Introduction
Hello, People of Praetoria and Hive!
Over two weeks ago, I made my first post introducing myself to this community. I would like to further elaborate on my story and discuss how I have been progressing in this journey. Link to previous post HERE. I will start with current milestones with Splinterlands and then discuss the steps I have taken in building my Hive account.
It has been almost four years since I first experienced the fantasy world of Splinterlands unaware that I am also being welcomed into the Hive ecosystem as these two go hand in hand. All I knew about Hive was the Keychain extension that I needed in order to rent and buy cards and other Splinterlands assets. For the past few weeks, I have been exploring this blockchain and ecosystem, learning new things almost everyday! I am also meeting new people along the way and some of them I have made friends with already!
I find Hive really fascinating especially the social media aspect of this space via PeakD and similar dapps I have yet to explore. Voting for articles that interest me and responding to comments that provide feedback and constructive criticism seem like a great way to pass along information and provide value, completely redefining what social media should be.
I have always thought about expressing myself through writing but never had the urge to do so until recently. Please join me in my journey as I wander through this digital environment in hopes of revamping myself and collaborating with other adventurers through this next generation of social media, literature, finance, and gaming!
Splinterlands Assets
As previously mentioned, I have been playing the game for almost 4 years. This experience hasn't always been smooth sailing as it was obvious there were plenty of ups and downs. Some were related to the decisions and changes made to the game. Some were related to the crypto market in general.
A lot of negativity has been expressed and spread, further complicating the optics toward the game. Lots of big names have liquidated some or most of their assets. Still, though I have to admit that sometimes I let the negativity get to me, I kept playing the game and investing in assets knowing that someday, I will be thanking myself for being headstrong and resilient. Let's see where I currently am.
Staked Splintershards. I did a thing.
I remember reaching my goal of 100,000 staked Splintershards or SPS to help me get decent rewards while playing Ranked battles. Over time, my SPS bag just kept growing, and growing, and growing. I got these tokens from buying some off the market, from staking rewards, from daily chests (mini jackpots from a while ago) and tournament prizes, from owning a Validator Node License, and from mining SPS via Land, which we will get to later in this article. Today, I have reached a milestone of having 250,000 staked SPS!
This may not be as impressive as other accounts with millions of staked SPS. For me though, especially since Splinterlands was my first exposure into cryptocurrency, this is a big deal. I never thought I would own this much SPS. There was a time when I bought SPS near the all-time high. If we were to reach that token price again, I would be a very happy man, and I'm sure others can say the same. We don't know what the future may bring but for me, I'll keep on stacking.
Card Collection and Ownership. I did another thing!
When I was first introduced to the game, I only rented cards in order to play. I would select a few cards from 2 or 3 specific Splinters as I was trying to make at least my money back from rental fees and enjoy the game while at it. Over time, with the help of a couple of Youtubers indirectly influencing my decisions, I developed a desire to own the cards I play with and I slowly and painstakingly started to bring in more money into the game to purchase these.
I started with two or three summoners and some key monster cards just leveled enough to compete in Gold League. This was during the time when Untamed was in Modern and the release of Chaos Legion was just right around the corner. I remember trying to buy enough packs to get a guaranteed 1 BCX of Dr. Blight and then buying more off the market for $100 per BCX! Remember how much vouchers cost at that time?
Today, I own almost 7,000,000 in Collection Power. A long way from renting to play and earn! I used to purchase cards I wanted/needed multiple times in a month thinking I'm getting a good deal. Weeks later, I'll find other cards that look like a better deal than my last purchase so I end up buying more. Sometimes, I regret my decision to buy right away and other times, I don't. Just really depends on the market. Nowadays, I have been more selective with my purchases since money doesn't grow on trees. Still, I think I have come a long way from owning nothing to now owning this much. Also, a lot of these purchase were for Monster Cards now assigned to Land. With this much CP accumulated, I was granted access to the Splinterlands Discord's Card Collectors Channel (exclusive to accounts with 2.5m CP or higher).
Land as Digital Property. Add this to the List!
I have always been "big" on Splinterlands land. From the day I was informed that there's digital property that will soon be included as part of the game, I knew I had to get my hands on some of them. If these virtual lands were to mimic real life land, then there is so much potential in this type of asset.
