Today I'm going to talk about a topic that I'm a world-renowned expert at: buying SPS 😅
I'll go over 3 different ways to buy SPS that I've used. For those of you who are already familiar with blockchain basics this will be trivial, but I know a whole lot of people out there who don't know how this works, so hopefully this will help you guys out.
There are plenty of ways to buy SPS, but the ones I'm familiar with and recommend considering are the following:
- Through Hive
- Through alternate blockchains such as BSC
- Through a Centralized Exchange
First off, to decide which of the above methods you want to use, you should have a quick look at liquidity & volumes. These will give you a sense of how much you can buy without moving the price. You also of course want to look at price; since overall we still don't have a ton of trading volume on SPS, the price across different channels can differ by up to ~5%.
Typically when buying SPS I first look at markets on CMC/CG and on Hive Engine.
CMC and CG aggregate various markets in one place but they both have intermittent issues with their data, and neither has Hive Engine markets integrated. However, with a quick glance, you can see which markets have the highest volume.
In this case, PancakeSwap (on BSC) is the best method to use. MEXC appears good, and Crypto.com, BUT when trying those methods out you should always look at the order book on their swap pages (more on that later) to see how much you can get at a certain price. More on that later.
As for Hive Engine markets, I go to TribalDEX. There, I look at the asking price and the volume, but mainly I check the order book on the bottom right to see the sell orders and estimate how much I can get at or near the current asking price.
Ok now let's go into how to actually do it:
1. How to buy SPS on Hive Engine
Buying SPS on Hive Engine is very easy and I recommend using Hive Keychain to do so. The process identical to buying DEC via Keychain, which I did a tutorial on recently.
In a nutshell, the steps are:
(1) Send HIVE to your Hive Wallet
(2) Swap via Hive Keychain
(3) Transfer from Hive Engine to Splinterlands
Since the article I did for DEC covers the steps, I won't repeat all the screenshots here.
2. How to buy SPS on Binance Smart Chain
Binance Smart Chain (BSC) is currently the best place to buy large amounts of SPS, as it has the largest liquidity. You'll still move the price if you buy >$5000 of SPS, but less so than buying through other channels.
Here's how you buy on BSC:
(1) Send some USDT to your BSC wallet (e.g. Metamask or similar). Make sure the network you're using when sending the USDT from your exchange is "BSC", otherwise the default will typically be for it to go to Ethereum.
(2) Swap using PancakeSwap, since it has the best liquidity. Select USDT in the "From" field and SPS in the "To" field.
If you don't see SPS as an option in the "To" field, that's because you need to import it. The contract address can be found on CMC/CG (it's best to always use those sites to copy contract addresses as they're human-verified). SPS's contract address on BSC is 0x1633b7157e7638c4d6593436111bf125ee74703f, and typing that into the search bar correctly suggests SPS.
If you're buying a large amount of SPS, you sometimes may need to increase the slippage tolerance. Again that's due to the fact we still don't have a ton of liquidity for SPS. Never go too high though, unless you're willing to buy for that much higher than the market price.
(3) Press "Swap" and confirm the transaction with your wallet. It typically requires a few confirmations (approving spending limit, then approving the transaction itself). After a few seconds, you'll see the SPS in your wallet.
(4) To move the SPS to the game (so you can stake it!), simply go to the SPS Transfer screen (https://splinterlands.com/transfer/SPS), select "From: Binance Smart Chain" and "To: In game" and start the transfer. Note that if you haven't yet linked your wallet to Splinterlands, you need to do so before proceeding (instructions here).
Currently this process then takes you to an intermediate page where you then initiate the transfer and confirm it via your wallet. The transfer is handled by zkcross and there is a bridge fee.
In case you're wondering whether this also works on Ethereum, the answer is yes it does. However there's considerably less liquidity on Ethereum for SPS, and the fees are higher, so I suggest sticking to BSC for the time being.
3. How to buy SPS on MEXC or Crypto.com
The two primary Centralized Exchanges that support SPS as of Feb '25 are MEXC and Crypto.com. Both of these are well established exchanges that support many other cryptocurrencies. However, the SPS volumes on both exchanges are also fairly small, and the spreads in the order book fairly wide. Let's have a look.
On MEXC's SPS spot trading page, we can see a few things. Firstly, we see the 24h volume in SPS and USDT at the top, which looks fairly large. However, when looking at the order book on the right, we get a slightly different story.
It appears that buying just $5k on SPS on MEXC would spike the price up >10%. That shouldn't happen if there's indeed >$50k being traded each day, however that's what's in the order book. Now I'm not going to accuse MEXC of wash trading (i.e. artificially inflating volumes via "fake" trading) but there's certainly something strange going on.
Now let's look at Crypto.com:
Here we see a similarly sparse order book, but we also see a correspondingly low 24h volume. It appears we could buy 1M SPS without spiking the price more than 1-2%. Certainly looks a whole lot better than MEXC.
Clearly if you'd like to buy SPS on a Centralized Exchange, I'd recommend Crypto.com.
Making a purchase there is very simple. You simply fund your account and then buy the SPS on the spot page. After that, I recommend withdrawing it to your Binance Smart Chain address, and from there you can transfer it in-game using the same method as explained earlier.
Conclusion
- If you want to buy a small amount of SPS (<$500), I generally recommend going through Hive & Hive Engine.
- If you want to buy a larger amount of SPS, I recommend buying on Binance Smart Chain using PancakeSwap. However, you should first check Hive Engine to look at the order book depth.
- If you prefer to use a Centralized Exchange, use Crypto.com, but always make sure to look at the order book depth before buying.
Hope this was a useful guide and that it'll help some people buy SPS! If you have any questions, please let me know in the comments.