Eco-friendly NFT Marketplace, Sparkles, Launches on Flare Network

The NFT marketplace, Sparkles, is launching on the Flare network with the aim of increasing innovation in the digital asset space and enabling new use cases for NFTs and their owners.

On Thursday, Sparkles, the leading NFT marketplace on the 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 use the latter’s interoperability protocols and decentralized oracles to “enable new use cases for NFTs and their holders”. In addition, Sparkles aims to grow 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 empower NFT holders and creators.

“We are very pleased that Sparkles has agreed to continue the development of the NFT platform 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, Flare’s test network, accounting for over $3.5 million in value traded since launch. After the successful tests, Sparkles finally joins the main network of Flare, connected with Flare’s State Connector and Flare’s Time Series Oracle to provide reliable and scalable data to the platform.

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

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

An environmental plus on the Flare network

According to their website, Sparkles is designated as the only NFT marketplace in the blockchain space to achieve 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 partnering with SCB, a leading carbon commodity company.

The carbon company calculates and estimates the carbon footprints of the Sparkles NFT market and then buys carbon credits to offset the carbon emissions. The credits are then used for environmental reasons, which ensures an environmentally friendly platform. Sparkles used Toucan’s bridge to withdraw the credits on the 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 protection.

“Sparkles is honored to be the leader 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 the Flare Network.”

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