The November Look Ahead
Welcome to another exciting article brought to you by the team here at Sphere. October was another successful month with some feats achieved and improvements made. All getting us ready for the next bull market…
What is covered in this update:
- Website update
- Refund policy update
- Sphere Ambassadors
- Future new CEX listing
- Marketing campaign
- New IDOs
Our CEO, Alex, had a brief chat with the community recently to bring us up to speed with where we are and where we are headed. We can see it got you guys hyped up!
If you missed the AMA, which took place on Friday, November 3rd, no worries, we have got you covered. But before we dive in, here are some important reminders from last month;
$40k raised
We recently completed another smaller IDO that raised over $40k. This is only the start, read on for exciting IDO news!
Refund policy update
We recently made some changes to our refund policy, following feedback from our community. Our policy now has a two-level approach, a 48-hour mandatory 100% refund period, and an opt-in extended 7-day 100% refund period. You can check out the updated policy — here
Elevating Your Experience with our redesigned website
We are always innovating and trying to improve our user experience, so we took a closer look at our website and implemented some major design changes that we feel not only put our impact at our core, but also massively enhanced the UX. What do you think of our new home? Check it out here.
Summoning the Ambassadors!
We just finalized the selection of our official ambassadors and they have been sent acceptance emails. If you applied, kindly check your email to see if you were accepted. Sphere ambassadors are huge supporters of Sphere who will be advocates within and outside the community, spreading the word of Sphere to the crypto-verse.
Now, let’s get into the AMA recap!
Alex: Hey all, welcome to the AMA. On behalf of the team at Sphere, I would like to thank the community for the unwavering support thus far.
Before we start, I would like to point out some important announcements.
One of them is that we now have 7 projects that have signed contracts to do an IDO with us. We are waiting for them to confirm launch dates with us, but at least one will be this month.
That aside, I would like to also announce that our staking is going live next week. Our staking will have 7 separate pools:
3 will be general access with a minimal SXS deposit needed
3 will be pools only open to our higher tiers
1 pool will be an early launch pool.
It is important to keep in mind that the main reason for staking for a launchpad is to unlock tier benefits, however, we have also added a reward element in SXS. Basically, the longer you stake and the larger the amount of SXS you stake, the bigger your SXS reward. We will be launching a full staking guide prior to staking launch and all this and more will be covered there. For the time being, you might want to check out our SXS tier benefits guide here.
Want to know what staking is? Click here to learn more
Question: How do you usually get new IDO projects? Do they find you and ask you to launch their project on Sphere?
Alex: Great question. Well, most of the projects that come to us are usually from credible leads like our close partners and investors.
Although we do get ‘cold leads’ i.e. leads that come to us directly, we have found that the higher potential projects tend to come via recommendations/ introductions from trusted sources.
Want to know about the due diligence we do? Check out our insight article here and another article here that contains useful insights to help you do your own due diligence.
Question: Is there any plan for another CEX listing?
Alex: The simple answer is yes! Actually, plans are quite well developed here.
As you know we are already on Bitget as our CEX and Uniswap as our DEX. But we plan to launch on a second CEX very soon. I can’t give details on the exchange yet, but we are in advanced discussions and contacts are being signed.
However, we are big on managing expectations. It won’t be Binance or Kucoin, their listing fees are sky-high. However, it will be a top 15 CEX and one of the key areas we are looking at is daily volume.
Question: How many total team members does Sphere have? Are you well funded for the bear market?
Alex: Thanks for the question. Well, I am proud to say we have 18 strong passionate members of the sphere team spread across various parts of the world, who are experts in their fields. We have covering all areas including dev, content, due diligence, marketing, design, community, management, etc.
In answer to your second point, yes, we have a runway that will cover costs and enable us to scale through the remainder of the bear market.
Question: What kind of APY can a user expect for staking their token? Will there be an option for early unstake with some penalty?
Alex: As for the APY I can’t say anything on that yet.
As for the penalty question, unlike some projects, we will not penalize stakers for unstaking their originally staked SXS.
You bought these tokens, they are yours. You will be able to unstake at any time and you will not be penalized on the SXS you originally staked when you do so. There will be a freeze period, as you can expect on a lot of staking services, but you won’t lose any of the SXS you staked at the start.
Question: Will Sphere announce some new utilities for the token?
Alex: We are still finishing up with the staking and tier feature for SXS so that is the utility on our priority list for now.
Aside from that, there are still other plans to make SXS as valuable as possible to investors and we will add more benefits where feasible.
Do you have any ideas on token utilities you would like to see added? If so let us know, we would love your insights.
Question: Have you done a contract audit?
Alex: Yes. we have done many audits. As a project, we were triple-audited for our launch. However,I think you might mean staking. And again, yes we have ensured our staking contract is audited. Here is the Audit link.
Question: What are the unique points that set Sphere apart from other launchpads?
Alex: I believe what sets us apart from other launchpads is our strong stand on due diligence, our passionate team and community, and our track record of successful raises. We have done raises from $40k,- $1m, we have done raises that have sold out in under 10 seconds, we have done IDOS that have seen 1,000%+ returns. We have done successful IDOs during bull and bear markets.
Question: How does Sphere make money?
Alex: We charge a fee to have projects do a raise with us. However, it is important to note that we are a success-first-based launch pad. This means we do not charge an upfront fee. We believe that if we are presenting projects to our community then we should be bought into them as well.
As such we take a percentage of our fee from a successful raise after the project has launched. We take the other percentage of our fee in the project’s native tokens, vested at the same level as their seed round, this tends to be for around 12 months.
As you can see, we have bought into the project for the long term. We feel this ensures we, as a project, are focused on finding the best and brightest projects out there.
Question: Does Sphere plan to raise awareness of the project?
An excellent and timely question. As I mentioned earlier, we are aiming to launch on a second CEX before the end of the year. Tied into this we are also going to be launching our first major marketing campaign.
We are currently speaking to 3 marketing agencies in the space, looking at ways they can help us get out and in front of the right audience, working with the relevant KOLs for our space that will deliver real value.
Wrap up:
Thank you all for joining this AMA and I know a member of the team will do a write-up of it covering the key areas.
As you can see it has been a busy October and an even busier November. We have IDOs planned, staking launching, new website updates, marketing campaigns going live, and maybe even a new CEX listing!
Thank you all for the support, this is just the beginning.
Here ends the AMA
Continuing the Dialogue with Sphere
If there is anything else you’d like to know, or you simply want to say hi, please engage in our various channels:
