SpareCoin (SPARE) confuses me. As one of the “original forks”, it has some things about it as of late that do not line up or add up when compared to the others. Specifically, I mean when we compare it to Flax (XFX) and ChainGreen (CGN), the other two mainstream original Chia Forks that hit the scene before “MOAR FORKS” became a thing. Yes, we also had Goji (XGJ), Seno (XSE) and ChiaRose (XCR), but for obvious reasons, I do not count these among the “originals”. There was a point not long ago, where the 3 big Forks was SpareCoin, Flax and ChainGreen. However, where the other two have stayed their course of strength within the Trading community, SpareCoin has gone in a very odd direction.
Let us first rip the band-aid off and cover the “issues” that exist with SpareCoin:
- SpareCoin has been criticized heavily for multiple chain re-starts/re-launches early on before having an actual stable launch.
- SpareCoin also upset the core Fork Farmer community by seeming to attempt to “hide” their 5 Million Pre-Mine.
- SpareCoin has not published an open source release of their Windows GUI client on GitHub, rather having it available via download offsite.
- SpareCoin has taken a real wide turn on their Community Management, whereas almost all serious Forks are using Official Discord Channels, SpareCoin chooses Twitter as their Community, seemingly oblivious to the entire Chia Fork’s Discord momentum.
- Since launch, Chia Fork Farmers Discord has blacklisted them with seemingly no further consideration to change this.
Here then are my thoughts about these issues. First, the issues with multiple “re-starts” is not new to Forks and it does not surprise me. I am not about to hold a bad launch and chain re-starts against any Fork, especially the early ones. At this point, SpareCoin’s Blockchain runs quite smoothly for me and I have no issues with it. Second, while it seemed that initially they did not be 100% transparent about their pre-mine, it is what it is, we figured it out quite fast and the size of the pre-mine is general knowledge now. Pre-mine size is really up to the Fork Developers and we have seen a variety of approaches to this with all the Forks that have launched. Third, the lack of publishing an open source GUI for Windows seems like a bad move indeed, but their are open source builds you can use if their is a trust issue. Also, there have been no reports of anything malicious related to this so far. I think this has been made into a far bigger issue than it really is. Despite their Community Management being “Twitter” focused, that is also a choice and not really something we “Discord” Farmers should be holding against them. They could do far better to approach the community with more transparency and connection, but when I see how Team Chia handles this so poorly, I have a hard time to really hold this against them. At least they are “doing something”. Unlike Goji and Seno which are literally “dead Forks” at this point with literally not a single update, news or interactivity with their Developers since those Forks launched.
The blacklisting of SpareCoin by Chia Fork Farmers is a tough one for me. I do not agree with it. If they are going to Blacklist and not reconsider it ever, then in all honesty, a LOT more Forks should be Blacklisted. I have only Blacklisted one Fork, that being ChiaDogeCoin (XCD) and this was because of their excessive spam advertising and shilling. But I am open to reconsider of course. Just not now. But at this point, I find it hard to believe SpareCoin remains blacklisted by Chia Fork Farmer’s Discord. It feels “vengeful” at this point and not based in reality or serious criteria choice.
Now with that out of the way, we have to dive deeper into the odd history of SpareCoin. Upon launch, like many Forks, we saw their Netspace grow quite quickly. A lot of us are Fork addicts and so despite any negativity about Spare, we were still farming it. This rise went from June 19, 2021 and kept growing steadily (as most Fork’s Netspace has done) and hitting the 1 EiB Netspace size around July 10, 2021. Which is literally “crushing” it for Forks. Only Flax has surpassed the 1 EiB Netspace size, which then had SpareCoin sitting at #2 in NetSpace behind Flax for the Forks since then. But then we have seen this last week something very strange; SpareCoin is losing Netspace at a rapid pace. This week their Netspace has fallen from the height of 1.1 EiB down to 720 PiB, for about a 35% loss of size in a week.
This is remarkable and an anomaly that is unexplained. We have not seen any significant Netspace loss by any of the Chia Forks over time. Only SpareCoin this week had this occur.
Now keep in mind that a large “decrease” in Netspace means that the ETW for those farming it actually has increased and we are still within the 90 day promotion period for SpareCoin where winning a block is worth 4 SPARE rather than 2 SPARE. I farm every Fork possible. Even Thyme. So I am certainly not slowing down on my SpareCoin farming by any means.
Then we can look at the price history of SpareCoin and see another wild trend with a lifetime drop of almost 95% from when it first started being traded. Back when trading got going at Chia Fork Trader’s Discord, we saw SPARE swapping for $1 each and then its eventual decline over time. All the Forks have declined fairly significantly over time, there is no doubt about this and even we had seen the price of Chia decline along with them, but none declined as harshly as SPARE. Starting trading at $1 and now swapping at $0.06 is dramatic. What has changed over time to cause this, lack of news? Just following the down trend of the other Fork’s prices? Hard to say.
Here is the reality from my perspective though, SpareCoin is being actively developed with a team behind it. There are updates made via their Twitter, albeit not very often. SpareCoin is not going to disappear, in my opinion, any time soon. We have no idea the future of these Forks, but for one of the original Forks and with how things look today, SPARE is at a bargain price if you are trying to play long on these Fork bets. Being able to snap up a position of 1000 SPARE for $50 USDT is a bet I have been taking and I will take more.
As always, I could be totally wrong here.
Lastly, there was a cryptic tweet today from SpareCoin:
My final analysis today on SpareCoin (SPARE) based on where the price is and other related specifics: BUY/HOLD.
Not a financial advisor. This is not financial advice. If you think it is, you are either drunk or a fool.