Maya is a highly ranked Mexican restaurant, opened in 2008 and located in the heart of Shanghai. For over a decade, they have been delivering award winning food to the residents of Shanghai, and have built up a reputation for their excellent service and impeccably presented cuisine. After the success of the first restaurant, a second location ‘Mayita’ was opened in 2014.

Maya has cemented itself as the most consistently awarded Mexican restaurant in Shanghai, and now begin their exciting journey into the world of NFTs.

Uptick is the first flagship ecosystem app, powered by the Uptick Network. Launched on March 12th, 2021, as the first globally mobile native app with all-in-one NFT functionality. Featuring a native minter, first and second-hand marketplace, and an in-app wallet to securely store your digital assets.

Our aim at Uptick has always been to ensure that user experience is as seamless as possible, as we believe it is of great importance in order to enable a globally accessible product for the general public. Especially for those new to cryptocurrency and NFTs.

Being a mobile NFT app, the team made a strategic decision to focus on digital collectible cards and event tickets for its NFT strategy, as this covers both the collectible and functional NFT domains. Although there were no commercial campaigns at launch , word-of-mouth effect has brought good attention to the project.

The slogan of Uptick:

Record timeless moments // Monetize your creativity

The mission is to help individuals express themselves via user generated content, and to also enable businesses to offer these new and exciting NFT services to their customers. In less than 3 months, Uptick has recorded over 30,000 NFT assets minted by users all over the world, with over 5000 transactions between buyers and sellers.

A healthy start, and we are excited for Maya to showcase the Functional NFT aspects to the Uptick app.

Food is an integral part of one’s culture and identity. It’s something all humans have a deep and intrinsic connection to. When eating out at a restaurant, everyone seeks that special and unique experience tailored for them— the customer. With emerging technologies such as blockchain, and specifically NFTs (Non Fungible Tokens), creating a unique and mutually beneficial experience for both the customer and the restaurant is entirely possible.

In its current state, the way we interact in a restaurant setting is outdated, and it’s also monopolized by the behemoths of the industry. The unlocked potential of this technology is just waiting to be explored by budding pioneers of the space. Miguel of Maya Restaurant is hopeful that it can evolve into a peer-to-peer system where the beneficiaries are the guests and the restaurants, as opposed to those third-parties that control the current status quo.

Smart contracts open the doors to a host of different loyalty programs and reward systems, while decentralized reviews could also unleash a new wave of transparency over the industry. We believe there are undiscsovered use-cases that will transform the industry over the next decade. Maya and Uptick are commited to pioneering this exciting new NFT frontier, and to start leading the restaurant industry into the web 3.0 era.

When the market became aware of Uptick, a friend of mine put me in touch with the owner of the Maya restaurant. As founder of the project (Brian Xin) I love to talk to anyone curious about blockchain and NFTs, so an afternoon meeting was quickly scheduled. This was the first time I met Miguel. He is the founder of two well-known Mexican style restaurants — Maya and Mayita. Both are well known and highly ranked Western restaurants in Shanghai.

The trophy display of glory

As a present to Miguel, I brought two designs of collectible cards to the first meeting. Tacos and Margaritas made me nostalgically recall my time in California. Miguel proceeded to show me a list of the items a restaurant owner needs to consider, and wanted to discuss how to use blockchain to solve the problems. As an expert of O2O (service sector e-commerce for local lifestyle) in my last entrepreneurial journey, I enjoyed the talk with Miguel. There are a lot of different aspects to running a restaurant. The most important part is to acquire customers and manage the loyalty of the customers. I used to call it SCRM — Service Sector Customer Relationship Management.

For Miguel, Maya is an expression of his love for Mexican food, drink and art culture. Maya was opened in 2008 and Mayita in 2014, with an aim to provide quality Mexican dining experiences and to introduce Mexican flavours to China. Although Miguel is not Mexican, he has family there and spent years in California, where there is a thriving Mexican food scene. Over the years, Miguel grew a warm connection to the country.

Miguel performing as a guitarist

Before arriving in Shanghai, Miguel was based in Tokyo where he was working as a guitarist. He was invited to Shanghai to perform music, and as they say, the rest was history. A creative soul at heart, and it definitely shows with the approach Miguel takes on technology and innovation within the restaurant industry.

Miguel was first introduced to the world of blockchain in 2016, and from there, like a lot of people, he fell down the rabbit hole and started to look into what other projects were doing in the space. This curiosity led him down a path of discovery in this new technology, and he soon realized its potential to change the world. Being the creatively minded individual that Miguel is, this naturally sparked a thought process on how to implement the technology in the restaurant, bar and hotel industries.

This path of technological discovery ultimately led Miguel to Uptick

Together, Uptick and Maya began working on trying to actively attach more utility to NFTs. We want customers to be able to use them in restaurants for utilities such as loyalty programs, issuance of tickets. etc. Maya/Mayita restaurants are a test-case, and will be used to experiment with different use-cases. Some will work, and some won’t, but it’s an important step in discovering a way to create a seamless and user-friendly environment for the customers, and creating use cases that have real world benefit for the business and customer. The potential is quite exciting.

Miguel strongly believes that in order for this to succeed, it has to be super easy for the end user. Uptick shares this same belief, we also think the user has to be able to effortlessly navigate on the app, and also feel that they are actively benefitting from usage.

Reservations

Not honouring reservations is a problem in the restaurant industry. One solution is to have bookings converted into NFTs, with deposits becoming available to the restaurant, creating immediate cash flow, and at the same time, provides a cancellation policy for the customer.

A secondary marketplace is available for customers to trade the reservations between one another. Instead of cancelling, one could simply sell their reservation on the marketplace. It’s a win-win situation where tables get filled, and restaurants are improving profit margins as nothing goes to waste due to last minute cancellations. Customers don’t lose out on bookings they were unable to attend.

Restaurants have also become increasingly reliant on third-party platforms for services such as bookings. It becomes quite costly and time consuming to manage these relationships. The centralized behemoths monopolizing these services create a closed market where they are the kings, and the restaurants are forced to pay the increased fees to use the platform.

Customer Loyalty Plans

NFTs create a transparent exchange of value system, aiming to retain customers for the long-term. Bypassing the behemoths allow us to share the benefits fairly between the restaurant and the customer.

Event Tickets

Easily issue tickets to an event. The QR code on the Uptick app grants you access to the event, and maybe a free drink upon entry. Or whichever incentive you would like coded into the smart contract. The possibilities are quite endless, and this also creates a powerful marketing tool.

Reviews

Combat malicious fake reviews, with a replacement system in which the user has to verify on the blockchain that they were in attendance at the restaurant, or in fact placed the order in question. The old way of reviewing provides no real way to attach truth to the rating, where they can easily claim they were in attendance and had a bad experience, when in fact that was a lie. By implementing a decentralized review system, this removes bad actors from the equation.

Ingredients

Depending on the desire for the particular item, different foods could be tokenized and priced dynamically, as there are limited amounts available for service that night. This way restaurants can still have good levels of stock, but also have the ability to charge a little more if the supply is running low. Especially useful with items that are expensive and tend to degrade quickly.

Coupons

Easily create unique discount coupons as NFTs, another useful marketing tool that is particularly helpful in attracting new customers. Also a great way to reward the current and loyal customer base.

MAYA Membership Card

Maya has issued a restaurant membership card for their customers on the Uptick app. Holders of the Maya NFT can enjoy membership rights such as free drinks and snacks, and discounts on meals. etc.

For sale in the primary market

Events

Maya Restaurant regularly holds events of various scale, such as: ‘Cinco de Mayo’ for the general public, or ‘Crypto Drinks’ for members only. Uptick provides a complete set of functions required for holding events, including: Publishing, selling, verification, statistics, etc.

Create an event

Loyalty Member Discounts

For loyal members, Maya Restaurant has also issued a card that entitles them to special discounts. Members that hold the card can enjoy discounted prices when they participate in activities.

Discounts on events by holding Collectible Cards

Easy Ownership Transfer

Uptick provides Maya customers with a convenient ability to transfer rights. After purchasing the membership cards and event tickets, you can easily transfer them to relatives and friends, or sell them on the second-hand market.

Transfer in the secondary market

Direct Messaging

Maya restaurant can easily communicate with their loyal members and customers through the messaging function available on Uptick.

Maya Restaurant can actively send event information to ticket buyers for an event in order to provide better service. If customers have any questions, they can directly communicate with the merchants in real time.

Merchant Contact

Buyers can directly contact the merchant

Merchant Verification and Statistics

For use with membership cards and tickets, Maya restaurant uses the ‘Verification’ function on Uptick, which can conveniently verify the authenticity, and change the status of the ticket.

Merchant verifiy NFT

Maya Restaurant

Through the Uptick App, Maya restaurant will be able to have a more direct line of communication with their guests. At the moment, this aspect is being controlled by those third-party behemoths we discussed - everything from launching different events, selling different menus, and any promotional materials are all usually being handled by third parties, such as Trip Advisor.

Maya and Uptick want to introduce direct, peer-to-peer interaction to the hospitality industry which benefits both restaurants and customers alike. It’s a process that is much easier to control, because usually with something like marketing for example, it’s done through a third-party platform, and there are countless restrictions. Anything ranging from a limited amount of campaigns per month, only being able to have it within a certain price range, limitations on the amounts of pictures you can post. etc.

With NFTs, a new paradigm is created where customized offerings for any guest is an option on the menu.

Let’s say Maya has a VIP guest that they want to be made to feel extra special, with NFTs they can go the extra mile for them. They can easily be interacted with directly through the app, and receive an NFT that perhaps entitles them to a free meal, or free drinks.

The value of the token is specifically attached to that particular token. It’s unique. One could even go as far as selling limited partnerships to the restaurant on the marketplace, all recorded on the blockchain. Memberships, gift vouchers, discount coupons, all of these can be applied directly, and this is exactly the point - this technology enables a way to bypass the third-parties and interact with the customers directly in a peer-to-peer fashion. It’s not currently possible without those third-parties, but Uptick and Maya is changing that.

Currently Maya are issuing tickets and discounts, but they hope to add a lot more utility to the world of NFTs on Uptick. We think the most exciting part is that we don’t really know what’s going to happen in the future, because the technology is currently so nascent and is always evolving.

These are new and exciting times.

Authors: Chris Parker & Brian Xin (Uptick Network)

Uptick Network is an ecosystem of decentralized apps and services for NFTs.

Uptick app is the world’s first full-featured decentralized mobile NFT app, and also the first NFT platform in the COSMOS/IRISnet ecosystem. With interchain transferability and support for multiple public blockchains, Uptick manages users’ NFT-based digital assets, with a focus on entertainment, sports and the creative industries.

Email：hello@uptickproject.comTelegram：https://t.me/uptickprojectTwitter：@uptickprojectMedium：@uptickproject

Maya is a highly ranked Mexican restaurant, opened in 2008 and located in the heart of Shanghai. For over a decade, they have been delivering award winning food to the residents of Shanghai, and have built up a reputation for their excellent service and impeccably presented cuisine. After the success of the first restaurant, a second location ‘Mayita’ was opened in 2014.

Maya has cemented itself as the most consistently awarded Mexican restaurant in Shanghai, and now begin their exciting journey into the world of NFTs.

Uptick is the first flagship ecosystem app, powered by the Uptick Network. Launched on March 12th, 2021, as the first globally mobile native app with all-in-one NFT functionality. Featuring a native minter, first and second-hand marketplace, and an in-app wallet to securely store your digital assets.

Our aim at Uptick has always been to ensure that user experience is as seamless as possible, as we believe it is of great importance in order to enable a globally accessible product for the general public. Especially for those new to cryptocurrency and NFTs.

Being a mobile NFT app, the team made a strategic decision to focus on digital collectible cards and event tickets for its NFT strategy, as this covers both the collectible and functional NFT domains. Although there were no commercial campaigns at launch , word-of-mouth effect has brought good attention to the project.

The slogan of Uptick:

Record timeless moments // Monetize your creativity

The mission is to help individuals express themselves via user generated content, and to also enable businesses to offer these new and exciting NFT services to their customers. In less than 3 months, Uptick has recorded over 30,000 NFT assets minted by users all over the world, with over 5000 transactions between buyers and sellers.

A healthy start, and we are excited for Maya to showcase the Functional NFT aspects to the Uptick app.

Food is an integral part of one’s culture and identity. It’s something all humans have a deep and intrinsic connection to. When eating out at a restaurant, everyone seeks that special and unique experience tailored for them— the customer. With emerging technologies such as blockchain, and specifically NFTs (Non Fungible Tokens), creating a unique and mutually beneficial experience for both the customer and the restaurant is entirely possible.

In its current state, the way we interact in a restaurant setting is outdated, and it’s also monopolized by the behemoths of the industry. The unlocked potential of this technology is just waiting to be explored by budding pioneers of the space. Miguel of Maya Restaurant is hopeful that it can evolve into a peer-to-peer system where the beneficiaries are the guests and the restaurants, as opposed to those third-parties that control the current status quo.

