Inspired by @seattlea's recent post entitled "Why Splinterlands Players Should be More Involved in HIVE Blockchain" I wanted to do a post that showcases the various ways one can earn in @Splinterlands as well as give some specifics on my personal earning experiences in the game. Of course, none of this is financial advice. Make your own decisions on what to do with your money.
Preface - How I Hive
Now before I go into this, I want to preface by saying that I completely agree with @seattlea, as well as @azircon who's been preaching the message for years now: Hive is wonderful and largely underrated and misunderstood. I don't claim to fully take advantage of it by any means, but over the years I've developed my content strategy, engagement, and reputation and have frankly had a blast. Early on, @azircon made a comment on an article of mine saying "You have a natural talent. You should explore this side of you even more." That article was entitled "Interview With a Reptilian", and I used AI to create images of Grund and accompanied the images with a pretend interview of the character, which I tried to make entertaining... This comment from AZ, along with many other encouraging comments from others, have motivated me to continue exploring new content creation and continue engaging on Hive, and the journey has been extremely rewarding, and I'm not even talking about the actual monetary rewards (which ARE motivating and rewarding) yet, but simply the community and engagement aspect of things. Ultimately I'm highly motivated to create GOOD content on Hive for multiple reasons, and I've reaped a lot of returns from doing so, which I don't take lightly. I highly encourage others to explore their passions and translate them into content on Hive, and to learn more about Hive in general. I also encourage people to follow Azircon and read what he writes about Hive, as I've learned a lot in that process and believe you can too.
Alright, now, on to Splinterlands!
Ways I Earn In Splinterlands
There are so many different ways to "earn" in Splinterlands. While at the surface it's a card game, when you look deeper it's a gamified economy. I love the card game and get a ton of enjoyment from that alone, but I ALSO get a ton of enjoyment from other ways to "earn", such as rentals, because to me that's also a game, and excelling at the various ways I can manage my resources to continue improving my position in the game is both challenging and gratifying.
In the next sections I'll explore the various areas I'm currently "earning" in while participating in the Splinterlands ecosystem, and share my personal data as well. I do want to stress that is NOT intended to "show off". All of it can be seen on-chain anyways. I've put a lot of funds into this game over the years, though not as much as some others, and therefore I do think it makes sense that some of my returns are somewhat proportional to the investment, but I take nothing for granted and keep working and hustling like everyone else. Instead, I hope this can serve as motivation for others who are looking to expand their involvement in the game.
All of the earnings estimates below are based on a value of:
- 1 SPS = $0.007
- 1 DEC = $0.00075
1. Ranked Battles
Starting off with some basics: I have 3 accounts in Splinterlands: @bravetofu (my primary account), @lordtofu (my "Wild" account which I also use for rentals), and @holotofu (A GF UT account I created back when I bought someone else's GF UT collection...). The first is the one I use for pretty much everything I do, with the other two being legitimate "alts" that allow me to delineate certain things (like my rental collection as you'll see) and participate fully in both Modern and Wild.
I play manually (myself) in Modern on bravetofu, while lordtofu and holotofu are botted in Wild using xbot. As I said before, I love playing the game itself, and plan to continue to do so in Modern.
In all 3 accounts, I buy an extra 25 energy each day (using Glint) for a total of 49 energy per day. I'm able to do so sustainably because at the high Champion tiers, and with a lot of staked SPS, my Glint earnings can fun that extra 25 energy per day. I estimate a win rate of 60% on bravetofu and lordtofu and 55% on holotofu based on the past few seasons, and my earnings per battle in each are dependent on the card selection. Each account has enough SPS delegated to it to max out the reward multipliers. In total, I make about $9/day or ~$270/month in ranked across the 3 accounts.
2. Ranked Leaderboards
It may not last forever, but at the moment you're able to earn DEC if you are in the Top 50 in either Modern or Wild each season. I don't rank all the way at the top but am usually in the 25-50 range for Modern with bravetofu as well as in that range for Wild with lordtofu, which means I earn a total of 80k DEC per month (2 seasons * 20k * 2 leaderboard spots), or ~$60 at the current DEC price.
3. Brawls
I participate in nearly every brawl for the 3 accounts I have, in each brawl cycle. I'm fortunate to be in amazing guilds that are in the top tier of Brawls, which means higher rewards. However, the financial rewards are relatively small at the moment when it comes to SPS itself. Instead, it's the merits from Brawls I'm more interested in. Regardless, I'll include the SPS earnings here for completeness.
