The spark code base is 100% new. It is not a fork of an existing cryptocurrency.
Spark eliminates the clumsy/bloated blockchain and replaces it with what we call « Spark clouds », decentralized ledgers that shut down once they get too big
Spark clouds can emit near instant transactions (less than 10 seconds) which we call « Lightning bolts », if you set a high enough fee compared to the other outgoing transactions at the time you emit it.
Normal transactions are still very fast (should never be more than a minute), and will never get stuck in limbo if you set no fee, like bitcoin transactions tend to
As proof of work mining is a waste of energy that might reach environmentally disastrous proportions, Spark can not be mined at all
Instead, inflation is introduced through a standard proof of stake model, with 10% new coins minted each year, except the first year where no extra coins will be generated
On top of the annual proof of stake inflation (distributed every day), mining fees will be proportionally redistributed to stakeholders
Spark's proof of stake does not require wallets to be unlocked and open, all they have to do is exist. Yes, you will get PoS revenue from your cold storage
Only a spark node can recieve a lightning bolt (super fast) transaction. This encourages businesses or other heavy Spark users to support the network by hosting nodes
The speed of Spark transactions, especially lightning bolt transactions, makes it appealing for online or offline businesses to use as an actual means of payment
Transactions can have attached messages, which is an extremely important feature for commercial usages (attaching a user id, a command id, an invoice id, etc)
Public keys can have aliases, which businesses can use for simplicity. For example, you would send your coins to the wallet Gamecompany instead of sending it to a random hash that you'd never be able to memorize
Sparks are divisible by up to 10 units, making them much more efficient than bitcoin for micro transactions. If Spark value goes up, we will increase this number
Wallets have an open plugin system that lets you build anything on top of them (in Python 3)
A demo plugin that greatly simplifies Spark related accounting for businesses will be released with the wallets
The wallet runs on every major OS (including our beloved FreeBSD), and a special lightweight wallet (called sparkyd) will be offered to exchanges on release
In the spirit of cryptocurrency, we believe that anonimity is a very important feature, and we live by the way we think
Spark implements a mixing method that makes it extremely hard to trace transactions if you are not aware of their txid.
All transactions, even past ones, are constantly mixed within the spark clouds, which makes it harder to trace them than the currently existing coin mixing implementations
The team decided to remain anonymous on purpose, but we do intend to support the coin and keep churning bugfixes and releases, as we do believe in the importance of cryptocurrency
We are three professional developers who know each other in real life, and have worked on past crypto currency related projects. This is all you will ever know about the Spark team
There will be 1 000 000 000 (one billion) sparks distributed initially, with nothing at all premined or reserved for the developers
There are no block times, as there is no block chain. Spark clouds are spawned and/or transactions written into spark clouds when the nodes deem it necessary
As we have sadly not found a better distribution model, we will have to resort to an IPO to distribute the initial Sparks
The IPO will be fair for everyone involved, and we will guarantee that coins are not wasted or stolen by using a trusted escrow service for the IPO instead of collecting it ourselves
You will be given 10% of the Sparks you have bought through the IPO every month for ten months. This is to ensure that the market does not get flooded all at once, and has time to develop.
The bitcoins raised during the IPO will be used exclusively for the promotion of Spark. The escrow we have contracted will directly spend the coins for us when needed, we will never touch them
