Decentralized finance (DeFi) giant Spark has for the moment put aside its plans to launch a mobile application.
“We’ve had an internal discussion and we’re going to pause it for the moment just because we see our advantage as largely being in the DeFi-native crypto space,” Sam MacPherson, CEO of Phoenix Labs, told CoinDesk in an interview during Devconnect Buenos Aires. “We are not consumer app makers and this space is very competitive.”
Phoenix Labs is the company behind the development of the Spark protocol, which has accumulated over $9 billion in total value locked to date, according to data from DeFiLlama.
“If and when we get there, we need to be sure we have some sort of advantage. I think there’s a tendency for projects to get distracted by doing too many things at once,” MacPherson said. “So we’re just going to double down on what we do best, which is liquid infrastructure within DeFi.”
The protocol will instead focus on what MacPherson called “liquidity infrastructure and transactions like our recent billion-dollar investment with our own balance sheet in PYUSD with PayPal,” highlighting a focus on institutional use cases rather than creating more retail-friendly solutions. He was referring to a billion-dollar investment intended to increase the liquidity of PYUSD.
When asked if the mobile app had been canceled or simply delayed, MacPherson said it was “on pause at the moment. Things can change, but it’s a market thing; you have to see the opportunities, and it’s just not there for us at the moment.”
MacPherson’s comments come shortly after another DeFi giant, Aave, announced the launch of a retail yield app. “It’s an exciting development, but like I said, it’s a competitive environment. I wish them the best of luck,” MacPherson said when asked about the launch.
