What Is Flare?
Flare is the blockchain for data. It is a layer 1, EVM smart contract platform designed to expand the utility of blockchain.
Flare's aim is to provide data as a public good, meaning that data is not controlled by a centralized entity and is available to all. The infrastructure providers, which perform doubly as validators and data providers, enable two native oracles, the FTSO and the State Connector.
This native processing provides developers on Flare with efficient access to large amounts of data and data proofs at minimal cost.
By giving developers trustless access to the broadest range of data, Flare can advance the development of more blockchain use cases where data is important, such as in DeFi, gaming, NFT, music, and social networks.
Flare Protocols
Flare has the following native data acquisition protocols at these stages of development:
- The Flare Time-Series Oracle (FTSO) provides continuous estimations of changing data, such as price pairs.
- The State Connector allows querying of verifiable, non-changing data from other chains and the internet.
- Flare LayerCake is being developed by Flare Labs to provide a decentralized, trustless bridging system between smart contract networks. For an overview of trustless bridges, see LayerCake.
Developing on Flare
Flare developers can work in a familiar Ethereum-like environment. It offers the same API and uses the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), so Ethereum's Solidity smart contracts can be used directly. Like Ethereum, Flare supports other assets, such as NFTs.
📄 See Developer Docs for more info.
- The Flare native currency,
$FLR, works the same as$ETHon the Ethereum blockchain. For those contracts that can only work with ERC-20 tokens,$FLRcan be easily wrapped as$WFLR, which is an ERC-20 representation of$FLR. Flare's FTSO delegation and Flare governance are examples of such apps.
- Common blockchain tools like wallets, a token management portal, and block explorers are available on Flare.
Flare is actively seeking developers eager to discover what new utility can be brought to the blockchain industry when acquiring data is possible in a decentralized way. To start, since Flare is EVM-compatible, you can migrate Ethereum smart-contract dapps to Flare. Then consider, for example, creating DeFi, gaming, NFT, music, or social network dapps.
📄 See Start Building, for more information.
Flare Networks
Flare has 4 networks with different purposes:
- Flare is the main network, where
$FLRis the native currency.
- Songbird is the canary network, where
$SGBis the native currency. Created with users in mind, it is meant for testing features under "real fire" conditions, before deploying them on the main network.
- Coston is Songbird's public test network, created with developers in mind.
- Coston2 is Flare's public test network, created with developers in mind.
Flare Chains
Flare uses two chains and is developing a built-in interoperability mechanism between them.
- C-Chain: The contract chain that is used for smart contracts. It is where the Ethereum Virtual Machine operates, and is the chain where the vast bulk of the community currently interact.
- P-Chain: The platform chain that accommodates staking and provides rewards to its validators.