Environmental Friendly NFT Marketplace, Sparkles, Launches On Flare Network

NFT marketplace, Sparkles, launches on Flare network aiming to boost innovation in the digital asset space and enable new use cases for NFTs and their owners. 

On Thursday, Sparkles, the leading NFT marketplace on Songbird Network, announced its launch on Flare, becoming the first NFT platform on the network. According to the statement, the launch of Sparkles on Flare will allow the former to utilize the latter’s interoperability protocols and decentralized oracles to “enable new use cases for NFTs and their holders”. Additionally, Sparkles aims to boost its market base and build a community that supports NFT innovation and digital content creators and artists.

As Flare CEO& Co-founder Hugo Philion explained in his statement on the launch of Sparkles, the partnership will help develop and integrate core protocols between the two projects to provide opportunities to NFT holders and creators.

“We are very pleased Sparkles have agreed to continue their NFT platform development on Flare, integrating our core protocols to champion NFTs and provide opportunities for SGB and FLR holders to participate in the digital art space,” Philion said. 

Since the launch of Sparkles on Songbird in January 2022, it has grown to become the largest NFT marketplace on the platform. Sparkles has handled over 90% of NFT sales on Songbird, the testnet network of Flare, accounting for over $3.5M in value traded since the launch. Following the successful tests, Sparkles is finally joining the main Flare network, connected with Flare’s State Connector and Flare’s Time Series Oracle to provide trustless and scalable data to its platform.

“We look forward to seeing Sparkles become a community-owned platform, push the boundaries of NFT innovation on Flare and support digital artists on their journeys,” Philion added.

Simply, the Flare State Connector allows smart contracts on Flare to use off-chain information and data in their DApps. The State Connector enables the trustless, scalable, and secure transmission of this information and data to Flare’s smart contracts. The FTSO, on the other hand, relays time series data such as NFT prices and data series without relying on centralized parties. Sparkles APIs are also integrated into Bitfrost Wallet, the most widely used Flare Network wallet and D’Cent wallet. This allows users to easily participate in the NFT marketplace to buy, sell, and manage their digital assets directly in their wallets.  

An environmental plus on the Flare network

According to its website, Sparkles is touted as the only NFT marketplace in the blockchain space that achieves an environmentally positive status – a green NFT marketplace. In addition, Sparkles joined the Crypto Climate Accord in 2021, pledging to become a net-zero carbon platform by 2030. The team is already on its way to achieving this status by working with SCB, a leading carbon commodity firm. 

The carbon company calculates and estimates the carbon footprints of the Sparkles NFT marketplace and then purchases carbon credits to offset the carbon emissions. The credits are then used for environmental causes, which ensures an environmentally friendly platform.  Sparkles used Toucan’s bridge to retire the credits on-chain. According to Sparkles Founder Mohamed Kanoun, the push towards a green initiative will allow NFT creators, owners, and artists to join the platform, as it leads the way in environmental conservation. 

“Sparkles is honoured to be leading the way when it comes to NFTs on Flare,” he said. “We believe Flare will be home to many new artists, brands, companies, games, metaverses and much more. The future is bright for NFTs on Flare Network.” 

Notwithstanding, Sparkles is also planning to launch an IP licensing platform in their upcoming DOTM collection to protect the intellectual property (IP) rights of its creators and artists. Finally, in the near future, Sparkles aims to become a totally decentralized NFT marketplace, run by the people and for the people, when it transitions into a DAO with the launch of the SNFT token.