Unfortunately, I wasn't here yet during the land presale. I got into the game when Plot tokens were selling on Hive-Engine for almost $400 per token. I remember buying a couple of Plot tokens early on just to have future land I could call my own. I eventually got 10+ Plots and waited patiently for something to happen with it. When the time came to claim and survey these plots, I had the chance to join two separate group surveys with popular social media personalities in the community, in order to boost our chances in getting the minimum rarities per a 100-plot survey. Remember when @aftersound got himself a Keep in Area 51? I was there!
Fast forward to today, after the price of claimed and surveyed plots have plummeted to their all time low, I now have almost 250 Plots of land of varying rarities. Even though I only have a bit over 50 plots that are active, I know one of these days I will get the opportunity to activate more. Who knows, someday, other people might even be able to farm my land or utilize the building I have built on my property!
Going back to comparing these digital properties to real life land, we know that we cannot "build more land." Same thing with Praetoria. There will only ever be 150,000 plots available! Once the game developers start building more infrastructure and updates to land, these prices will surely increase in value. Similar to real life. If any development is built somewhere, adjacent properties tend to increase in value. This is how I envision Praetoria.
Hive Blockchain – Point of Origin and Future Plans
I didn't know much about Hive except the things related to Splinterlands. Neither did I have much experience with blogging. Social media, for me, has gotten really exhausting nowadays. I used to try to post often and try to keep up with day to day happenings with friends and family until one day, I just didn't feel like posting anything at all and has stayed that way for a long time. I still have my accounts active and I still check my feed from time to time but very seldom I post or comment on anything there. If friends or family needed to reach me, they can use the chat or the messenger component of the app. Or they can just simply call or text. The main reason I reactivated Twitter (now called X) was so that I can follow Splinterlands news and updates without all the negativity from Mav Chat or Tavern.
Aside from gaming, I have known that there's a social media element to this blockchain. Whenever people would post news regarding Splinterlands, it's usually a PeakD or Hive.Blog link. I would check these links and read the articles I find interesting. I didn't think I would eventually also start posting here expressing my thoughts and ideas mostly about Splinterlands but come to think about it, I can pretty much post about anything!
The deeper I dug into discovering this ecosystem, the more I realized how much I'm missing out on! There's so many articles I have read recently but this post by @seattlea is one of my favorites that I have bookmarked and used as a reference as to why I need to be more involved with Hive!
From that post:
The reason why you as a Splinterlands player should get involved in Hive is because Splinterlands will pay you three times more money for participating on Hive than you can earn in Splinterlands with an $8,000 investment. And no investment required to earn on Hive.
- Every Splinterlands player should be taking part in Splinterlands posting contests on HIVE
- You can take up to 50% of these rewards and invest in Splinterlands Assets
- Consider the fact that same money invested in HIVE will outperform earning in Splinterlands at this time so it might be worth it to get involved in HIVE more seriously
Did I get your attention? Then read on...
So reading on, I did. Who doesn't want to earn more than what they are currently making?
I have to say I was so impressed not only by the quality of the content, but also by the realization of the financial incentives brought by adding value to this ecosystem! This inspired me to finally "upgrade" my account by getting more Hive Power. I sold some Splinterlands assets and received Hive tokens in return. I know that the more HP I have, the higher the value my votes are worth. I want to keep building onto this so I can reward articles that keep me engaged and comments that provide useful feedback better.
I think this is a decent starting point for a Hive newbie like me. I plan to keep building my account and add value by exhibiting "good behavior" in this ecosystem. My Post Reward settings are currently set to 50% HBD and 50% HP. What I'm doing with my HBD, I do not know yet. I just might reinvest them by converting these to Hive so I can accrue more Hive Power for a better influence score! What do you think?
Final Thoughts
I have grown my Splinterlands assets over the years and now I want to do the same with my Hive account. As mentioned above, I try to learn new things everyday by exploring more and more of the communities in PeakD and navigate through this Hive space. I read different articles to further understand what it means to create quality content. I have started to interact more with people by responding to their posts with questions or just general feedback regarding my thoughts on the matter. I would like to be better at this and hopefully you can follow along and guide me through this journey.
I hope you guys enjoyed this article! If you have questions, comments, or feedback, please let me know! Let's all learn and grow together and set each other up for success! Vonak! Together We Thrive, Kapamilya!