Smart contracts open the doors to a host of different loyalty programs and reward systems, while decentralized reviews could also unleash a new wave of transparency over the industry. We believe there are undiscsovered use-cases that will transform the industry over the next decade. Maya and Uptick are commited to pioneering this exciting new NFT frontier, and to start leading the restaurant industry into the web 3.0 era.

When the market became aware of Uptick, a friend of mine put me in touch with the owner of the Maya restaurant. As founder of the project (Brian Xin) I love to talk to anyone curious about blockchain and NFTs, so an afternoon meeting was quickly scheduled. This was the first time I met Miguel. He is the founder of two well-known Mexican style restaurants — Maya and Mayita. Both are well known and highly ranked Western restaurants in Shanghai.

The trophy display of glory

As a present to Miguel, I brought two designs of collectible cards to the first meeting. Tacos and Margaritas made me nostalgically recall my time in California. Miguel proceeded to show me a list of the items a restaurant owner needs to consider, and wanted to discuss how to use blockchain to solve the problems. As an expert of O2O (service sector e-commerce for local lifestyle) in my last entrepreneurial journey, I enjoyed the talk with Miguel. There are a lot of different aspects to running a restaurant. The most important part is to acquire customers and manage the loyalty of the customers. I used to call it SCRM — Service Sector Customer Relationship Management.

For Miguel, Maya is an expression of his love for Mexican food, drink and art culture. Maya was opened in 2008 and Mayita in 2014, with an aim to provide quality Mexican dining experiences and to introduce Mexican flavours to China. Although Miguel is not Mexican, he has family there and spent years in California, where there is a thriving Mexican food scene. Over the years, Miguel grew a warm connection to the country.

Miguel performing as a guitarist

Before arriving in Shanghai, Miguel was based in Tokyo where he was working as a guitarist. He was invited to Shanghai to perform music, and as they say, the rest was history. A creative soul at heart, and it definitely shows with the approach Miguel takes on technology and innovation within the restaurant industry.

Miguel was first introduced to the world of blockchain in 2016, and from there, like a lot of people, he fell down the rabbit hole and started to look into what other projects were doing in the space. This curiosity led him down a path of discovery in this new technology, and he soon realized its potential to change the world. Being the creatively minded individual that Miguel is, this naturally sparked a thought process on how to implement the technology in the restaurant, bar and hotel industries.

This path of technological discovery ultimately led Miguel to Uptick

Together, Uptick and Maya began working on trying to actively attach more utility to NFTs. We want customers to be able to use them in restaurants for utilities such as loyalty programs, issuance of tickets. etc. Maya/Mayita restaurants are a test-case, and will be used to experiment with different use-cases. Some will work, and some won’t, but it’s an important step in discovering a way to create a seamless and user-friendly environment for the customers, and creating use cases that have real world benefit for the business and customer. The potential is quite exciting.

Miguel strongly believes that in order for this to succeed, it has to be super easy for the end user. Uptick shares this same belief, we also think the user has to be able to effortlessly navigate on the app, and also feel that they are actively benefitting from usage.

Reservations

Not honouring reservations is a problem in the restaurant industry. One solution is to have bookings converted into NFTs, with deposits becoming available to the restaurant, creating immediate cash flow, and at the same time, provides a cancellation policy for the customer.

A secondary marketplace is available for customers to trade the reservations between one another. Instead of cancelling, one could simply sell their reservation on the marketplace. It’s a win-win situation where tables get filled, and restaurants are improving profit margins as nothing goes to waste due to last minute cancellations. Customers don’t lose out on bookings they were unable to attend.

Restaurants have also become increasingly reliant on third-party platforms for services such as bookings. It becomes quite costly and time consuming to manage these relationships. The centralized behemoths monopolizing these services create a closed market where they are the kings, and the restaurants are forced to pay the increased fees to use the platform.

Customer Loyalty Plans

NFTs create a transparent exchange of value system, aiming to retain customers for the long-term. Bypassing the behemoths allow us to share the benefits fairly between the restaurant and the customer.

Event Tickets

Easily issue tickets to an event. The QR code on the Uptick app grants you access to the event, and maybe a free drink upon entry. Or whichever incentive you would like coded into the smart contract. The possibilities are quite endless, and this also creates a powerful marketing tool.

