that for a second, but then, um, take us into, uh, Genesis live. That's the big,
big event right now for you guys coming up. It's been, it's your five year anniversary. So congrats
on that. Um, and, uh, you guys will be celebrating that at Genesis live. So maybe give us a quick overview
of what that, uh, that, uh, event is and what people can look forward to there.
Yeah. Um, Genesis week is definitely the highlight of the year for the, for the community. Um, it
commemorates our Genesis block in Upland, the first, the first minted, uh, property in Upland. And for
the past three years, we've had it as a live event in Vegas. And the first year we actually opened up
Vegas as a city and Upland in real life. So that was, yeah, that was, that was a lot of fun.
Um, the, I was actually, I think three weeks I started, I started, uh, into working in Upland
with the, with the first one. I'm like, I didn't know what to expect. And I, yeah,
I came in and I saw the energy and I'm like, wow, okay. I made the right decision. I came to the right
place. Um, and last year we've also had a great success with having, uh,
community, community booths that, uh, whether it's third party developers or different communities
that are, uh, that are building or, uh, or, uh, selling, selling things in Upland or for
Upland. We even have, uh, a community member who has a, in real life, he has, uh, a business of
selling, uh, coffee beans and he sold them for, he sold them for Upland.
That's cool. And we've, yeah, we bought like a year's worth of, for the, for the, for the office.
Um, so that, that's really exciting. What we're doing this year is we're combining, um,
key week live with the airdrop campaign. So yes, we're going to have chapters that are also,
we're reiterating on and, uh, make, uh, doing more features for the different chapters of the social
airdrop, but it was really important for us to, uh, reward the players who are coming
in real life to Vegas. And they're going to be different missions, um, in G week on that day.
And the ones who are attending, um, have a very easy chance to win up to five spark, but definitely
a minimum of one for everyone who's coming. So that's, that's our way of also just thanking the
community and having them participate in the excitement and value of sparklet and everything
we've been working towards. Sick. Well, it sounds like it's going to be quite the event guys. So
if you're listening, head down to Vegas. Um, what, what's the day of that event again?
That is the first weekend of June. Let me, I should know this by heart. I have
June.
David's going to kill me for not knowing this by heart. I have June 7th on my calendar.
Okay, great. Awesome. So guys, June 7th, mark your calendars and, uh, head down, head to the
Upland page and check it out. I think there's some posts on your wall. So I'll try to get one of those
things pinned up at the top of this chat during the next, uh, question. Um, but I guess just moving
on, like, how does it feel to be at the five year mark? And maybe obviously it's been, been a while
and this is again, probably one of those questions you can spend much longer on, but like, how have
things evolved for you guys? Like, are you surprised at where you guys are now based on where you were
five years ago or yeah, I guess just like, what are your feelings, you know, with it being the five
year anniversary? Um, it's, I'm not going to lie. It's a mix of excitement. And then that feeling
that I think you have in every startup that we're not moving fast enough. Cause we just did, uh,
on the one hand you have this excitement cause you release something and you see how,
how, how it's like booming like totems, right. Um, or, or, or, you know, racing ecosystem or the
third party developers. But as a startup, you're always like, man, I wish I had more resources
because we go over the backlog and like, we have a list, we come out after a few hours with a list of
a hundred things and we need to prioritize. So we're always like, Oh, we need to build more.
So there's, um, I mean, I've always been at startup, so I know it's a, it's not even like a web three or
upland thing. It's you, you always feel that way, but, um, it forces, it forces you to always
prioritize and, and focus and, um, ask for the patience of the community as we're trying to
accommodate a lot of things as a platform. So it's not just like, you know, we have like five
different categories, um, of things that we're working on at any given, at any given time.
And the idea is always to prioritize and shuffle and shuffle the resources. But what's I think is,
is amazing about upland is that even when it was like a, a very rudimentary, just, you know,
buy a mint a property and, and yay that I have a property card, even at the very beginning,
the vision was always the same. The vision hasn't changed of where we're going. There are some things
like opportunities that, that come up on the way. Uh, but the, the focus is there in terms of,
okay, how do we make this into a real platform with an open economy where
adults can interact, can, um, can earn, can have business, can have businesses, can enjoy themselves,
can have a, a, a, a community and social interactions as well. Um, you know, with adding, uh,
more and more, uh, features and optimizing on our partnership with, with nowhere for actual spaces.
So there's a, it's a, it's, it's, we always want to build more. I wish we had, you know,
a lot more resources to build more and hopefully, and hopefully we will. And, but the focus of knowing
what, where we're going and being able to prioritize to get there, uh, is how I would summarize the,
the five years. I know I'm a little, I should be a little more like, yeah, we're amazing. But like,
we're always like internally super hard on ourselves. I was going to say, I relate. That's
sort of the way it is when you're a product owner. Um, it's like you, you, you're, you know,
you're doing it because there's a dream and there's a vision there. And I think what's cool about what
you're saying is that, um, you guys have that vision and the vision, the mission side of things
is so important, like to have that North star, just to keep you moving in the same direction,
because it's also easy when you're early on in a project to just get distracted and move
left or right too much. Right. So, um, yeah, that's actually a really good point. And I think
it connects to where we started with the MVP and iteration. It's like when you have limited resources,
as opposed to, you know, I sold token for $300 million and I have $300 million to build what
I like the product of, you know, my, of my dreams, it will never come out as good as if you put on an
MVP and reiterate. So I think the same thing with the limitation of resources, um, of development
resources, that it forces you all the time to prioritize and like, okay, what, like dig into the
data and like, what actually moves the needle? What do we have that we have data to back it up
as opposed to like, you know, a fantasy that we have in our head about, about a product or things
that we know we want to, we want to build, but you, we know we will take a few iterations to get there.
