SparkPoint and Knit Finance AMA: The Recap
Meeting the Knit Finance Community and sharing interesting facts about SparkPoint and its long-term goals!
Our executives just pulled off an insightful AMA with the Knit Finance community!
On September 22, SparkPoint’s CEO, Mr. Andy Agnas, and CTO, Mr. Rico Zuñiga joined the AMA session hosted by Knit Finance. The Knit Finance team is not new to us since we have already invited them as a guest in one of our #SparkCommunity AMA series, last July. We are glad that this time the SparkPoint team finally met the Knit Finance community too.
In connection with the ongoing collaboration with Knit Finance, this AMA is set to make the community see that great things are coming with this partnership especially knowing our mission and vision. 🔥 So without further ado, let’s begin the recap. 👇
The Recap
Q: Could you please brief us about your team and their journey.
Rico Zuñiga: I’m the Chief Technology Officer of SparkPoint. I’ve been in the software industry for 20 years working mostly with startups, and with some big multinational companies. I’ve worked on various games, e-commerce, enterprise, fintech, and e-learning projects. As for blockchain development, I started exploring it in 2017 and switched careers full-time to focus on it in 2018 starting as a blockchain architect for a French software company before joining SparkPoint. Outside of my work, I’m just a simple family man starting a new life with my wife and 7-year old son here in Canada.
Andy Agnas- I’m the CEO and founder of SparkPoint as well as Founding Partner of SparkPoint Global Ventures, our global venture arm.
I’m a Certified Public Accountant (CPA ) by profession and my background is primarily in Finance, Accounting and Management. Aside from SparkPoint, I’m managing my own accounting firm and have been a consultant for various companies.
Bitcoin was actually introduced to me by one of my former students in 2015 and I was skeptical at that time so I just ignored him. However, in the 3rd quarter of 2017, my mind changed due to its average price increases and I got interested in investing in early startup crypto projects.
Knit Finance: Impressive!
Q: Could you brief us a little more about SparkPoint, its products, and services.
SparkPoint or officially, SparkPoint Technologies Inc., is a duly registered corporation in the Philippines under the SEC. The project was launched on October 5, 2018, and is one of the pioneer cryptocurrency startups in the Philippines. The project aims to fast-track mainstream adoption of blockchain and cryptocurrency through an ecosystem of practical products and services.
- SparkPoint Wallet (srk.sh/wallet) — A non-custodial mobile cryptocurrency wallet that natively supports various and major cryptocurrencies,
- SparkLearn (learn.sparkpoint.io / srk.sh/bdb) — E-learning platform focused on educational content about blockchain technology, cryptocurrency, and financial literacy,
- SparkPlay (sparkpoint.io/play) — Collection of mobile casual games with cryptocurrency as a central theme and soon with P2E integration,
- SparkEarn (earn.sparkpoint.io) — SparkPoint referral and rewards program where users can earn SRK and other tokens from sponsors by performing simple bounties and,
- SparkDeFi (srk.finance)- A governance token-based platform that empowers individuals to unlock the true value of their cryptocurrency assets. SparkDeFi offers an AMM Decentralized Exchange, Liquidity and Pool-Based Staking, P2P Lending and Borrowing, and DeFi Assets Protocols Management in a seamless, transparent, secure, inclusive, and interoperable approach.
These products and services have collectively reached hundreds of thousands of users and are steadily growing.
Knit Finance: That’s truly appreciated!
Q: Can you tell us more about the idea behind this project?
Rico Zuñiga- The idea for SparkPoint started in 2018 with Andy, during the bear markets. It was intended to be an ecosystem of applications and projects that’s why it was originally called SparkPoint Ecosystem. But developing a suite of products is a steep challenge especially with limited funding and resources so our focus was diverted to projects that we have a competitive advantage. This includes gaming (SparkPlay), DeFi (SparkDeFi), e-learning (SparkLearn), and our established marketing team which helps with our token launchpad platform for other projects.
We will be celebrating our 3rd year anniversary on October 5th, next month and we are just getting bigger and stronger.
We narrowed down our focus to only those with the potential to become profitable, our Blockchain Developer Bootcamp which is part of our SparkLearn platform (soon to be rebranded to SparkPoint Academy for expansion) is our most profitable so far. In turn, we use a portion of this profit to buy tokens from the market and burn them.
Knit Finance: A real hot stuff! Wishing you all the best to the entire team!
Q: Looking at the products and services, can you tell us the company’s vision and mission? Are there any laid out plans for the future growth of SparkPoint?
Andy Agnas: Our company’s vision is to encourage people to participate in digitizing payment transactions by providing inclusive financial services integrated with blockchain technology, easing the hassle of transferring money and participating in cryptocurrency exchanges.
