Splintershard Airdrop
As most of you know, Splinterlands recently announced that they will be creating a governance token. The governance token will be distributed in a variety of methods, but the one that has everyone the most excited seems to be the Airdrops. According to the whitepaper, the airdrop will be distributed over a multi-year period, to accounts in proportion to the Splinterland assets that they own. However, there are a ton of different asset types, each with their own cost, airdrop value, and utility other than for airdrops. This post will compare each asset type based on their price and their airdrop value.
Airdrop Value of Assets
The below chart is from the whitepaper, and shows the airdrop value for each type of asset. @nealmcspadden has created a great calculator which will allow you to input your assets to see how many airdrop points you will qualify for.
Airdrop Value per Dollar
But what if you want to buy more assets in order to increase your airdrop allocation? What is the most cost effective way to do that? I have created the table below showing each asset type, its cost, its airdrop points, and the cost per airdrop points. Many of these assets can be bought in either DEC or USD. DEC is supposed to maintain a peg around 1 cent each, so I am assuming 1 cent per DEC for now - I may create another version showing other DEC prices for a second iteration. For assets that are currently for sale directly from Splinterlands, I am using their sale price assuming no guild discount. For assets that are no longer for sale, I am using their current market value as shown on Hive Engine.
Maximizing Your Airdrop Points
So what does this mean? Clearly, not all assets are created equal when it comes to Airdrop value. DEC and Splintertalk tokens are far and away the best value. This makes sense, because they have no other in-game utility (good job Splinterlands team). If you're holding DEC/SPT, you are getting airdrop tokens, and that's about it. If you're holding other assets, you can, ya know, actually play Splinterlands with them.
After DEC and SPT, the next best bang for the buck is land, especially if you are buying in bulk to get the discount. A tract of land nets you 667 airdrop tokens per dollar. The card packs are worth significantly fewer airdrop points per dollar, especially the out of print ones which are trading at inflated prices.
What About Card Collection Power?
You may have noticed that I left off card collection power from the chart above. This is because the value of cards differ drastically from each other, based on their power in the Splinterlands game. For example, a Giant Scorpion is trading for $0.022 on Peak Monsters, while a Serpentine Spy is trading for $0.091. But these are both Untamed Commons, and so have the same burn value and same Airdrop value.
To get a sense of the ranges that cards are worth in the airdrop, I've created the table below showing highs and lows of Untamed cards of each rarity. This table could be expanded to include gold cards and other sets.
This chart shows that the airdrop value is all over the place - but that some cheap cards are almost as good value as DEC (and better than land). In general, the cheapest cards come in around 500 airdrop points/DEC, which is similar to land and better than the Untamed Packs that the cards come out of.
Conclusion
So what does all this mean? Of course, everything is dependent on the value of the governance token, and by extension the airdrop points. If they are not seen as valuable then all of the above doesn't really matter. But let's focus on a world in which the governance tokens are valuable. For simplicity, let's just say that each airdrop point is worth a net present value of a tenth of a penny over the life of the airdrop (note that this is completely arbitrary).
So, the value of every asset would go up according to the number of air drop points it is worth - see table below.
The value of all of the assets goes up, but some more than others. DEC and SPT double in value. Land plots get a 60% bump. Boosters get a 30% bump. Remember that these increases are in addition to other increases in value due to their actual utility or due to scarcity.
What Does The Future Hold? 3 Predictions around Splintershards
These are early days, and it is impossible to know how the Splintershards update will play out. These things may end up worthless. But, I have 3 predictions on asset prices based on the analysis above.
Card values will increase more than they otherwise would have. Because the increase will be based on DEC value, not card utility, we will see a narrowing of values (in percentage terms) between the lowest priced cards and the rest. Good news for the Flame Monkey!
DEC will break its $0.001 peg - to the upside! Owning DEC (holding and providing liquidity) will be the best way to get airdrop points. This will become even more true once the land is gone. The assumed airdrop points value could push the DEC value well above $0.001. As a result, you will see a ton of people buying DEC and holding it for the airdrop value. As the airdrop nears an end (one year), these people will need to unload the DEC and the price will head back down.
Peak monsters will have to deal with a bunch of people buying credits and then self-dealing in order to convert the credits to DEC.
- The airdrop points will reduce the number of packs that are held but not opened. People are hoarding Untamed packs in the hopes that their price will rise once they sell out. In general, the Untamed packs are worth less in airdrop points than the cards inside of them. It is a lot easier to hold the packs indefinitely and watch the price go up when you aren't losing out on airdrop value for each day that you do it.
That's all for now, let me know what additional analyses you would like to see, and if you have any thoughts, disagreements, etc. on the article above.