Inaugural Meta Report

#3 August 2021

Last updated: August 30th 2021

The Magic of Inaugurals

There has been a lot of cool stuff going on in the background of Upland. With the release of the NFT Portal on August 19th 2021 Upland has reached a new milestone in creating the biggest metaverse in the history of online gaming. Players can now import their Wax NFTs into Upland. The NFTs will be transferred into an Upland custody account and a copy of the NFT will be created inside Upland (technically on the EOS blockchain). As of today, players can only import the NFTs in this very early version of the NFT portal. The developers explained that it will be possible to extract them again at a later stage. In the future players will also be able to interact with their NFTs e.g. to show them to others, to place them on their properties and inside their houses. A lot of cool stuff is coming to Upland and this is only the beginning of a lively metaverse.

Total Inaugural supply: 619 properties
Largest Inaugural: 1652 UP Squares (1825 04TH ST)
Smallest Inaugural: 12 Up Squares (1206 48TH AVE)
District with most Inaugurals: Outer Sunset (56 Props)
Cheapest Inaugural in UPX: 1,350,000 UPX (+5.7%)
Cheapest Inaugural in USD: 632 USD (-21.0%)
Hodl Ratio: 95.6%

Top 10 Inaugural Hodlers

August 30th 2021

Stability in the top 10

The top 10 Inaugural Hodlers has been rather stable this time. The biggest seller of Inaugurals was zafar177 who “sold” 6 of his 15 Inaugurals. Although it is unclear if he really sold them in a hidden deal or was just giving them to other players as a temporary swap (more about this later on). Oliver sold one Inaugural and dalenz moved into the top 10. The Hodl Ratio shows 95.8% for August 2021 which means that out of the 619 Inaugs 593 owners were the same one month before. This could indicate that players value Inaugurals at a high price and are willing to keep them instead of selling them.

Let’s take a look at the real inaugural sales prices:

583 LOMBARD ST was sold for 1,710,000 UPX from octavius to buster_worth

1010 ANZA ST was sold for 1,277,000 UPX from oliver to bogdansky
Minting Price

266 RED ROCK WAY was sold for 650 USD from mrmonopoly to dylandick12

Two Inaugurals have been selling for more than 1. Mio UPX which seems to be a realistic price at the moment. At the time of writing the floor price has been 1,350,000 UPX. Until today we can even conclude that there are similarities to Bitcoin as Inaugurals are limited in supply and quite a lot of early investors sold them for a price they probably regret later on. The sales price of mrmonopoly for 650 USD is undervalued. In my opinion it could have been sold for a way higher price if the previous owner would have hodled it for some time.

Massive number of temporary swaps

Out of the 26 new owners only three were done in exchange of either UPX or USD. The other 23 trades consisted of property swaps. Taking a closer look one can discover that quite of lot of these swaps have a really high number of owners. Luckily, it’s all on the EOS blockchain so everybody can find out how many owners a property had.

It is estimated that the reason behind the high number of temp swaps is caused by players wanting to complete the EST. 2019 collection badge including the bonus UPX. What most people forget about is that the property itself will most likely lose in value due to the number of owners in the past.

For example, let’s take a look at one of the properties with a high number of temporary swaps: 1133 WEBSTER ST which is currently owned by deftones. Since the minting on September 4th 2020, the property has been swapped 101 times. Do you really want to own something that had these many owners before? Imagine if this was a car, would you buy it? Probably not. In January 2021 I’ve published an article about this topic on Publish0x: Why swapping your collections in Upland might decrease their value in the long run.

Patient collectors will look for rare properties with a low number of owners and evidence shows that you can still find them. A good example for this is the player nicow who recently has become the owner of 3240 Lawton ST. Although this is also a swap, it clearly makes a difference to be the second “buyer” instead of being swap number 102.

Being owner no. 100+

Don’t sell too early, hodl!

In this report we already learned that one should not sell Inaugs too early. The player mrmonopoly sold one for 650 USD which might seem to look like a great deal but in the long run of Upland’s metaverse it might be a cheap purchase for the buyer. Let’s take a look at another example that underlines this theory. In August 2019 qann31 bought the Inaugural 191 02ND ST and was hodling it until March 24th 2021 when it was sold to nimoryan for 143 USD. While qann31 made a 4x on his initial purchase it could have easily been sold for a lot more if he would have kept it for some more time. As long as Upland is a popular game with rising players numbers, Inaugs are expected to increase in price.

The EST. 2019 collection consist of only 619 Inaugural properties and represents the very beginning of Upland’s metaverse. If that alone is not convincing you, just check out the price history of Cryptopunks, a collection of some of the earliest NFTs ever created.

Summary August 2021

This update has shown that there is quite a high interest for temp swapping Inaugs as opposed to buying them. It is estimated that players were doing some kind of hidden deals or payments in order to temp swap Inaugs to gain that prestigious collection badge. However, in the end those property swaps will only increase the value of the real hodlers. The past has shown that hodling Inaugs has been a good choice due to the fact that prices have been rising over time. Owners of these valuable properties should think twice before listing them on the marketplace.