On average in each of my guilds I'd say we earn ~250 SPS per brawl cycle, and there are 6 cycles per month (each lasts 5 days), so each account earns about 1500 SPS / month from Brawls, for a total of 4500 SPS or ~$31.50 at the current SPS price.
4. Tournaments
I have times where I participate heavily in tournaments, and other times where I don't participate as much as they can be quite time consuming. However given I have a large collection and enjoy participating in the higher level tournaments, I try to make it a habit of participating in as many as time allows me to, focusing mainly on my primary account for this.
Over the last month, I've made a total of ~$193 from tournament earnings. Note this is "revenue" and I haven't included the DEC entry costs.
5. SPS Staking Income
This is my largest earning bucket in Splinterlands, though over the next few years it will decrease as staking phases out. Currently the APR is ~10% though I believe that includes Vouchers, which I am excluding from my calculations (more on that later, but I don't assign any value to vouchers). Also, the APR is dropping so to calculate a fair APR it's better to average it down. Estimating a 7.5% AP, my 42M SPS currently give me a staking return of ~$1800/mo.
6. SPS Validator License Rewards
I own 19 SPS Validator licenses, which are currently providing rewards of ~18% from what I can tell, based on the current cost of a license on Hive Engine and the SPS emissions they provide. They give rewards from a specific pool, as well as yield vouchers (which again I'm not valuing here). As a result I'm earning ~$72/mo with my licenses.
7. SPS Rental Income
There's been controversy about whether SPS should be rented, but personally I think it's a good thing as it makes earning in Splinterlands more accessible. I won't get into all the details, though there certainly are some potential improvements that could be made (e.g. owned SPS being more valued than rented, putting price thresholds, or controlling automation to ensure equal access to the market). In any case, I do current rent the SPS that goes beyond what I need for my own reward multipliers, and at the current market rates of 0.001 DEC/SPS/Day the yield is approximately 3.85%, which nets me ~$490/mo.
8. Card Rentals
There's also controversy around card rentals, and philosophically my position is the same as for SPS - I believe rentals are a great feature for accessibility. In any case, this article is about earnings. I have a collection of mostly Chaos Legion and Rebellion cards that I rent out from my "lordtofu" account, and that is currently earning me ~$340/mo, with an APR of roughly 12.5% based on the current market values of the cards being rented.
What Else Is There?
I haven't included LAND in the above, because I currently don't earn on land. 100% of my plots (I only have ~100) are currently farming either grain or research. I do occasionally get totems from my harvests, but I mostly stack those to increase my production on land, so I don't consider any of it to be earning. I am excited about what Land will bring in the long term and may in the future consider this to be a source of "earning", but for the time being it's a passive mode I hope will bring new dynamics (namely items and spells) in the future.
I also didn't include VOUCHERS at all in the above sections, despite getting handsome yields from my SPS staking and licenses. The reason I exclude those is that I like the company's definition of them as "access tokens". I use them in the Voucher shop to buy cards, which I could put a price to but for simplicity have ignored here, as well as because I turn those cards into either assets I play with or in some cases rentals, which are accounted for above.
Lastly I didn't include CARD FLIPPING, i.e. buying assets and selling them (hopefully) for more than you bought them for. That's because it's just not something I actively participate in. In general, I think I suck at flipping. I've tried day/swing-trading (both in traditional markets and cryptocurrencies) in my life and am mostly breakeven. My "investment" money comes from buying things I have high conviction in and holding it for years/decades. Therefore "flipping" doesn't appeal to me, and I don't do it.
Summing it up
Adding this all up, I'm currently making ~$3,300 in "revenue" with the various activities I'm doing with my Splinterlands accounts. ALL (100%) of it is currently being reinvested into the game. Of course, as I've said at the beginning of the article, I have heavily "invested" in Splinterlands, so none of this is free money. I also spend a lot of time on Splinterlands (playing, moving assets around, buying/selling, managing my collections, onboarding new users, etc.). I have enormous conviction in this game. I know the risks, but I'm passionate and committed, and working in my own little ways to try to help the game and ecosystem grow.
I hope this article inspires some of you to find new ways to explore and earn in the Splinterlands game economy. And if you spot any weird data or have further questions, please post them down below!