Spark soars 73% as Upbit listing and 500M staking, what ignited the huge rally?

Spark’s SPK jumped 73% after an Upbit KRW listing, 500M+ tokens staked, and F2Pool co-founder Wang Chun’s public regret over selling 83.7M SPK stoked fresh speculative flow.

Spark’s native token SPK (SPK) surged as much as 73% in the past 24 hours, briefly topping gainers lists after South Korean exchange Upbit confirmed it would list the asset on its KRW markets. The rally coincided with Spark’s announcement on X that total SPK staked has exceeded 500 million tokens, while a public admission of regret from F2Pool co-founder Wang Chun over selling tens of millions of SPK last year added fuel to bullish sentiment.

At press time, SPK was trading near $0.06 with 24-hour spot volume approaching $650 million, according to CoinMarketCap data, giving the token a market capitalization in the tens of millions of dollars. In a post highlighted by TechFlow, Spark told users that “the total staked native token SPK has just surpassed 500 million tokens,” specifying that on-chain data showed 509,969,466 SPK locked, and inviting participants into its Spark Points reward program.

Upbit listing and staking milestone

Korean markets have a track record of turbocharging liquidity and price discovery when Upbit lists new altcoins, with recent additions seeing double-digit to triple-digit intraday gains following listing announcements. Upbit’s KRW market addition for SPK now opens the token to one of the world’s most active retail trading bases, where local order books often trade at a premium to global venues and can dominate short-term flows.

Spark’s confirmation that more than half a billion SPK are staked strengthens the narrative that a core holder base is locking up supply in pursuit of protocol rewards and potential governance influence. Earlier analytics indicated over 136 million SPK staked by more than 3,400 users when the network was smaller, suggesting the staking footprint has expanded by several hundred million tokens as Spark’s total value locked climbed into the multi-billion-dollar range.

Wang Chun’s $1.4M “regret” moment

Retail traders seized on a post from F2Pool co-founder Wang Chun, who disclosed on X that he had received 83.7 million SPK as rewards from Spark over the past year but chose to sell them on CoWSwap. “I received 83.7 million SPK rewards from Spark and sold them on CoWSwap for 663 ETH and 1.4 million dollars. I regret it a bit now,” Wang wrote, a line that quickly circulated across trading forums as a contrarian signal of perceived upside left in the token.