What is Flare?
Content:General Information-What is Flare
Flare Background
Flare Funding/Collaboration
Additional Information-
Flare Finance
Tokenomics
Closing Thoughts
General Information-
What is Flare?
Flare is a layer-1 blockchain platform that aims to enable smart contracts on the XRP Ledger via wrapped XRP, the decentralized ledger technology also allows other assets to utilize smart contracts like $DOGE, $LTC, $BTC, and more. Flare uses the Federated Byzantine Agreement (FBA) consensus mechanism based on the XRPL protocol consensus algorithm. Flare's goal is to provide a secure and reliable platform for building decentralized applications (Dapps) and to enable developers with a simple and coherent stack for interoperability. My favorite element of Flare is that it’s combining the best of multiple blockchains. Flare utilizes XRP technology for fast settlement, Ethereum smart contracts, and Avalanche for consensus which will ultimately increase utility and allow developers to create smart contracts for DeFi-related use cases.
2. Flare Background
The main purpose of Flare is to bring the benefits of smart contract functionality to the compatible ecosystems mentioned below, which until now has been mostly focused on digital payments and cross-border money transfers. The smart contract capabilities provided by Flare will allow for the creation of a wide range of decentralized applications, including DeFi, prediction markets, gaming, and more. Additionally, Flare aims to bring interoperability between different blockchain networks by allowing for off-chain computations and data storage, this would make it easier to interact with other networks and move assets between them. Smart contracts will make it possible to interact with other networks and move assets between them via Flare Network.
3. Flare Funding/Collaboration
Flare Network is a project based out of Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and was founded by Hugo Philion in 2019. Flare Network has been through a few funding rounds with the following firms: New Form Capital, Spring, Do Kwon, CoinFund, Gate Labs, Charlie Lee, Genesis Capital, Kenetic Capital, Digital Currency Group, and more. Flare Network was able to raise a total of $11.3 million in one of their most recent rounds alongside other undisclosed rounds. Flare Network has a strong group of VCs backing it in case they need help with strategy, funding, or any other future events. Most recently, Google cloud has partnered with Flare Network to give a boost to its blockchain. “Google Cloud will also help to enable our mission to offer bridging for tokens that lack smart contracts capabilities such as bitcoin, litecoin, dogecoin, stellar, and xrp.” Google clouds look forward to connecting APIs to Flare’s chains and connecting to Google’s cloud to access other networks, technologies, and services.
Figure A
Additional Information-
1. Flare Finance
Flare Finance is a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform built on the Flare Network. It aims to provide a wide range of financial services and products, such as lending, borrowing, and yield farming, that are accessible to anyone with an internet connection. Flare Finance uses the $FLR cryptocurrency as its native currency, which means that users can participate in the platform's financial products and services using $FLR. Additionally, Flare Finance has compatibility with other tokens after being wrapped which may be used to pay for transaction fees on the network and to participate in governance and staking. Some of the DeFi products that are offered in FlareFinance are FLRX(Staking), FLRLoans(Lending), and FLRFarm(YieldFarm). These products are still in their early phases so it’s important to understand the risks involved in using these protocols.
Figure B
2. Tokenomics
$FLR is the native token for the Flare Network protocol. Some details remain unknown of the supply but we will cover the facts that were shared by the Flare Team. The total supply of $FLR is 100 billion tokens and it launched as an airdrop for $XRP holders. Flare’s team airdropped the initial 15% of the supply to the XRP holders and promised the remaining 85% over the course of 24-36 months. This was the initial plan but it seems that a new proposal to the tokenomics may change that via FIP.01 which may be found here. At the time of writing the supply is allocated as per the below. 22.5% of the supply is product development, 58.3% is allocated to the community, and the remaining 19.2% of tokens are allocated to the team, investors, and early backers.
Figure C
Closing Thoughts
Flare Network is a powerful protocol that will enable a lot of DeFi for blockchains it’s interoperable via F-Assets. This was an intelligent move by the Flare team because it essentially makes a mutually beneficial relationship between non-smart contract platforms and the Flare Network. Non-Smart contract platforms can build DeFi applications on their chains utilizing F-Assets via Flare Network, and Flare Network will be utilized in the meantime for transactions. Not only did they find the perfect way to create interoperability, I feel like they have the best of all blockchains as mentioned in the first paragraph making it a valiant layer-1 blockchain. Today, Flare Network is still in the beginning phases so its full potential has yet to be unlocked. In my personal opinion, I believe Flare Network is an incredible protocol because of what it can do for other networks, but my bullishness is not correlated to the price of $FLR at the time of writing.