Upland, a metaverse platform attuned to the real world, is launching an NFT fundraiser to help a US nonprofit build playgrounds in neighborhoods that historically haven’t had access to them.
KABOOM! has built or renovated more than 17,000 playgrounds since its founding more than 25 years ago. According to Upland Chief of Staff Danny Brown Wolf, ending inequality in the gaming space is a mission that has resonated with users of the Upland metaverse.
“Our community members, who are avid Uplanders, have…KABOOM!” taken, Wolf said, adding that some of those members participate in actual fundraisers for the playground manufacturer.
Thanks to the community members, KABOOM! was able to contact the Upland team so that a fundraiser in the metaverse could be facilitated through in-game card assets.
Card assets in Upland are equivalent to NFTs, and users can purchase assets such as land, houses, apartments, and even decorations for their virtual living spaces.
In that same vein, Upland is selling an NFT playground collection with 1,800 NFTs, with proceeds going to KABOOM! Upland charges a 10% transaction fee.
The coining process, visible to all metaverse participants via an in-game representation of a factory producing the playgrounds, will start on Thursday. The first sales start on Friday.
The collection was designed by an Uplander who is a graphic artist. It features five different playgrounds that, once purchased by a user, can be placed in their virtual backyard, Wolf said.
This isn’t Upland’s first charitable effort. In December 2022, Upland launched a similarly styled fundraising campaign, this time with UNICEF Brazil to fund its “youth program that teaches metaverse and Web3 skills to young adults who want to work in the industry,” according to Wolf.
This sale included ornaments and winter gnomes that people could purchase to decorate their virtual homes for winter – just like in the real world, Upland has seasons.
Leveraging its existing relationship with UNICEF, Upland launched a sale of items in February to help victims of the magnitude 7.8 earthquake in Turkey and Syria.
Both sales of these winter decorations raised a combined $89,692, Wolf told Blockworks.
Wolf sees the UNICEF fundraiser, as well as Upland’s involvement in other metaverse funding projects, as a testament to the validity of the medium and a validation of its future business model.
Wolf said that “just as every impact organization has a social media team that runs GoFundMe campaigns on Facebook,” she wants to see the same use case play out more broadly in the metaverse.