Nicknames are funny things. They can be acquired through many means and often emerge from real life names. This is the case with Upland OG “Morecheese” – a great name in many ways and funnier since it comes from a mispronunciation from childhood of her surname Marchese.
But Morecheese actually likes cheese and so she is happy to keep it as her online persona. – it’s an Italian name by the way.
By day, Morecheese is a stay-at-home options trader, not often a profession and location put together, and she jokes that she is one of the ‘evil’ people that bets on things going down. She later explains to me, should I follow her career, that I need to own the shares that I am shorting or I could be stuffed. I assure her I do not have the mental capacity for trading, so all good there.
However, it is an interesting career for someone who smiles so much and who is genuinely gifted in the pursuit of happiness. Morecheese has even been stopped in the street by perfect strangers who seek to know the source of her jollity.
It makes more sense that her other hobbies include beading, pixel art and video games. She is also happily married and the joint possessor of three cats. Or perhaps she and her husband are owned by said pets, it’s hard to know with felines.
Morecheese shows me on our video call one of her beaded creations. I remark that the image looks like a Welsh Dragon but in fact it is the emblem of the famous Targaryen family from Game of Thrones. The creative process for Morecheese is to design a graphical image from which she creates her beadwork. In a typically random web3 turn of events, a conversation with fellow Uplander, Ben68, persuaded her to look at her initial creations and convert them into NFTs.
To be fair, Morecheese has always had a digital life, even before Upland. As a young person she played The Oregon Trail educational game that was available on a floppy disc. For those of you too young to experience these ancient crafts,, games were provided on a floppy disk and inserted into the computer. Floppy disks basically provided the storage for the game not available on the computer’s hard disk before the “internet” or the “cloud” were a thing.
When blockchain games emerged, Morecheese was an early adopter. She heard about Upland in the Alien Worlds Discord server and then went into the Play Store to investigate more.
“There were many bad reviews but that only piqued my interest. I understood blockchain games and was keen to learn more about Upland.”
Morecheese took three days in a deep dive to research Upland. This was in March 2021 and Fresno had opened up on the Upland Map as a roaring minting event.
“I could see that I could get properties for less than 1000 UPX and started buying.”
From there Morecheese went to San Francisco proper and purchased more metaverse properties as digital assets. In total, she estimates she has put some eight thousand dollars into buying NFTs in Upland and now has a net worth of almost $60,000, which she admits is not a bad return.
Morecheese initially extracted her profits through the Upland FIAT offramp, which was relatively easy, but now she either reinvests her income into other properties or puts it into Spark to build her NFT empire in Upland. Spark is a utility token that allows her to build structures and UGC NFTs within the Upland platform.
It was through her friendship with Ben68 that she realized the power of community in Upland. MoreCheese hails from the Bronx (in the real world) and had initially purchased property there when the city opened in Upland. But she also wanted to be part of a greater cooperative, and so Upland Development United was born – now better known as UDU. There are now six active nodes in the UDU whose purpose is to help its members create neighborhood communities.
Part of the role of the UDU is to ensure its members follow the TOS of Upland and are trustworthy. This has led to an escrow service for members to safely place money while purchasing properties. There are currently approximately 60 people in the UDU.
Morecheese first viewed Upland as a money making game in the high days of Play-to-Earn hype across web3.
“I won’t lie – that’s exactly what I thought at first. However, soon I perceived Upland as a platform to do lots of things, to create projects, to create mini businesses, and to become entrepreneurs. The thing is once I get into something, then I go all out. So much so that I email big brands such as Starbucks and McDonalds to encourage them to look at Upland and maybe to open a store.”
Morecheese loves the community and interaction at Upland. “Other metaverses,” she says, “tend to rely on big stars and little on regular users.
“Upland offers a great place for people to show up, demonstrate their creativity and skills and create a business.”
With Ben68’s encouragement, MoreCheese began taking her designs more seriously. He asked her to design his Block Explorer -a unique 1 of 1 NFT players who reach a certain status in Upland get to mint and use- which he loved. Next up he encouraged her to create NFTs from her pixel art. She learnt everything she needed to know about creating NFTs from T Davis, another OG.
Throughout her story, Morecheese keeps referring to other players in the community who helped her along the way, through encouragement, education, learning and supporting her NFTs. MoreCheese has a fan, Teddy Pig, and everytime she mints an NFT he just gobbles it up.
Ben68 and Morecheese also formed a YouTube podcast to support the UDU community. Morecheese laughs when she says the name – Whine and Cheese – came from her nickname and Ben68’s grumpiness!
“Before Upland I would not have had the confidence to go on a podcast – I was just too shy.”
She remembers growing up and being a very scared kid. Her mother was very strong and encouraged her to go outside her comfort zone.
“She’d push me down that slide,” laughs Morecheese. “It was tough love but helped me over my fears.”
Morecheese spends about an hour a day on Upland and with Ben68 and Detech, working on Ben68’s Samurai Aquatics brand. This brand marries Japanese art with aquatics to create unique outdoor décor map assets which other users purchase to decorate their metaverse homes.
There are now a number of Samurai Aquatics stores in San Francisco, LA, Chicago and of course in Morecheese’s beloved Bronx.
While Morecheese originally joined for the possibility of profit, it’s the community that keeps her on Upland. That being said, she points out that to earn money on Upland, it is important to be entrepreneurial and creative first.
“From the beginning I saw the big picture and I knew this was going to be big. I’m here for the long haul.”
Part of the experience of being an Uplander is Genesis week where Uplanders get to meet in real life. Morecheese has attended two Genesis weeks now and quickly made friends in real life with people she had been chatting with online.
Funnily enough when they met, they stayed up late playing board games.
“It was a nerd party.”
Morcheese only has one criticism of Upland – Metaventure asset approval wait times take too long according to her, which reflects the long line of community creators who understand that building something on the Upland platform is how you create value.
“The Upland team is great but there are not enough of them – the wait times for assets to be approved can be frustrating. Having said that, they have introduced a way of checking your own assets to locate possible errors so that should speed approvals up.” The service however, is provided for free whereas other metaverse platforms charge creators for asset approvals.
Time and agai
n, Morecheese reverts to the community. As she points out, there are a lot of women involved and all ages.
“I’m no spring chicken (Morecheese is 44) and it’s great to have all ages involved. I’d say there is an older demographic than other games. I just keep on promoting it – I walk into places with a barcode on my t-shirt. My favorite expression is adapt and evolve and that is what is happening here.”
Finally, when asked to say what Upland means to Morecheese in just one sentence, Morecheese laughs and takes a few seconds before deciding on:
“Upland is opportunity.”