Our mission, however, is we want SparkPoint to be a globally competitive project that focuses on financial inclusion by integrating blockchain technology and promoting financial literacy awareness to reinvent the world of digital payments.
With our recent accomplishments in the past months and current progress on developing our products especially our flagship products, SparkPoint Wallet and SparkSwap, we can proudly say that a big aspect of our mission and vision are already being realized and coming to fruition.
Our plans for the remainder of the year can be found here in our 4th quarter roadmap: https://sparkpoint.io/roadmap
Rico Zuñiga: Our original vision and mission in general is to promote mass adoption of cryptocurrency which has become a bit of a cliché already because this is what most other projects are also touting. It still stands but our approach has become more mature because of our 3 years experience in the industry. We’re now going after profitability and sustainability to avoid yet another case of a failed crypto project.
Another mission of ours is education. We are big advocates that education is a great equalizer and with the crypto industry having a lot of unknowns, bad actors, and high risks, education has become even more important.
Knit Finance: Hats off for the good work guys!
Q: “We believe that blockchain technology is a catalyst in the digital revolution.” Can you expound what your mantra really means?
Andy Agnas: In this particular time, where digital technology is prevalent now in our daily lives, access to blockchain and cryptocurrencies has been more accessible for everyone as compared before. Thus, paving the way to revolutionize the way we use money, and the way we manage our finances has evolved from simple peer to peer (p2p) transactions, to the use of crypto and blockchain as a tool for mobile payments, remittances, exchanges, gaming, and most especially with the rise of DeFi. With the support of our ever-active community, our products and services have started changing the way we manage our own finances.
Rico Zuñiga: It’s not just a belief anymore. It is happening as we speak. Industries are starting to get disrupted already. Finance with Bitcoin and DeFi. Gaming and art with NFTS. Even a sovereign has adopted Bitcoin as legal tender. And more will be happening soon. It’s not a matter of belief now, it’s a matter of riding the wave, continuing to launch products, adapting to the changes, and educating ourselves even more.
Knit Finance: Outstanding!
Q: On developing your vast SparkPoint Ecosystem, what are the most challenging or difficult things you encountered during the development? Were there any instances that you think the project is going in the wrong direction, or did you feel like your project was in a stagnant state?
Andy Agnas: According to a recent study, about 90% of startups fail. Around 20% failed during the first year of operations. We encountered difficulty in our 1st year of operations due to a lack of funding and some members of our team left the project during that period. To continue the project’s operations, I needed to sacrifice my personal money because I strongly believe in our mission and vision.
With the determination and commitment of our current team members, we are able to overcome these challenges and are able to launch several products.
Rico Zuñiga: One of our biggest challenges during the start of the project is our limited funding. With persistence and a disciplined approach to handling money, we were still able to maximize this small fund and thrive. Right now, our team in the Philippines is also facing infrastructure challenges including power interruptions, slow internet, scarce availability of developers and other talents, and lack of government support. We’re planning to expand outside of the country, particularly here in Canada to mitigate these limitations and challenges.
Knit Finance: Very impressive!
Q: Let’s dive deeper into the DeFi space, can you tell us more about your SparkDeFi platform and what are the biggest or headliner developments on your DeFi platform.
Andy Agnas: Our own AMM DEX, SparkSwap (sparkswap.finance), is already launched and fully operational. It is one of the AMM DEX in the space that has a transparent team. We have also recently launched our launchpad platform, SparkLaunch. The first IDO launch was successful with an ROI of more than 2,000% after launch.
We are continuously adding more features to our DeFi to take advantage of the current opportunities.
Rico Zuñiga: It is similar to other DeFi projects with some advantages including having a mature and transparent team behind it that communicates to the community regularly.
It is also continuously being improved as part of our iterative approach to development which means as long as SparkPoint team is around, SparkDeFi will continue to be developed and improved everyday.
We listen and are always open to feedback from our community. We recently launched our IDO platform, SparkLaunch, and have seen early success with Ownly and soon with other projects. This is a result of our strong community of SRK supporters and our established marketing team led by Andy Agnas.
Knit Finance: Truly a great team leader!
Q: As we all know NFT is a hot, trending topic, and not only as a topic but a growing industry within the blockchain world. Do you have any plans on entering this field?
Andy Agnas: Actually this September 30, we will be launching the early preview of our first NFT product, the minting platform where you can mint your own NFTs. We advise the community to stay tuned for the latest news about NFTs under SparkPoint. After we launch this, we will also add products such as marketplace, NFT staking, etc.