Um, it actually probably is a recipe for a much better product at the end.
Yeah, totally. That makes perfect sense. Um, well, we're coming close to the end,
and we have a couple more quick questions. Um, you know, uh, I'm here with the EOS network
foundation and we're, um, we represent the EOS blockchain, which Upland is built on. And we're
really grateful to have you guys as part of our ecosystem, Danny, like, like I say, since pretty
much since mainnet launch, cause we also just had our five year anniversary a few months back. So, um,
our timelines are pretty, pretty close together. Um, but I guess, I guess I'm just curious, um, like, uh,
for people who maybe aren't familiar with EOS, maybe there's the developers in the audience or
even just users, like, is there anything maybe that we haven't spoke about that you like about
building on EOS that maybe sets it apart from other tech stacks or even just other ecosystems
or communities? Like, um, yeah, yeah. Why EOS? Oh, well, we would definitely five years ago,
but probably even today, um, there is no layer one we've seen that could probably support the number
of transactions that we've had. I mean, was it, I think even two years ago when we launched Rio,
we had 83 mints per second. And I, I don't want to, I don't want to name names, but there are a lot of
layer one blockchains that would break that instance, like on the first three minutes of
that mint of that minting event and minting events in upland, like city openings are hyper-competitive
and they're the, you know, the highlight of the, of the community and, and EOS, you know, it like has
the, the, the, the technology stack has supported the transactions from volume from, from day one.
So I, I mean, it's not even, it's not even a question like there were five years ago,
definitely there wasn't any other blockchain that can handle this. Um, some have caught up now,
but I think also the, um, the ability, the ability, as I mentioned before, um, for us as a developer on
top of EOS to pay for the gas fees and the resources for, you know, RAM, we call it, but for the sake of
everyone, uh, gas is fine for our users, um, is absolutely critical in anything that requires mass
adoption. Totally. Yeah. I think you guys are a really good poster child for just, um, using EOS
really the way it was built to, in my mind, at least, you know, one of the reasons it was built
was to extract a lot of those blockchain elements away from the user. And so, yeah, you guys showcase
that really well. That's another reason we just love having you guys in our, in our ecosystem.
Um, well, thank you for singing our praises. I appreciate that. Um, uh, but, uh, the feelings
are mutual. Um, I think, uh, we, we do, we should wrap sooner coming up on time here. Um, but again,
everybody make sure you go follow up land and, um, that you follow the ENF, um, here for, uh,
more updates on stuff going on in the EOS ecosystem. And I'm sure we'll be having more
events with, with up land soon. Um, right before we wrap Danny, um, can you just, uh, maybe let
people know how they can get involved in the ecosystem? Like whether they're a user developer
or, you know, any other sort of potential like stakeholder, um, where should they go to learn more?
So the easiest is just to download the app, um, at, uh, play.upland.me, um, either on your mobile
or, or your desktop. So if you're a developer or a creator, um, all those resources are in our website,
which is upland.me. And if you want to start participating in the airdrop there, I, uh, seven
more days to the airdrop platform chapter one, that's airdrop.upland.me. So all these are ways to
immediately, uh, start participating. We, there is a lot going on in the app because it's a platform
and it might be a little confusing. So I do, I highly recommend going to the mission center
first and start doing missions. It's basically like taking new users by the hand and helping them
understand upland through missions that they can earn up through completing those missions.
And of course there's, um, an in-game chat, uh, and one of the channels is, uh, for, uh, new players.
And they're always amazing community members who are there to help new players and give them advice.
And if they get stuck, help them out. Fantastic. All right, guys. So head to all those places. I also
just pinned the, um, uh, post at the top of this event for, um, the Genesis week. So, um, if you guys
are listening, go check out that as well. Um, yeah. Any final thoughts, Dani, before we wrap things up?
Um, this is going to be exciting year. It's, it's, uh, I am feeling, you know, a game five summer and
sparklet is heading in the right direction. Uh, we're this year in 2024, we're really seeing in our
numbers, uh, increase of new users, increase of activity. Like we're, we're feeling the momentum
and we're very excited, uh, for, for the growth that's coming this year. Yeah, I can tell it's a,
yeah, I can tell it's a pretty exciting year for you guys and things are buzzing. I mean,
even on this space, it's wild. We've got like 51 comments and people like you're, you're, you're
speaking earlier about your Twitter community and it's pretty obvious with this event, just the
attendance and engagement and all that kind of stuff. So I can feel the excitement. So looking
forward to the, to the year ahead, Dani, this is going to be great. Me too. All right. Let's,
let's schedule, uh, the, the next space space for a few months from now. Yeah. After the
Genesis week chaos ends, right? Sometime. Exactly. Sounds good. All right.
Thanks again so much. And thanks everybody for listening. Uh, take care. Bye.
