Spores Network Summary Recap with Shin Chan Community
We held a live AMA with CEO of Spores Network, Eric Hung Nguyen on 21st July 09:00 PM (UTC+8). Here’s the recap for those who missed it.
Introduction
JH | ShinChan: Before the ama start, Can you introduce yourself to the community?
Eric Hung: My name is Eric, CEO and Co-founder of Spores Network, Asia-premier NFT marketplace. 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 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.
JH | ShinChan: What are the major milestones Spores Network achieved so far?
Eric Hung: 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 have announced a new Chief Content Officer — Mr. Allen Dam. Allen is a veteran Hollywood producer that has over 20 years track records and extensive network in the entertainment industry.
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1378045/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
Actually, we also having a massive partnership announcement comming in a few hours actually, so please stay tuned!
JH | ShinChan: One more question, it is believed that Spores also put your focus on Gaming & e-Sports, which is witnessing a 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 Hung: Gaming is a very high potential area and one of the verticals that we are focusing on, we plan to be a platform that lists in-game assets of many 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 top 100 games in the blockchain space and bring their items all onto our platform.
So any amazing blockchain game that you love, do let us know, we would love to reach out and work with them!
E-sports is an area that is almost brand new for NFTs space, we are working with both teams and top e-sports players to bring them onto our platform to issue NFTs.
At the moment we are working with some of the top E-sports players to bring onto our platform, many of them are amongst the best E-sports players in the world.
We are talking about players that have millions of followers across multiple social channels. One interesting thing is that if there is one industry that share very similar user base with crypto that would be E-sports, so we expect a lot of cross synergies in term of bringing many non-crypto users onto our NFT marketplace.
JH | ShinChan: Last but not least, animation/anime, one more challenging area. What is your direction to stand out amongst all?
Eric Hung: 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 there are only all physical merchandise and what NFTs really mean for anime is that they are digital merchandises, which open up the entirely new space and potential. Just imagine how cool it would be to own a One-piece NFT?
JH | ShinChan: Do you have any news/update regarding Spores would like to share with us?
Eric Hung:
📣Spores Network AirDrop Event!
📆 Timeline: 13th July — 27th July
🪂 #Airdrop Prizes: 1M $SPO pool prize
1️⃣ Join Spores TG
2️⃣ Follow Spores on Twitter
3️⃣ Retweet Twitter pinned post & tag 1 friend
4️⃣ Follow Spores on Medium
🔸All details on how to participate and submit entries:
https://spores.link/3i7c4h6
#Airdrops #DeFi #NFTmarketplace #SporesNetwork
— — — — — — — — — — — — — —
🔸The only official Spores accounts are:
Website (https://spores.app/) | International Discussion Channel (https://t.me/sporeseng)| Medium (http://spores.medium.com/) | Twitter (http://twitter.com/Spores_Network) | LinkedIn (http://linkedin.com/company/SporesNetwork) | White Paper (https://drive.google.com/file/d/14o134X8zbig-OlCjEupJyWALdHy0BOuJ/view)
Our airdrop campaign is still live!
Also we have great news in the pipeline going to be announced in comming days, so stay tuned!
AMA Twitter Section Begin:
Q1: “Asia is a large Gaming Hub when it comes to eSports. On reviewing an article i came across “Gamified Royalty sharing”, but didn’t quite understand. Could you explain what is it’s mechanical and how is it different from others?”
Eric Hung: Yes, basically with NFTs, artists can now receive a second stream of royalty from secondary sales of their NFTs. So say someone trade their NFTs on the secondary market for 1000 usd, they can get 10% — 100usd. Now we want to put another spin on top and let artists to be able to capitalise on these and communities can also participate and support the artists they love based on this stream of royalty. The details of how this mechanism work we will unveil when it is ready.
Q2: “Currently, Covid-19 does slow down many global economies, as a cryptocurrency business, How does it impact to your project? Do you have any plan to overcome it?”
Eric Hung: Yes indeed, we are based in Vietnam, and the country is almost in a total lockdown, but luckily I think we are one of the few business that can go on almost like normal. As the nature of blockchain, all the works can be done remote, the products are also digital which work to our advantages. Some aspect of this actually working in our advantages, like the current lockdown also gives fuel to the recent play to earn trend and I think it open up a huge opportunity for Blockchain gaming.
Q3: “After I followed your channel, I Heard about the “”BUNCH”” partnership and collaboration you did with TOP tokens. Can you Explain More? What Partnerships Have Locked In With Spores?”
Eric Hung: Sure, we have announced two partnership in the gaming space with
1. SparkPoint — Defi/NFT gaming project that is amongst the largest in Philippines with a large communities.
2. Chainguardian — an NFT gaming project that will do cross listing of their in-game item on our marketplace.
we have signed with at least 6–8 other major blockchain gaming companies, that waiting to be announced soon
Also major partnership with TOP blockchain projects and non-crypto are also in the pipeline for announcement
One of the major partnership announcement is actually comming out in a few hours
so please tuned!
Q4: “Spores Network is a cross-chain platform that supports Ethereum, BSC, and Cardano, but will Spore implement additional chains, such as two layers, in addition to these popular chains?”
Eric Hung: For sure, our philosophy is that of the blockchain agnostic, we are already have plan to incorporate Polygon in Q3, we definately think that the rise of NFTs make layer 2 scaling become much more essential given the lower costs and higher throughput they help to facilitate. For the rest of 2021, we are looking into WAX, as a very popular blockchain for gaming and Solana as well!
Q5: For any project, its development is 90% dependent on how strong its team is. I have seen many projects fail, due to the lack of skills, experience and knowledge of the team. So, with Spores Network, is the team qualified to achieve all your goals?
