How did Sparklet evolve to where it is today? This question is important to understand how the Upland economy has changed over time.

Sparklet is the ERC-20 fungible token on the Ethereum blockchain that fuels all value creation in Upland. It is the resource required for world-building, joint community projects, no-code NFT minting, and “manufacturing” of 3D map NFTs such as cars or decor items and more.

Learn more about how to earn Sparklet, its utility and tokenomics in our free course.

The precursor to Sparklet was Spark, which was an in game token introduced in June 2021. This in game token served the same purpose to fuel value creation in the metaverse. It started with players being able to construct structure on their properties that would function as a player’s home a future business. To start, all players were airdropped Spark with the amount being a function of a player’s account age and amount of USD that player spent to date in Upland. Beyond that initial airdrop, players were regularly able to purchase Spark within Upland directly for USD. These limited time sales happened during Spark week, where limited amounts of Spark were sold for the following prices:

  • 1 Spark for $460
  • 0.5 Spark for $240
  • 0.25 Spark for $130
  • 0.1 Spark for $55
  • 0.05 Spark for $30

In October 2023, Upland posed a vote to the community and asked Uplanders to adopt the Sparklet Whitepaper, which proposed to changing Spark from only an in game token to an ERC-20 fungible token on the Ethereum blockchain. This vote overwhelmingly passed with 87% of voters voting in favor of the proposal.

In June 2024 all Spark held by players was converted to Sparklet with a conversion rate of 1 Spark = 1000 Sparklet. The term Spark remains in Upland when presenting the amount of Spark hours (SPH) required to build structures. On July 19th, Sparklet was officially launched as an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain. You can track the price here.

As part of the initial token launch, its initial price offering did not coincide with the price of which Spark was sold for in the Upland store. To compensate players for the initial change in token valuation, all players who held Sparklet ahead of the token launch were awarded additional Sparklet based on the following factors:

  • For all Sparklet purchased in game, players were given a one time airdrop
  • For all Sparklet earned or won, players were airdropped Sparklet based on the amount of gamified earnings tasks completed. Six different airdrops occurred over the 3 subsequent seasons.

As part of the Sparklet white paper, Upland maintains the authority to tweak Spark-related economic parameters within Upland in reaction to macroeconomic conditions. Each quarter Upland will update the following parameters such as (but not limited to):

  • The amount of Spark Hours required for construction of particular structures in Upland
  • The amount of Spark Hours required for manufacturing of particular Map Items
  • The amount of Spark required to create Legit NFTs
  • The amount of Spark Hours required to charge a particular vehicle

The first adjustment was done in February 2025.

The following are the Sparklet adjustments that have been made by Upland: