On this week's episode of Understanding Crypto, Jolyon Layard Horsfall, the CEO and CFO of Sparkworld, chats with James Burtt. Jolyon discusses the development and sustainability of Fair Predictions Launches (PFL), a gamification suite that assures that users receive equal opportunities to purchase NFTs. They also discuss using staking and the white list to ensure quality participation through price and effort discrimination.

SparkWorld

Jolyon describes Sparkworld as "a full-service launch pad and marketplace aggregator focused on innovation, community, and engagement." The company's primary goal is to raise money for NFT initiatives through crowdsourcing. James commends the company's contribution to equality within an NFT-focused community. Jolyon laments that in current Web3 launches, "Bots are coming in and scooping up all of the initial distribution of the NFTs. Then they're getting sold or manipulated on the secondary market, and that's bad for the project." 

James talks about Sparkworld's development and usage of Fair Prediction Launching (FPL), a gamification process, which is essentially a suite of tools that guarantees that customers are given the same opportunities to purchase NFTs. The Fair Prediction Launch (FPL) ensures equity and transparency because all predictions are stored and shared on the blockchain. “If you use a prediction event, you might predict the price of Bitcoin in three days, the closest 500 predictions get on the white list. We're being transparent and it's a fair process." [Listen from 2:53]

Changing Direction

Jolyon is a trained accountant and as early as 2013, recognized the viability of the cryptocurrency market. He left his accounting practice to concentrate on the web3 industry. "I saw some of these projects that were being made and I thought I could write a white paper and token economy better. Not because I was good, but because some were really bad." He ultimately chose to focus his time and energy on designing tools to enhance the NFT community. The creation of FPLs by StackWorld offers members a more inclusive option where incentives are based on participation, with the size of the investment determining the return. [Listen from 8:51]

Avalanche

Jolyon and his team at Sparkworld selected Avalanche, an open-sourced decentralized blockchain platform, to host their blockchain. He explains that this platform provides a more energy-efficient option that is also EVM compatible, enabling the use of MetaMask. Avalanche also won their approval because it addresses the three key problems of scalability, decentralization, and security, as well as its superior potential for implementing novel approaches to achieving these solutions. For Jolyon, his company would become a dominant player in the Avalanche ecosystem, a reward for their early adoption. He and James discuss using the white list, a method that many NFT communities are using to pre-select their communities. They agree that it can ensure the success of any NFT project. [Listen from 19:04]

The Way Forward 

The Hydro Whales Mining Club, which reflect the real principles of the decentralized web, have held Jolyon’s interest. It's very transparent, he says! Additionally, he is impressed by the creators' participation in the Discord server and their work on upgradeable NFTs, which he views as a promising prospect. [Listen from 29:48]

Key Takeaways:

• Fair Prediction Launches or FPLs are a suite of tools that guarantee that all community members are given equal opportunities to purchase NFTs.

Resources

James Burtt on Twitter | LinkedIn | Instagram | Clubhouse

Paul Abercrombie on Website | Twitter | LinkedIn | Instagram