Hey TruStar, how's it going?

The Sparky project is still around, and it's actually incorporated into supernodes. We were having some reservations about releasing sparky given the current dynamism of the network (Chris can tell you much more than I on this part), but with the stability that supernodes add, it makes more sense. Clients communicate with supernodes using query routing (Sparky technology) that dramatically reduces the bandwidth they must use to communicate their files to the supernode.

This also makes it possible for the supernode to forward searches to the correct client nodes connected to it far more cheaply than if they had to search through a normal index, so it makes it much less costly to become a supernode (it doesn't slow down your machine as much as it otherwise would). In terms of communication between supernodes, that will likely not use the sparky technique.

So, the short answer is that it's still around and that it's getting incorporated into the client-supernode communication.

Hope that makes sense!