SparkPoint and Spores Network AMA Session: The Recap

Things you need to know about Spores Network and its vision for the future of the NFT-DeFi space.

On July 23, SparkPoint hosted the last AMA for this month! It was with Spores Network, a cross-chain DeFi-powered NFT marketplace defining decentralized pop culture. Mr. Eric Nguyen, the CEO and Co-Founder of the said project, joined the #SparkyCommunity to address all the questions from the community.

To give you a short idea about Spores, they also have a native token called the SPO token. It is designed for community governance and DeFi utilization with NFT-creator-centricity and DeFi-community-driven purposes.

The Spores Network and SparkPoint collaboration have led to plans in store for the community including the onboarding of $SPO token to our SparkDeFi platform. In addition, part of this ongoing collaboration is the #AMA Session with the #SparkCommunity.

▶ Discover more about Spores Ecosystem and Tokenomics.

▶ Know the details of the SparkPoint and Spores Network partnership.

The AMA RECAP

Introduction

Karan: Hi Community! It's time for another SparkPoint AMA session.
This time for the AMA, we have Spores. Spores Network founders believe that crypto will lead to decentralization of ownership and frictionless redistribution of capital. Their mission is to create an NFT ecosystem that is creator-centric, community-driven, frictionless, and borderless. Spores Network chooses to be a cross-chain DeFi-powered NFT marketplace defining decentralized pop culture. Spores co-founders include Duc Luu (Nasdaq IPOed serial entrepreneur ), Eric Hung Nguyen (former senior investment analyst at a top-10-worldwide hedge fund and blockchain angel investor), Paven Do (former blockchain & cryptonomics researcher at HK Applied Science & Tech. Research Institute), and a diverse team of advisors across blockchain and entertainment.

Are you ready, Mr. Eric Hung Nguyen?

Eric: Always!

Karan: Let’s get started with a small introduction first. Can you introduce yourself and Spores Network to the community??

Eric: My name is Eric, CEO and Co-founder of Spores Network, a cross-chain DeFi-powered NFT marketplace defining decentralized pop culture. My background is in Investment and Trading, first working on the Trading Desk at the largest Japanese Investment Bank — Nomura in London, trading a book of over 300m USD of high yield and distressed credit for 5 years. Later, I moved to Elliot Management, one of the world's largest hedge funds with over $70bn AUM where I was senior investment analyst overseeing a portfolio of over $2bn. I joined the cryptocurrency space in early 2017, and actively invested and advised in many early-stage blockchain projects.

Karan: What are the major milestones Spores Network has achieved so far?

Eric:

• MVP Alpha (UI/UX): Spores have already completed its system architecture design, user flow, and part of the UI. MVP Beta (Public). In development — projected to release in August 2021. We will have a bug bounty for the community to participate in.
• We have announced a new Chief Content Officer — Mr. Allen Dam. Allen is a veteran Hollywood producer that has over 20 years of track records and an extensive network in the entertainment industry. We have also announced Jeff as our Chief Content Officer, he has over 20years of experience in arts and has his own gallery in Shanghai.
• Chainguardian, our partner, designed a new game character for Spores — Sonya! Sold out in a matter of minutes after launch last night.
• We also recently announced a partnership with Polygon early this week. Our airdrop program is still live till 27/7.
• Our IDO registration is open now on Cardstarter, we will launch on 28

Karan: Spores has announced the new Chief Art Curator — Jeffrey Lee. Can you tell us a little more about him? Which value do you think he is going to bring to Spores and your users?

Eric: Born in Taipei, and raised in New York City, Jeffrey seems to have been destined for the art world since birth. His mother started working as a gallery assistant in Taipei Lung Men Art Gallery in 1978 (the same year Jeffrey was born), and she would eventually take full ownership of the gallery. Much of Jeffrey’s childhood memories consist of roaming around galleries and artists’ studios both near and far. Shortly after graduating from USC, Jeffrey worked for The Capital Group/American Funds, where he learned the basics of wealth management. He then took those lessons and returned to Asia where he began his now 18+ year career in the art industry, first as an auction specialist for Beijing Hanhai Auction Co., and later Sotheby’s New York and Hong Kong. With over 18 years of experience in the traditional fine art industry, Jeffrey has always believed in the value of curation and emphasis on individual artists and their unique stories. Utilizing his knowledge and network, as well as his physical exhibition venue, Spores Network will be able to host regular, offline opening receptions full of cheerful guests and lots and lots of art; as well as online presentations of a thematic single artist and group shows via the Spores Virtual Museum. Our focus in the digital art vertical is upper to high-end digital arts, so Jeff is already busy onboarding top digital artists. When we launch later in Q3, we will have an impressive roster of artists.

Karan: Great. One more question, it is believed that Spores also put your focus on Gaming & e-Sports, which is witnessing fierce competition among NFT marketplaces. What makes you different from others? As far as I know, you have some very cool features to share.

Eric: NFT Gaming, especially Play to Earn, we believe will be the megatrend in the next few decades. Covid 19 has changed how human society operates, Play to Earn enables people to stay at home, enjoy a game, and still able to make a decent income which is awesome in my opinion. We aim to list in-game assets of many top blockchain games, supports blockchain gaming from launching, attracting audiences to payment, and marketing. We have already signed a number of gaming partners that will be listing their in-game items on our platform when we go live later in Q3, we look to work with the top 100 games in the blockchain space and bring their items all onto our platform.

Karan: P2E is in trend these days

Eric: Yes they are quite popular in the Philippines too I heard :)

Karan: I might not miss the chance this time. Who doesn’t want to earn while playing games?

Last but not least, animation/anime, one more challenging area. What is your direction to stand out amongst all?

Eric: Anime and Animation is fertile ground for NFTs that is waiting to be explored, the whole business model of Anime is based on selling merchandise to fund the production. Before it is all physical merchandise and what NFTs really mean for anime is that they are digital merchandises, which open up an entirely new space and potential. We have secured a partnership with a manga publisher that is working with us to bring many top artists and content onto our platform. We are also working directly with some amazing artists that we can’t wait to announce to the community in the near future.

Karan: In the meantime, please make sure you guys join this group to not to miss any updates and be eligible for claiming your rewards:
https://t.me/SporesPhilippines. All Pinoys out there!

Let’s get started with the pre-selected Twitter question. Are you ready?

Eric: Yes!

Twitter Round Questions

Q: What makes you believe that the +“marketplace defining decentralized pop culture” (which is according to your tagline) could survive and become a long-term project? What is your plan to show people that you exist in the crypto world?

Eric: There are many NFT marketplace out there but, what we truly believe that set us apart is our content. Content is king. We focused on 5 verticals — gaming, e-sports, animation/anime, digital arts and celebrities. And within that 5 verticals we are bringing awesome contents and artists on our platform. We are running our communities across 10 different languages from Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, Filipino, Portugese, Spainish, Chinese, Turkish, Russian. In the next 6 months we are making extra marketing commitment to penetrate our two key market of China and Korea.

Q: How Spores Network generates income to sustain the project and what is the revenue model? How can it be mutually profitable for your investor and project?

Eric: We are a NFT marketplace so we charges fees for listing primary and secondary items, also for IPs and contents we can take higher revenue cut. We are rolling out many ways to add value to our token holders, from staking tokens to lottery and airdrop NFTs of famous artists, exclusive access to NFT drops and platform fee discount. Our long term focus is to align the success of the platform and SPO token.

Q: What are the future investment prospects of the project? Where are the best places to buy your tokens? Is it too late now for us to buy? What benefits do I get for buying and hodling $SPO tokens for the long term?

