AMA : EcoFi

The Selective
8 min readAug 20, 2021

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Mission :
I was actually talking to a friend about a similar idea, but we decided it would be too difficult to execute : so it goes without saying that I’m very impressed with the project so far. Thanks for coming by to discuss it.

Before we start, can you tell us a bit about yourselves and what you do on the EcoFi team?

Kevin Monahan :
I’m Kevin, I develop the way the mechanisms work. I’ve been in the block chain space since 2015.

Denver :
Hello,
I am Denver Nunley. Kevin, Lawrence and I Co-Founded this project about a year ago have been building since then. Our platform is nearly ready to launch this week. I run overall operations and marketing.

Question 1 :
Ok, let’s first get into EcoFi specifically. What is it, and what are it’s long-term goals?

Kevin Monahan :
Ecofi is us, we have essentially 2 platforms atm.

The first part is the staking platform, the second is our nft marketplace hub.

With the staking platform, anyone with our utility token, eco, can stake and earn rewards. The cool thing about the way we built it, is that you’ll never lose your initial capital — And at this point you keep 100% of your rewards. However, we enforce a 90 day lockup.

After you generate these rewards, sprt tokens, you can use them on our marketplace hub to generate nfts that represent shares of ownership of real world items — our first marketplace is fine art.

Mission :
That would be HYPE — correct?

Kevin Monahan :
Yes

Mission :
Great, so currently I can stake ECO tokens to receive SPRT as a reward — which can then be used to generate and purchase NFTs on HYPE?

Kevin Monahan :
Yep

Denver :
Our NFTs are tied to real world assets. As of now we are fractionlizing ownership of masterworks via NFTS. Such as, Picasso, Basquiat, Banksy and many more.

100/100 NFTs will be minted per piece to represent the total ownership of the artwork.

Kevin Monahan :
Some pieces will have more than 100 units

Mission :
Is that dependent on the minter, or what?

Kevin Monahan :
Yes, so as many of our pieces as possible will be 100. But for a piece that is worth say $5m or more. . .

Denver :
And the value of the piece. If it is very expensive there may be 1,000 NFTs per — to have it more accessible

Question 2 :
How about HYPE — what can you tell us about this?

You mentioned real world items, what sort of items? It’s a focus on fine art?

Kevin Monahan :
No. So fine art was what we had access to first. So that’s our first marketplace. But my idea started with real estate. Music rights, any industry basically.

Mission :
And this will all be on HYPE eventually, or there will be separate marketplaces for each category?

Kevin Monahan :
Separate marketplaces. HYPE is our fine-art marketplace.

Mission :
Will they all *potentially* utilize SPRT?

Kevin Monahan :
Anyone that builds their own marketplace will have a choice. Other people can build marketplaces that can be added to our hub. They won’t be our marketplaces, but whoever published the marketplace. But part of the ecosystem.

Mission :
OK, so how are the NFTs generated on the platform? How are the real-world assets tied to the NFT?

Kevin Monahan :
You can think of us as a mall for mft marketplaces

Basically a lawyer writes a contract that says x piece of art owned by ecofi is tied to this nft contract on blockchain, and x amount of nft tokens represent that piece.

Question 3:
To get a better idea of the platform, can you give us a quick overview of the user-experience when purchasing from the platform?

Let’s say I want to jump in and buy a piece of a picasso on the platform, what are my steps?

Kevin Monahan :
Denver is going to add screen shots, but basically you’ll pns on the site, land on the site, browse art, find a piece you want, and it’ll take you to the purchase page. Click Purchase and sign the txs. Any image with a badge is verified by us. . .

And as soon as you purchase it, you can relist it immediately for eth, eco, or sprt.

Mission :
Let’s say I actually physically wanted a piece of art from the marketplace — what’s this process like?

Kevin Monahan :
So if you purchase 100% of a set. You can get in touch with us and you’ll have to redeem the entire set for a 1/1 nft that we’ll send you the piece — anyone that wants a physical piece will have to kyc.

