Sparkle is BitShares + Proof of Work consensus rather than DPOS.
The Sparkle test network is live and because we want to test the mining system we have decided to honor the block producers in the real chain. Thus you can mine (but not trade) Sparks today.
Mining will never be easier and the announcement of the December 14th snapshot of PTS has already pushed the price up.
https://github.com/sparkle5/Sparkle/releasesThere is a Mac build but no windows build at this time. We are actively looking for someone to maintain the windows build. This will be a paid position once the block chain is live.