Eric: SPO token is the native token of Spores Platform designed for community governance and DeFi utilization with NFT-creator-centricity and DeFi-community-driven purpose. We are having our IDO on Cardstarter on the 28th of July, so please head there if you want to participate in our public IDO, our token will be listed on Uniswap soon after. I don’t think it is ever too late to buy SPO tokens. We are at the very beginning of this massive journey, both me and my cofounder Duc have huge plan for Spores for 15–20 years to come, this is anything but a start. The benefit for holding $SPO are the rewards from staking tokens, to lottery and airdrop NFTs of famous artists, exclusive access to NFT drops and platform fee discount. Our long term focus is to align the success of the platform and SPO token.

Q: Any blockchain startup needs a strong community. How do you intend to involve the community in your project? Do you have any plans to start an ambassador program or create DApps on your platform? What will be their responsibilities?

Eric: We are going from grass root movement like Ambassadors program (which is awesome that we are going to announce soon) that active communities can earn tokens weekly, monthly, quarterly. And also working with top PR and agencies. Post launch we gonna do a lot more marketing in South East Asia, China and Korea where we have pipeline and a large user base. Ambassadors are our reach to the outside world, carry and share our message and vision and spread it to the 4 corners of the world so being active on social media is one of the key criteria. We will have more detailed plan for our Ambassadors when we roll out in the coming weeks.

Karan: Cool. let’s go for a live round. Keep your questions ready everyone.

Live Questions

Q: Spores has secured $2.3 Million in funding. That’s great!! What amount were you expecting? Is this amount enough to run/ start the platform?

E: Exactly that amount. This amount is enough to cover 24 months operation for us and will enable us to bring some major development to the platform as well as a great pipeline of NFTs to our audiences.

Q: Seeing Spores' goal which states that we cannot equate Spores with other blockchain projects, give me a reason why I should not equate Spores with other blockchains?

E: Content is king, just like there are many video streaming app, but not everyone is the same as Netflix! We leverage on our network to bring amazing contents and artists onto our platform, for example Allen our new Chief Content Officer is a executive producer in Hollywood, he is the producer behind Expendable 4, Rambo 5, Lamborghini the Legend. So it gives you a hint in term of what level of contents we are working with and targeting.

Q: How do you make users believe that this is a high-quality, long-term project? Would you please share 3 main points to convince them?

Eric: One is our team — we come from diverse background, from high finance to crypto, entertainment industry to arts, and are all very successful in our own field. With that blend of experiences, network and skillse, t I believe we are well equipped.

2. Is our contents, we believe content is king and we are bringing awesome artists and contents onto our platform that I believe fans will love

3. Last but not least is our ability to incorporate multiple blockchain and being blockchain agnostic, allow us to partner up and offer a wide range of selection to our users and partners.

Q: We’ve seen billions of dollars circulating in big NFT’s implementation, like games & property, is there any potential NFT implementation that you think needs more spotlight?

E: Anime/Animation need more of spotlight really, like discussed earlier we see NFTs as a sort of digital merchandise, and Anime/Animation market is ripe for that! Imagine how cool it is to buy and own a One-Piece NFT? We are working closely with many top artists in this field and will be announcing the line up in the upcoming weeks that I am sure will make fan of Manga and Anime thrilled :)

Q: Many projects only talk about their strengths; But can you tell us the current weaknesses and/or challenges facing hyperjump?

E: Major Challenge? Is that me and Duc only have 24hrs per day each, so there only so many partners and investors we can bring onboard during that amount of time. Given that we started about 3 months ago from scratch, investors and partners are all super impressed with the pace that we develop, roll out partnership as well as building communities. With the onboarding of amazing talents like Allen our Chief Content Officer and Jeff our Chief Art Curator, we can definitely do much more! In the next 3months, I can tell you that you can find us at a totally different level!

▶ Spores Network Official Links

Website | Twitter | Telegram | Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn

It was a great conversation with Mr. Eric Nguyen of Spores. Obviously, the Sparkies have learned a whole different story today! And we hope, that all these E-meets with our partners will help the community decide to take advantage of these good grabs when it comes to #HODLING! 🚀🙌

Can’t wait for more #AMA Session with you Sparkies! Stay updated! 😉

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/