Eric Hung: I believe we bring an unique mix experience, skill set and network to the table from crypto to high finance, from entrepreneurship to entertainment and arts. Our team consists of excellent people who are amongst their best in their respective field comming together. So just an example, my background as a former hedge fund trader, Duc — my cofounder is a successful serial entrepreur, Allen is a former holly wood producer, Jeff who leads our art segment has over 20 years in art industry and own a gallery himself in Shanghai.
Telegram Live AMA Begin:
Q6: #SporesNetwork is limited by 3 major blockchains: BSC, Ether, & Cardano. Could you share with us about the reasonable decision to choose these blockchains? Does #SporesNetwork have a plan to get connected with other blockchains?
Eric Hung: good question, we are actually not limited by those 3, but those are the 3 we actually plan to incorporate first, Polygon is also amongst them, so make it 4.
Eth- as it is the most popular blockchain for NFTs
BSc — came close as well with lower gas fees vs. ETH
Polygon — much lower gas fees and one of the top layer 2 solution
Cardano — for the potential of low gas costs, higher throughput, green energy and great community supporting it!
And yes we have plan to adopt WAX, Solana an other blockchain as well toward late 2021 and early 2022
Q7: NFT GAMES seems to have calmed down a bit, but is there anything new about SPORES compared to other platforms?
Eric Hung: Like discussed earlier we plan to list top 100 blockchain games and list their items on our platform. Even though NFT games have cool down in the short-term (trading-wise), but what we see is a mega-trend toward play to earn. With most of the world locked down due to Covid, people behaviors have changed, people now can stay at home while still earning an income through play to earn, and what we are seeing now is a part of that mega-trend. We intend to fully capitalise on that, by investing in blockchain games through our ecosystem fund, as well as supporting blockchain games success with marketing, user onboarding and payment facilitation!
Q8: 1. There are many other projects doing similar things as you do in Spore Network. What is the one specialty that makes Spores Network standing out from the crowd?
2. Is SPO the only token accepted for payment in Spores Network NFT Market?
Eric Hung: 1. Indeed, the only things that are more common than NFT marketplace these days are prob. launchpad, haha J/K. While there are many NFT marketplace, we believe content is king and we believe it is be the differentiating factor. Leveraging on our network and expertises we plan to bring awesome contents onto our platform as NFTs!
2. We will accept ETH and other protocol + stable coins. SPO tokens will be used for certain exclusive drops, not for all items on our marketplace so that buyers can easily buy their favourite NFTs
Q9: Are you going to do a PROGRAM as a form of APPRECIATION with ARTISTS who will or have DISTRIBUTED their work on SPORES in order to increase the VALUE of your own PLATFORM? Tell me about your SPECIAL PROGRAM
Eric Hung: Yes! for sure, for artists comming on our platform early, we going to airdrop them our NFT Founder Badge. Also part of the mining allocation will be used to incentives and reward top creators on our platform
Q10: ✅ In the month of June in one of your medium articles you commented that in the coming months you will announce NFT partnerships in all five verticals of Spores with creators / artists / studios / emerging celebrities and superstars in China Do you have any news for us on this? Can we know some yet?
Eric Hung: Great question, you have done your homework! Yes we have secured a large pipeline of creators, some are super exciting, we cant wait to share more about them. From next week we will start announcing artists, creators, studios that are joining us. In term of digital artists, we are working with the top, many of them have works sold for 5–6 digits on Nifty and Open Sea. We actually have a few amazing artists and creators specially from China (with billion view reached). I think that is as much as I can share at this moment, but please stay tuned, I am sure you will be thrilled when you see the line up!
Q11: how would Spores Network showcasing different artwork among the growing collection of art.
Will you have some sort of curators in place? How will the newer artists be given the spotlight?
Eric Hung: Good question, Jeff our Chief Art Curator, has over 20 years in art, he was a formerly worked at Sootheby — one of the world top art auctioneer. He also has his own gallery in Shanghai, so he and his team are serving as our curator. Our platform are full curation, so we make sure we bring the top qualities NFTs to our audiences, to bring the true gallery experience to the NFT world. We will have community driven contests so that we can pick and spot out top rising artists talent, artists can also reach out to us to show case their awesome portfolio!
Q12: 🥇 I was detailing in your roadmap and found no plans to develop any mobile application (very common aspect in other NFT Marketplace) Do you plan to work only with DApp? Or do you plan in the future to develop an App?
Eric Hung: We indeed have plan for a mobile app that will come later this year, so you can view your NFT on the fly. We actually also partnered with a NFT display company, that now you can buy a display screen and showcase your NFT for your friends to see!
Q13: I was reading that Spores will provide cross-chain payments with multiple types of cryptocurrencies, on-ramp and off-ramp solutions for many fiat currencies, this is really interesting!!! Can you describe us what means of payment with FIAT money will be available? Credit cards? Deposits with bank accounts?
Eric Hung: Yes! We will have option to buy NFT with credit cards also deposit with bank accounts! Those should be going live in Q4. We want the experience of buying an NFT as frictionless as possible
Q14: The manga and anime market is growing by leaps and bounds in the last decade, these due to the fact that it has been digitized and encompassed not only Japan but almost all parts of the world, how does SPORES NETWORK plan to take advantage of this great market?
Eric Hung: We are very enthusiastic about this manga and anime market comming to NFT, as per discussion we think this open a flush gate for digital merchandise as NFTs. We are working hard with multiple partners to bring awesome anime and manga NFTs to this space. We have secured an agreement with a manga publisher that will enable us to bring various title to our marketplace as NFTs! But of course, like anything with Japan, it will take time, but we truly believe that we will be amongst the first to bring it
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