It was one of those game nights in early 2018 when Mani, Idan and Dirk played the board game Monopoly. It was also the time when digital collectibles via non-fungible tokens based on blockchain technology (“Cryptokitties”) made it into the news. What if… the three co-founders started to ask themselves - we “tokenize” the real world and introduce true ownership of assets powered by blockchain technology? Wouldn’t it be fun to trade virtual properties that are based on actual addresses that are actually yours? That was the moment when the idea of Upland was born. From now on, the three would meet almost every day to advance their concept. Finally they developed the vision of a metaverse where people will not only play but also socialize and eventually earn money. But - and this was important from day one -  everything would have to be simple and easy to understand for non-technically versed people. 
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So Mani, Idan and Dirk started to look for a blockchain that would enable them to make this happen. And they found EOSIO developed by Block.One which would allow them to execute on their vision. Then everything went quite fast: The company Uplandme, Inc. was incorporated in July 2018. Soon thereafter the founders raised a seed round from angel investors and Finlab out of Germany and started to code in December 2018. In June 2019 the company allowed first users to try its closed beta. Since January 2020 Upland’s open beta is available cross-platform, meaning web, iOS and Android. Upland will continue to innovate in many areas such as allowing users to extract monetary value via “fiat-out”, “importing” NFTs from other blockchains and enabling users to trade them on marketplaces and dedicated shops within the metaverse.