Reviews

Combat malicious fake reviews, with a replacement system in which the user has to verify on the blockchain that they were in attendance at the restaurant, or in fact placed the order in question. The old way of reviewing provides no real way to attach truth to the rating, where they can easily claim they were in attendance and had a bad experience, when in fact that was a lie. By implementing a decentralized review system, this removes bad actors from the equation.

Ingredients

Depending on the desire for the particular item, different foods could be tokenized and priced dynamically, as there are limited amounts available for service that night. This way restaurants can still have good levels of stock, but also have the ability to charge a little more if the supply is running low. Especially useful with items that are expensive and tend to degrade quickly.

Coupons

Easily create unique discount coupons as NFTs, another useful marketing tool that is particularly helpful in attracting new customers. Also a great way to reward the current and loyal customer base.

MAYA Membership Card

Maya has issued a restaurant membership card for their customers on the Uptick app. Holders of the Maya NFT can enjoy membership rights such as free drinks and snacks, and discounts on meals. etc.

For sale in the primary market

Events

Maya Restaurant regularly holds events of various scale, such as: ‘Cinco de Mayo’ for the general public, or ‘Crypto Drinks’ for members only. Uptick provides a complete set of functions required for holding events, including: Publishing, selling, verification, statistics, etc.

Create an event

Loyalty Member Discounts

For loyal members, Maya Restaurant has also issued a card that entitles them to special discounts. Members that hold the card can enjoy discounted prices when they participate in activities.

Discounts on events by holding Collectible Cards

Easy Ownership Transfer

Uptick provides Maya customers with a convenient ability to transfer rights. After purchasing the membership cards and event tickets, you can easily transfer them to relatives and friends, or sell them on the second-hand market.

Transfer in the secondary market

Direct Messaging

Maya restaurant can easily communicate with their loyal members and customers through the messaging function available on Uptick.

Maya Restaurant can actively send event information to ticket buyers for an event in order to provide better service. If customers have any questions, they can directly communicate with the merchants in real time.

Merchant Contact

Buyers can directly contact the merchant

Merchant Verification and Statistics

For use with membership cards and tickets, Maya restaurant uses the ‘Verification’ function on Uptick, which can conveniently verify the authenticity, and change the status of the ticket.

Merchant verifiy NFT

Maya Restaurant

Through the Uptick App, Maya restaurant will be able to have a more direct line of communication with their guests. At the moment, this aspect is being controlled by those third-party behemoths we discussed - everything from launching different events, selling different menus, and any promotional materials are all usually being handled by third parties, such as Trip Advisor.

Maya and Uptick want to introduce direct, peer-to-peer interaction to the hospitality industry which benefits both restaurants and customers alike. It’s a process that is much easier to control, because usually with something like marketing for example, it’s done through a third-party platform, and there are countless restrictions. Anything ranging from a limited amount of campaigns per month, only being able to have it within a certain price range, limitations on the amounts of pictures you can post. etc.

With NFTs, a new paradigm is created where customized offerings for any guest is an option on the menu.

Let’s say Maya has a VIP guest that they want to be made to feel extra special, with NFTs they can go the extra mile for them. They can easily be interacted with directly through the app, and receive an NFT that perhaps entitles them to a free meal, or free drinks.

The value of the token is specifically attached to that particular token. It’s unique. One could even go as far as selling limited partnerships to the restaurant on the marketplace, all recorded on the blockchain. Memberships, gift vouchers, discount coupons, all of these can be applied directly, and this is exactly the point - this technology enables a way to bypass the third-parties and interact with the customers directly in a peer-to-peer fashion. It’s not currently possible without those third-parties, but Uptick and Maya is changing that.

Currently Maya are issuing tickets and discounts, but they hope to add a lot more utility to the world of NFTs on Uptick. We think the most exciting part is that we don’t really know what’s going to happen in the future, because the technology is currently so nascent and is always evolving.

These are new and exciting times.

Authors: Chris Parker & Brian Xin (Uptick Network)

Uptick Network is an ecosystem of decentralized apps and services for NFTs.

Uptick app is the world’s first full-featured decentralized mobile NFT app, and also the first NFT platform in the COSMOS/IRISnet ecosystem. With interchain transferability and support for multiple public blockchains, Uptick manages users’ NFT-based digital assets, with a focus on entertainment, sports and the creative industries.

Email：hello@uptickproject.comTelegram：https://t.me/uptickprojectTwitter：@uptickprojectMedium：@uptickproject