METAVERSE REAL ESTATE TRADING PLATFORM UPLAND ACHIEVES SIGNIFICANT HISTORIC ZERO SUSTAINABILITY STATUS FOR CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE USAGE

PALO ALTO, Calif., Feb. 17, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Upland, a blockchain property trading game, based on real world addresses, is on a mission to "Rebuild the World" as a sustainable metaverse. Today, Upland has moved another step closer to reaching its climate action goals by achieving historic zero for its AWS services. This status was reached by partnering with high-quality carbon removal provider Carbonfuture and their Negative Emission solution of capturing CO2 from the atmosphere and storing it robustly for hundreds of years.

Upland is a digital property metaverse where anyone around the world can buy, sell and trade virtual properties in over twenty cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and more. Each property in the Upland metaverse is mapped to real-world addresses and is represented as a non-fungible token (NFT) on the EOS blockchain, ensuring true ownership to the player. After having led a carbon offset of the entire EOS blockchain in 2021, as part of initial efforts to address the carbon impact of its metaverse, Upland has now taken another step towards achieving its climate action goals by reaching historic zero for its AWS services. While carbon removal enables net zero, it is possible to go one step further, removing more than you emit, leading to a climate positive impact. Reaching this status has enabled Upland to take care of the historic emissions of its cloud services usage, thereby reaching historic zero for this part of its operations.

Upland's community played a pivotal role in this new sustainability action, coming together in June 2021 to raise over $6,000 USD to support future carbon offset efforts. Individual donations were made in exchange for a sustainability badge that appears on in-game profiles. The UPX Podcast additionally contributed all proceeds from a special anniversary block explorer sale to the funds raised. Upland matched each dollar raised and the entire sum was utilized towards the current effort.

"At Upland, we are serious about sustainability being based on three pillars: timeliness, effectiveness and impactfulness. This is why we have chosen swift action, ambitious targets and trackable carbon removal methods," says Hagan Dietz-Rosales, Special Alliances Lead.

Upland's mission is to rebuild the world, but not without a focus on sustainability as a core value. As one of the largest, fastest growing, and most dynamic blockchain-based economies in existence, they understand it is their responsibility to rebuild it in a sustainable way.

"Partnering with Carbonfuture is one step in the direction of sustainability here at Upland.. But we are not done yet, and will continue our efforts until we reach our ambitious goal of becoming a carbon negative business in the near future. While we see the future of the internet as the metaverse, we see the future of the planet in climate action," says Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Upland, Dirk Lueth.

As a part of this long-term mission to become a carbon negative business, Upland is partnering with Greentech start-up Carbonfuture, to benefit from their expertise in high-quality carbon removal. Created as an answer to the lack of trust on the credit market, Carbonfuture focuses on solid climate performance by implementing trusted carbon removal solutions. This claim is made possible in multiple ways: firstly, utilizing a defensively quantified carbon capturing capacity guarantees long-term and scientifically verified credits and secondly, to support the integrity of these certificates even further, the company implements tamper-proof, digital tracking based on an innovative and low energy blockchain. The use of this technology offers a unique "credit-to-cradle look-through" and eliminates the possibility of double-counting. Finally, their fully digital platform is used to guarantee the secure and rigorous documentation of all climate-preserving activities generated in the project, enabling them to meet stringent selection criteria of impact-driven clients, such as Upland. 

"We are proud to be supporting Upland on their carbon negative journey and applaud the fact that they are taking crucial steps towards fulfilling their goal of a sustainable metaverse. At Carbonfuture, we share their conviction behind a tamper-proof, data-driven business model and are all the more excited to be offering our trusted and transparent carbon removal credits as the climate solution equivalent to this core value," says Hannes Junginger-Gestrich, CEO at Carbonfuture

Upland purchased 115 tons of credits from a strong variety of projects, the highest percentage of which stem from an innovative triple-bottom-line project in Sonoma County, CA, pioneered by Carbonfuture supplier Pacific Biochar. The applied climate solution, which removes carbon from the atmosphere and safely stores it for hundreds of years, is based on an IPCC-recognized climate mitigation approach, often hailed as a "sweet spot" between the nature-based and technological carbon sequestering solutions: biochar.

The charcoal-like substance is won by pyrolysis of biomass in the absence of oxygen and is then applied to soils, providing large co-benefits, such as increased water retention capacity, reduction of nutrient leakage and filtering of toxins, which in turn reduces the need for fertilizers. Additionally, the pioneering triple-bottom-line approach taken by Pacific Biochar, gives residual biomass a second life, reduces catastrophic wildfire risk, produces renewable energy, as well as helping local farmers by improving soil health and crop yield.

About Upland
Upland (https://upland.me/) is the leading blockchain metaverse designed to rebuild the world, giving players and businesses a new way to play, earn real value, and connect. Upland sits on top of the real world, allowing users to buy, sell and trade virtual properties that are mapped to actual addresses. Upland follows the principles of an open market economy, using blockchain technology to ensure true ownership of digital assets (NFTs). Upland is available on iOS, Android and the web. It can be played from anywhere in the world.

About Carbonfuture
Carbonfuture helps companies and organizations worldwide on their path to true net zero. As a marketplace and fully-digital platform for high-quality and effective carbon removal credits, the company offers certificates that not only avoid CO2 emissions, but actively remove them out of the atmosphere. With an uncompromising scientific approach as well as seamless, tamper-proof supply chain tracking, precise carbon sequestration modeling, and flexible credit management, Carbonfuture sets the standard for effective and trustworthy climate action. The mission:  Drive real climate impact by catalyzing an industry of high quality and persistent carbon removal at the gigatonnes scale needed to meet our global climate goals.

Find out more at: https://www.carbonfuture.earth

CONTACT:
Mike Paffman
[email protected]

SOURCE Upland