Rico Zuñiga: Our team has already entered the NFT space as early as 2020 with our Crypto Slicer swords. We are early believers of this technology. I’ve personally invested in NFTs as early as 2018. Right now, we also have a strong partnership with Ownly which sole focus is on art NFTs and building their own marketplace that will compete with OpenSea. Ownly is also a portfolio investment by our venture arm, SparkPoint Global Ventures. We’re also launching an NFT platform soon on SparkDeFi that will allow users to mint, stake, and use their NFTs as collateral.
Knit Finance: Outstanding!
Q: A few days from now, what are the biggest things that your team wants to accomplish or close this year?
Andy Agnas: We are in the process of getting a VCE license to enable fiat integration as well as to support our planned remittance services. These are the things that I’m looking forward to in our roadmap.
Rico Zuñiga: We’re already in the process of exploring opportunities here in Canada and we hope to establish something here before the end of the year. Aside from this, we have 2 major burn and airdrop events left. Our products are continuously being improved and developed so expect more new features, improvements, fixes, and innovations before the end of the year. As for SGVI, we will be supporting and investing in more promising early-stage projects in the coming months.
As for the VCE (Virtual Currency Exchange) license, when approved, this will enable us to disrupt the multi-billion dollar remittance industry of the Philippines with blockchain and cryptocurrency technology.
Knit Finance: We are eagerly waiting for your success!
Q: We’ve read before that through a collaboration with Knit Finance, Knit Finance will integrate SparkPoint’s native token SRK into its multi-chain platform by creating wrapped K-SRK tokens while providing staking service after launch with K-SRK or KFT token rewards. Can you expound more about that? How beneficial is this to both Knit Finance and to SparkPoint?
Andy Agnas: This is interesting and I’m looking forward to this integration. With this integration, it will onboard more users in Knit Finance platform, especially from our own community.
Users can stake K-SRK and KFT tokens for token rewards integrated into the platform which is beneficial to our community.
Rico Zuñiga: This is a win-win setup for both Knit Finance and SparkPoint. Both projects will benefit from each other’s strong communities. Having a bridged SRK token on Knit Finance’s platform will be a convenient way for Knit Finance users to have access to the SRK token and take advantage of its utilities like being eligible for airdrops, use in our upcoming NFT platform/game, and as payment for our other services (like our bootcamp).
As for having Knit Finance on SparkPoint’s platform, it will become part of a large and strong community of SRK long-term supporters and will be able to have immediate early access to any upcoming features, improvements, and new products.
Knit Finance: Yes indeed!
Dear Community,
That’s it for our AMA guest. Let me thank Andy Agnas and Rico Zuñiga from the SparkPoint team for joining our chat group today and sharing insights on the project.
On behalf of the entire Knit Finance team and community, we wish you and your team great success.
That ends the AMA with Spark Point!
Thank you everyone for participating in this insightful AMA.
Andy Agnas: Thank you so much for having us! If any of you have any further questions please join our communities and we’ll be happy to answer!
Knit Finance: I’m sure we will have more time to catch up with the community in the future! Thank you both.
“It’s not just a belief any more. It is happening as we speak.” — CTO, Rico Zuñiga
It always hits different hearing from our dear executives! ✨
#SparkPoint has gone a long way now and it will continuously improve and expand. As long as our community supports, SparkPoint stays! 🚀
Thank you, Knit Finance Community for this opportunity! And until next time, #Sparkies! See you at the upcoming #AMAs. 🥳
PS: Don’t forget to join us in the upcoming celebration of the 3rd Anniversary of SparkPoint!🙌 Cheers! 🥂
Learn more about SparkPoint and SparkDeFi from the following links:
SparkPoint Website: https://sparkpoint.io/
SparkDeFi Website: https://srk.finance/
Trade SRK: https://srk.sh/trade
Trade SFUEL: https://srk.sh/tradesfuel
SRK-ETH on Uniswap: https://srk.sh/uniswap
Telegram Announcements (SparkPoint): https://t.me/sparkpoint
Telegram Announcements (SparkDeFi): https://t.me/SparkDeFiOfficial
SparkPoint Community on Telegram: https://t.me/SparkPointOfficial
SparkDeFi Community on Telegram: https://t.me/SparkDefi
SparkPoint Twitter: https://twitter.com/sparkpointio
SparkPoint Facebook: https://facebook.com/sparkpointio
SparkPoint Instagram: https://instagram.com/sparkpointio
SparkDeFi Twitter: https://twitter.com/SparkDeFi
SparkDeFi Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SparkDeFi
SparkDeFi Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sparkdefi/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sparkpointio
GitHub: https://github.com/sparkpointio
SRK on CMC: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/sparkpoint/
SFUEL on CMC: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/sparkpoint-fuel/
