SPS & Voucher Prices Continue to Tank
The lack of actual use case in the game and a really high print rate of both makes it so that they continue to tank. There has been a whopping -99.7% Drop since the top around 0.90$ which honestly isn't a fair comparison as the price was crazy influenced by the farming rewards at the start which gave crazy returns. A similar scenario is playing out for GLX now.
The GLX Airdope these past 50 days however has been pretty good, 100k Staked SPS, when sold daily, gave around 1280 Hive (~376$) which equals 10% based on the SPS value at the starting date (4100$) this value however came down to 2759$ right now. This return would have been higher when just selling the hive for dollars daily.
One of the main issues of a low SPS price is that it gets the game in a downward spiral as it is the main reward token giving players lower earnings. Lower earnings mean there is less demand and prices go down, this creates more selling pressure and the complete opposite of what happened during the crazy hype Cycle.
While things might continue to go down, I'm not selling and just continue to play and accumulate right now. The total circulating supply market cap of SPS is only 22.5 Million while the full supply now is around 78 Million.
Demotivated Players are Capitulating
We've seen multiple players leave our guild and the game all together while others aren't particularly motivated to play brawls and such. Personally, I still see another adoption wave at some point where the entire spiral mechanism reverses again. I also think that the next adoption cycle might be the last one as it gets increasingly hard to top the previous one as exponentially more players need to come in each time.
Splinterland Company & SPS Dao Conflict of Interest
Once of the things I really don't like is the fact that there is the company of Splinterlands and the SPS Dao as this just brings a huge conflict of interest. Basically right now, the company makes profit in order to run the business and it throws some bones to the SPS holders where it can. It's no coincidence that things started going down once this notion was put in place that part of the profit was supposed to go the SPS holders. I also don't like how the proposal votes are very selective.
Creating a Chaos Legion End-Year promo at dumping prices and another promo card which further dilutes the total cards in circulation doesn't require a community vote, same for the entire release of Runis. It's also classic that these cards are pretty overpowered just to give enough incentive to bring money in for the company.
This makes me wonder if the idea of having Soulbound Reward cards will be a community vote or if it just will be brute-forced into the game by the company.
The way is should be optimally is if the company also just was an SPS holder instead of having these double standards. If would be normal for Splinterlands to have the majority of SPS and the community in a way being small shareholders in the company.
Rebellion Expansion Buy Incentives & Chaos Legion Prices
With Chaos Legion packs now going for as low as 1.5$ and cards that are included on average being worth less, it's hard to see why old and new players would buy Rebellion packs since it will be cheaper just to get the older cards and play. There will always be a core audience of players that want to get in just for the fun it provides. I can see a situation where they introduce a crazy power creep just to boost sales.MAX Level Decks Should Not Be The Norm
Right now at current prices, it feels realistic to have a Max Level Deck as the norm in the game while this is not supposed to be the case. The price that this costs to get from opening packs at shop prices without much of a discount is just insanely high and only obtainable for the whales. This pretty much is the complete opposite compared to the peak of the hype cycle where it was nearly unaffordable to get most of the cards at level 1. Personally, I'm not letting this influence me to get my summoners and cards at higher levels.Possibilus The Wise is Fun!
Soulbound Reward Cards
At this point it feels like it's already set in stone that reward cards will be soulbound going forward without any vote or so attached to it. Personally, I would use new reward cards as a way to give SPS or Vouchers an actual use case one way or another. It would also be nice if reward cards were added to the game one at a time instead of just all together. The problem with soulbound cards is that they likely will disincentivize players more making the negative spiral stronger.Out Of The Box Ideas
This is more thinking out loud about ways to possibly give SPS more use cases and value in the game. What if it was possible to delegate SPS and lease it (similar to how Hive is leased on dlease.io) and allow players to mint starter cards based on their relative value on the market. So the SPS you have staked or delegated to you gives a certain amount of points that can be used to get these cards to complete your deck leveling the playing field without using these cards earning you reward points. Also a system where Reward Cards when opened have a certain chance to turn from soulbound into real reward cards based on the SPS staked or delegated could work. Those looking to invest in SPS without playing the game will have a way to get a return this way while players have more reasons to stake SPS or lease it in an affordable way.
Land Expansion
I have not claimed my 12 land deeds yet and honestly still have no strategy for it. My main suspicion is that the land plots themselves are supposed to the smallest cost in the process of minting Items & Spells. From what I have heard, the devs feel they already gave back the value of the land purchases with the SPS airdrop and now the SPS Rewards. Most likely The cost in DEC / SPS / Vouchers combined with the cards needed to put to work on your land is going to be heavy making it take a while to earn this back from the spells & Items quickly.
The question also remains how fun the actual spells & Items will be once they are implemented into the game and how much demand there will be since this yet introduces another cost for players that want to get into the game. The problem also is that the devs already got their money from the sale which is the main reason why it took so long. If this releases around a similar time as Rebellion, there will be another conflict of interest. I'm thinking of taking some profit on 2 land plots also because I likely am not going to be willing to put a lot of extra funds in to level up buildings and such.
Conclusion
Right now, it feels like we are getting in the complete opposite zone compared to the peak of the hype cycle. The supply is just way too big for the demand creating dumping prices and a situation where max level deck are becoming the norm. There also is almost no use case whatsoever for SPS and Vouchers which continues to tank their prices. While all this makes the sentiment quite bad, it also most likely puts the game in a situation where there is plenty of opportunity for those brave enough to jump on it. I'm still quite confident that the game will survive the bear market and start thriving again somewhere in the future when the spiral mechanics reverse again. In the end, it always comes down to more new players coming into the ecosystem in order to sustain the economy and possibly make it boom again.
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