Dear Upland Team,

We have received The Upland Constitution, written by the Upland Team, and understand that it was issued in good faith. We appreciate the spirit in which it was written and that at its core it is trying to achieve a positive outcome to benefit us all. We agree that there are many issues concerning the game and within the community which needs to be addressed. We would like to take this opportunity to work with the Upland Team on these issues so that all parties can have an enjoyable and profitable experience in the Upland Metaverse.

As pragmatists, we expect to be treated as investors as Upland is first and foremost an investment platform and second a game. With Upland acting as the Operator, earning transaction fees from all of our activities, and us as investors who have chosen to make Upland our priority in a Crypto market filled with an ever-growing array of options.

Here are our collective feelings in relation to each article item listed in the Upland Constitution:

In regards to Article I: Asset Funneling

We feel that we require a clearer definition of what asset funneling constitutes. Furthermore, we are concerned that, rather than using the verbiage ‘mint price’, The Team decided to use ‘market price’. We believe that the term ‘market price’ is vague, and as the market is in constant fluctuation and an unfair indicator of funneling. A case in point would be the Upland Community Auctions where new price ceilings are reached regularly.

Moreover, the crypto space has a strong culture of trusting the free market. Any form of price-fixing scares current and potential investors. Therefore we believe that, as assets are absolutely owned by the player (as stated in the Upland Bill of Rights), selling below mint/market should only serve as an indicator of potential abuse of asset funneling rather than being viewed as an absolute.

In regards to Article II: Collusion & the Expectation of “Fair” Market Pricing

We reiterate that fair market pricing is something determined by the player base, and not the Upland team, and is in a constant state of fluctuation due to the robust nature of the ever-growing player base.

We believe that punishment should be proportionate to the crime committed. These crimes should be made known to the community and punishment should be shared for complete transparency of the process. Implementing this process ensures that individual players are not punished unequally for the same crime. We understand that this requires extensive manpower but the repercussion of doing this haphazardly can be catastrophic.

In the event of false imprisonment, what is the mechanic by which Upland assumes liability for losses in both the financial and reputational realm?

The current available in-game mechanics require the use of paying a large amount of UPX into what the community calls a burner prop (property). Payment of Spark for the purpose of construction, tipping players who act as real estate agents, payment of commissions, loan services, etc. all rely on the use of a burner property as part of the transaction. This burner process has been implemented by the players as a workaround due to the inability to directly send UPX from player to player. We, the undersigned, would gladly pay a commission for direct UPX transactions if that would help the Upland team catch legitimate asset-funneling cases as we too feel that the use of a burner property is not ideal.

In regards to Article III: Multi Accounting

We agree with this article wholeheartedly as multi-accounting is indeed one of the biggest detriments to both the community and the platform.

We strongly believe that multi-accounting is made easy and exacerbated by the availability to abuse the referral scheme. Therefore, we suggest lowering the threshold of the bonus or removing it in its entirety. The current referral bonus drastically devalues UPX. This can be further observed in the differential price between FIAT listings and UPX listings to cite one example.

The Upland marketing team has made leaps and bounds in increasing the player base through the use of targeted advertising. Therefore, we feel that the original reason for the referral bonus has served its purpose well as it helped to jump-start the Upland metaverse. However, as we are now a more stable community, new players are far more interested in finding ways to achieve financial success, many of which join based on word-of-mouth referrals from established players.

While on the subject of new players, the single biggest concern is in regard to starting cities. For new Upland players, we strongly believe that any cities which do not presently have FSA properties for sale should be removed completely from the starter city list. This upsets new players and established players alike. New players in the context of being incredibly frustrated at their inability to purchase property and provide them a completely negative experience upon starting the game. This also makes it seem that Upland is a complete cash-grab which established players know to not be the case.

Established players have to carry the brunt of attempting to alleviate the situation by either providing the funds for new players to continue to play (via sends for example) or take the time to coach them. Upland community members presently tell them to wait for their Upland Visa to expire, which we are sure the Upland Team agrees is not an adequate solution.

In regards to Article IV: Use of in-Game Bots

We agree with most of the Upland Team’s decisions on this but we require clarification on what constitutes acceptable use of the bot so as to not infringe on bot use unwittingly.

If possible, we would request a complete list of unacceptable uses of bots.

In regards to Article V: Due Process and Payment of Fines

We believe that the idea behind due process assumes that a person is given a fair chance to clear their name and provide proof prior to being incarcerated. A transparent legal system has always helped to instill investor confidence, community cohesion and acted as a deterrent for would-be criminals.

In addition to providing the suspect with an email, we believe that the suspect should be contacted on Discord by a member of the assigned investigation team to plead his/her case.

If the Upland Team decided to put players in jail without due process pre-emptively, and the follow-up determines that the player is in fact innocent of wrongdoing, how does The Upland Team assume liability?

There is a clear loss of time and income and in a metaverse where one’s financial well-being relies heavily on one’s reputation preemptive incarceration can devastate a player’s future prospects.

Further Opportunities

We feel that this Constitution has granted the rare opportunity to raise the aforementioned points and a few more. We would like to take this opportunity to request better property management tools (this is especially true when trading properties with other players). As more and more ‘serious’ money arrives in the form of whales and institutional investors, the right to ownership of our actual keys should be a priority. It has also been brought to our attention that a lot of pain and hardship is being experienced by players who, by mistake, list a property at the wrong price. So much so that we all know of cases of people who have decided to ‘rage quit’. We suspect that a good fix would be for the system to confirm for a second time in cases where the player lists a property for under mint price.

Idan recently mentioned on an AMA that Upland is rethinking the business license process, this was very encouraging as many smaller players, with great ideas, had a sense that business licenses would be reserved for the wealthy, exclusively. We encourage Upland to make it as easy as possible for people to open and close businesses and to reward those who spend a lot of time in the metaverse. We recognize that any attempt by the Operators of metaverses to set arbitrary limitations upon the extent that players can trade or conduct business with one another or to criminalize players for exchanging assets at a price that the Operators deem to be unfair is no different to price controls. Such policies have brought ruin to every national economy that ever attempted them and will surely have a detrimental effect on the growth of the Upland economy and metarvese. This is especially true for Upland as so many of the investors venture here from the crypto world and have strong opinions regarding governmental price-fixing. We hope the Upland Team will receive this document in the spirit in which it was written. We look forward to hearing your feedback and look forward to working with you to make Upland the best it can be.