Honestly I love Splinterlands and I've been one of those people that have been in it for the long haul. Putting money in and never taking it out. Which honestly looking back I should have! But that's hindsight and of course I've been looking to the future to of course sell out at least some to recover expenses I've put into it at least. So that's my mindset on the whole thing and figured I would put that out front and center.
Now we all know Splinterlands ran into some major issues about I guess it's been almost three years now or at least two and the restructure went well. However, I'm seeing some rather disturbing things as of late which are making me feel like this is all just slowly dying and we are almost at a breaking point once again.
This breaking point isn't as drastic as the last one but it's enough that it's a constant drag on everything and there's very little to tap into.
I also want to start this out by me writing as a concerned player and investor and not as someone sour or just out for revenge. I'm saying this things so the hard talks can happen, the changes can be made before it's too late.
Asset Prices
The most telling tail of this all I believe can come down to asset prices. Everything and at the core of it DEC peg and SPS value.
DEC peg still has not happened and it looks like it never will. With another massive 1.2 million dollar payout going to the company that will be injected back into the markets it's very clear that the peg for DEC wont be happening any time soon.
This also means the value of SPS wont be moving including the fact that even more printing is going to happen for staking rewards.
I for one agree that there should be staking rewards however I believe everyone would still be fine if you reduced the inflation of them from a 10% apr to something like 5% - 7% it's still a healthy APR and would double the length of time that SPS would be earned from staking rewards. This would also reduce the new supply by a small amount which could help constantly bump prices a bit. A big issue I see happening is way too much being given out for "free". Or change it in a way that those holding staked SPS get 1% of the fees across the entire marketplace could be another option that doesn't negatively effect the economy.
We also see this in card prices. My cards are worth NOTHING. The so called holding older cards would become more valuable because of land is totally out the window including land prices returning to levels they sold at 5 years ago!
If you look at the entire ecosystem right now we are to the point where all value from other areas like land and cards has been completely drained.
The FlyWheel
There's been so much talk and for so long about the flywheel and it's never really happened. Every time it's just about to start or runs for a few hours we get a complete slap in the face which mainly comes from the DAO funds near millions back into the company.
I honestly feel like if we don't soon start to get values injected back into card assets, land etc that people are going to get tired of it and things are really going to start crashing down to the point of no return.
The Bull Run
I find it funny that all this talk about the bull run was going to fix a lot of issues. Well I hate to break it to you but we went from a $40,000 BTC price to $110,000 BTC and so ZERO change. If anything SPS values fell during this time. So to say we are waiting on a bull run is complete garbage to me at this point and you shouldn't rely on a bull run to get yourself into the positive. There's zero reason that Splinterlands can't be profitable right now today with what it has and generate values back into the SPS token etc via market and exchange fees from land assets, cards etc.
LAND
Land to this day still is a slow hardly moving beast. What was sold to us nearly 5 years ago has returned to the same value it cost us and now actually costs many of us more money to generate and run it compared to it actually making anything.
The team needs to seriously refocus once again and start making hard choices.
Things like reducing the inflation of SPS from 10% APR on staking to like 8%, 7% or even 5% you can start small and make moves from there.
DAO
The DAO voting is still a mess. Coming down to a simple yes or no to rather complex or multi level questions that should be happening.
For example one of the most recent ones asking the the LP pool SPS should be added into the emissions of staking rewards for SPS holders. This would bring us to near 2026 end of which at that time once again we will be back in this spot.
The real question should be should the LP pool SPS that is no longer being used be used for SPS staking rewards. Yes or No.
If yes then how long should it be 1 year (seems like the current) 2 years or 3 years. My vote would be 2-3 years and spread it out over a longer period of time with less inflation.
One of the biggest issues with ALL of these types of games, DeFi etc is there's no emissions changes. When markets slow down and things are slow the inflation of the token should be reduced. When things heat up and there's lots of trading going on etc then inflation can be increased a bit. In honest all of these platforms are like mini FEDs that should be changing inflation based on activity levels to keep a well balanced system and not a set once and forget or constantly keep increasing while things are slow further putting negative pressure on the assets.