Denver :
Until then, all the pieces are to stay stored in a temperature/humidty controlled vault with a live feed. Also we are implementing a virtual gallery where users can browse the space in VR

Question 4:
How about from a seller’s perspective? Let’s say I have an art piece I want to sell on the platform, for example.

It’s possible to contact the EcoFi team and have it verified to receive the verification badge?

Kevin Monahan :
Yes. Most of the time this will mean sending us the physical piece. But later on we have some partnerships that basically will just be ecofi verified marketplaces. Over time we will have many verified/trusted marketplaces.

Mission :
Great. This idea can be applied to essentially any asset too, so it’s great that you’re seeing the big-picture and not JUST focusing on art. Makes me more bullish for the project in general.

Kevin Monahan :
I wanted to make a place where anyone providing value to nfts could thrive. And I think we’re on the right track.

Mission :
What about non-verified pieces on the marketplace? How do you imagine these coming into play? You foresee a lot of them?

Kevin Monahan :
Anyone can make one. At somepoint well have a process setup to get verified, like the blue checkmark on Twitter.

Mission :
Ah, like a verified seller or something?

Denver :
Users can also upload digital NFTs, just like OpenSea or Rarible.

Question 5 :
Like I mentioned when I announced the AMA, I think this is definitely something that we’ve all seen coming in the space. Really great to see it executed. How can users get involved right now? What are some upcoming dates we can watch out for?

Denver :
Right now our platform is in the final stages of QA and will be live shortly. We have started our marketing campaign with several high value influencers and projects.

Join this link to be a part of the early access:

https://rebrand.ly/EcoFi_HYPE_Launch

We are about a week our from pushing live

Mission :
A week from pushing public? Or the early access?

Denver :
Public

Mission :
Since I know a couple people wrote in about this, I can just ask now : what is the circ supply and mcap currently?

Denver :
circulating about 490k with the price around $10 daily, so close to $5M market cap.

Question 7 :
I know HYPE is already a big step, but what can you tell us about the future of EcoFi? We spoke a bit about it, but maybe there is something I failed to ask about. . .

Kevin Monahan :
We’re working on doing certs of Authenticity on blockchain via nft, which would eliminate a huge part of the forgery market.

Digital/ar skins, Fashion, music, and real estate. . .

Albatross Spacebucks :
[Forwarded from EcoFi]
0x7785… staked 284.00 ECO

Total percentage of circulating supply in staking is 72.47%.

Mission :
Wow

Kevin Monahan :
Yeah it does look like people are using the mechanism the way it was intended to be.

Audience Questions

@rat asks :
What about security of the physical piece of art? What is to guarantee the safety of it to investors?

Kevin Monahan :
They’re insured, we will be opening a gallery soon, which can be viewed by any owner.

Denver :
NFT holders will grant them access to the gallery

@pstax asks :
Is there any truth to partnership rumours? I heard alchemist.

Kevin Monahan :
So we’re in chats with them regarding crucible, and rewarding liquidity providers.

Albatross Spacebucks :
We don’t want to discuss specific partnerships until they are finalized

@jnckpeople1 asks :
if for example I have artwork from an artist and I can prove its authenticity, and I want to sell it to the ecofi team, is it possible?

Kevin Monahan :
If he’s asking if he can sell it to us : maybe. We are buying a lot of art.

Mission :
So if you’re sitting on a picasso. . . Now is the time lol

Kevin Monahan :
Exactly

@fonz84 asks :
I wanted to ask the EcoFi team if the DAO governance that was initially airdropped. Will it service any purpose in their ecosystem?

Denver :
EGT will be used as DAO governance. Please hold on to for now.

Kevin Monahan :
We plan on decentralizing the entire platform at some point. So we will essentially be taking a place as just marketplace owners on a decentralized hub. So moderation and verified marketplaces will have to be community managed. We’ll be using a voting mechanism for this and egt will be your voting rights.

$ECO token is trading on uniswap and staking is live, pair HERE.

Get early access HERE.

Resources 📚
- website : https://ecofi.io/
- medium : https://ecofinance.medium.com/
- telegram: https://t.me/eco_finance
- twitter : https://twitter.com/finance_eco
- github : https://github.com/Eco-Finance
- HYPE : https://hyp.eco/

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