Throughout 2020 there was ongoing talk in the community about property and business development and several players bought up large sections of target neighbourhoods to claim as their own in San Francisco, the Upland genesis city. On the 23rd October 2020, Tee-em outlined his grand plans for Visitacion Valley and the wider Upland metaverse in the UPX Podcast Episode ‘The Realest S*!t We Ever Wrote’ which blew everybody’s minds. It took a few listens to really understand what was being said and the future potential found therein. At about the same time several small factions of highly coordinated players started forming small communities around single target neighbourhoods, such as Choyna and Alamo Square. 

This was expanded further with players taking part in property development testing and then a massive coordinated push by the community for Woodward Park to win the sandbox finale. Player BEN68 observed how effective this was in not only developing the neighborhoods, but also in creating and supporting some strong collaborative relationships with groups of Upland players. 

In early April 2021 when visualising the concept of further neighbourhood development expansion for the Upland Development United concept, founder BEN68 sketched the idea for an unlimited expansion potential node map, which was then drawn up properly by UDU artist Skru. The term ‘node’ was then used exclusively by UDU to refer to coordinated property development in the neighbourhoods they owned a significant controlling percentage. 

Due to unprecedented public transparency by UDU, the term node and the concept surrounding it quickly began spreading and being adopted widely in the Upland community and has since evolved to encompass any area within the Upland metaverse that has collaborative property and/or business development plans. 

The term node has since been adopted officially by Upland.