Welcome to another article where I write about my journey playing Splinterlands! Once again, I am well behind on article writing. The end of the season being on a Monday morning certainly didn't help, though I also missed writing a mid-season article. To be fair, we did have hurricane Beryl come through and we didn't have Internet at home for several days, but I also procrastinated a good bit.
Anyhow, back to Splinterlands, there have been a couple of updates to the game and a Town Hall since my last writing, giving me a lot to touch on. The land update to allow delegated and seasonally rented cards was rolled out with little fanfare, considering it sounds like it may be the last big land update for the short-term. The 7th summoner card, for the next Rebellion Conflict also had its information release:
Yes, it is another cat summoner card.
There have been a lot of other small fixes and changes, as usual, but those were the main two items of note from updates. The main item that should be coming up in the next update, per the Town Hall that just happened, is the long touted 1-click rental system for new players. Essentially you can bundle up a set of cards that will be presented to new players to rent with their starting Credits. While this may help the new player experience, I feel like there's still a ways to go in improving the game for new players.
I won't recount all of the changes that have made the game more complex or harder to enter. Instead, let's move on to the title related item, several new proposals are up for the community to vote on. In the first one, the company is asking the Splintershard (SPS) DAO to pay it 600 million Dark Energy Crystals (DEC) in exchange for the profits from 5 promo card sales that will be run before the end of the year. Basically, Splinterlands gets paid upfront by the DAO, which in turn takes the profit and risk for how the sales turn out.
Five promo card sales before the end of the year seems like a lot, considering that they've been doing about one per quarter. But, I guess if they keep them simple, there's probably not too much work involved in cranking them out. Second, there are two competing proposals to either remove, or drastically reduce, the uses for Vouchers. The one to get rid of Vouchers seems to be failing, while the one to remove them from being a discount on most things seems like it may pass. Instead of the current ways they can be spent, the company is supposed to provide Voucher exclusive cards, skins, or other game items on a regular basis.
Third, there are two competing proposals for the SPS DAO to take over financing building an actual SPS blockchain. This was supposed to have been done in 2022, but as the last bull-run was ending and the company had stretched itself too thin in kicking off various project, it seems like the work was never completed. The company is pushing for the proposal they submitted, to hire some former Splinterlands staff to do the work. There is also a competing bid from PeakMonsters, which came in with a lower bid, but also has a caveat that they need to review the existing code before they'll agree to do it at that price.
Finally, the company is asking the Hive DAO to give it half a million dollars for marketing. Hive is the blockchain that the game has been running on, and they have a fund that gives money to encourage various projects in their ecosystem. At the time of this writing, the proposal is not currently passing, with only a few days left.
It is unclear how dire the financial situation is, but there have been some insinuations that the game might need to move to another blockchain or sell out to a new owner without these funds. Though, I suppose if the SPS DAO takes over paying for the developers for the SPS validators, as well as gives the company funds for running promo sales, then hopefully they'll still be operational.
That's about it for news. I did open a couple of Chaos Legion packs that I picked up cheap, to feed that pack opening addiction:
A standard pack, but one of the best rare summoners in it.
A nice pack with two gold foils, one of them being rare!
I did finish this past season in Champion III in Wild format on my main. I hit Silver I on my alternate account playing in Modern, though I may have fallen out of it while playing at some point. I'm still saving Glint on my main, and with the new reward cards potentially coming out "soon", I am also thinking I should potentially save up on my other account too.
I haven't bought any chests from this past season, so really nothing else to share! But, thank you for reading! I'll try to be back on a bit more regular writing schedule again, and hopefully be back in about another week with a mid-season update.