Firstly, a word about Flare, a recent entrant into the crowded and competitive "interoperability" space now energizing the entire blockchain industry. This still-in-development protocol aims to bring smart contract functionality to a slew of non-Ethereum-run layer-1 assets, such as Litecoin, Dogecoin, Stellar and XRP, currently lacking it.

Launched in September 2021, Songbird is Flare's "canary," or live beta, network.

SGB is Songbird's native coin.

Songbird is designed to be a permanent breeding ground for Flare, specifically built to be an enabler for those blockchains otherwise incapable of running smart contracts. It’s focusing, to start, on popular, community-supported coins (e.g. DOGE) of/for the people but in need of more functionality, explained Hugo Philion, a co-founder of the Flare Network.

Although often compared to a testnet, a canary network is live, subject to real-world conditions. It’s a fully operational blockchain with a pre-defined token supply. That supply is kept scarce, by design, as features for Flare (main net) are thoroughly tested, the Songbird team has said.

SGB’s "observation mode" phase concluded in late September of 2021. It was instrumental for deploying and testing the underlying network and the Flare Time Series Oracle (FTSO), which is the first of three protocols that'll eventually "combine to enable approximately 65% the value in the crypto industry to be used trustlessly on Flare with highly scalable Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-based smart contracts,” The Daily Hodl said.

In late 2021, SGB was airdropped to XRP holders.

The breeding grounds on Songbird already have produced FlareX, an experimental decentralized finance (DeFi) platform that as of January 2022 had completed an airdrop of 40 million EXFI tokens to SGB holders as well as to holders of Wrapped Songbird (wSGB), Cointelegraph reported.

Numerous DeFi projects, data providers, exchanges, wallets and custodians have expressed their intent to launch and test their applications on Songbird. These include Gala Games, 888 TNW, Trustline, Global Esports Federation, Delchain, Lena Instruments, Flare Finance, Ola Finance, Flare Metrics and more (The Daily Hodl).

The current price of SGB

As of late February 2022, SGB traded at about $0.06, or some 90% lower than its all-time high of $0.71 reached in late September 2021, around the time Songbird launched. As of Feb. 24, 2022, with crypto in a highly volatile state amidst geopolitical tensions, SGB fell to its lowest-ever level, below $0.05. It began 2022 just below $0.20 and steadily continued to decline, according to CoinGecko.

How the price of SGB is determined

On a Canary network users have a balance that cannot just be replenished at will, the Songbird team has said.

This is in contrast to a testnet which generally has an unlimited token supply.

The defined i.e. scarce token supply may confer value to the token; there is some built-in inflation, roughly 10% in the first year. That will decrease in subsequent years.

What the bulls are saying about Songbird (SGB)

"Blockchain interoperability is, without a doubt, a marked trend in our industry," Panther protocol said in November 2021, revealing that a partnership with Flare would be expanding into the Songbird testbed, described by Panther as "taking a unique approach." 

According to PricePrediction, SGB's price is expected to go as high as $0.093 by the end of 2022.

Songbird could potentially more than double in one year's time, TechNewsLeader said in late February 2022.

What the bears are saying about Songbird (SGB)

"According to our Forecast System, SGB is a bad long-term (12-month) investment," quant-factor-crunching website Wallet Investor said in late February 2022. 

SGB has displayed weak short-term technical attributes while overall its recent trading history suggests that investors are bearish on the token,

Investors Observer said in late 2021.

A "strong sell." That's how CoinArbitrageBot described SGB in late February 2022.