Splinterlands was once the 250th fastest-growing company in the US! This article came about one month before Aggroed was replaced as CEO of Splinterlands by Yabapmatt.
History is always written by those left to write it, but sometimes it kind of writes itself.
Splinterlands was so exposed at the end of the previous bull market... Over hiring, moving in too many directions instead of focusing on the core product (something I wrote about, but I assume others warned as well and were not listened, including the current CEO, from what he tells us), lack of optimization on server costs, marketing team that couldn't do much, etc.
From that position of apparent strength and expansion mode at the end of the bull market, the company needed to quickly switch to a survival mode when the market went down.
Maybe that's a way to run crypto businesses, switching between expansion and survival modes according to market conditions, but here I totally agree with Yabapmatt, that's not what I expect from Splinterlands, which should be beyond the crypto cycle, at least where it comes to regular business expenses and its ability to operate without having the executioner's axe above their neck constantly. You can't even put out your greatest work when you keep worrying about money and if you'll still be around in a few months or not. Not to mention that you would do anything to survive, which eventually leads to compromises and to short term options that affect the long term plan (I admit, Matt is holding his ground pretty firmly on everything so far: quality delivered, long term development versus short term business revenue, no serious compromises - although some may disagree here, but I guess each of us define "serious" in different ways).
For a long time I thought Matt will try to avoid putting out a DHF proposal, to show they can do it without it. But he was on pretty intense pressure to ask for funding from Hive, and those who wanted that to happen always gave examples from other chains. Splinterlands or its team contributed greatly to Hive, and the funding goes to marketing, according to the proposal. Without new blood coming into Splinterlands (and therefore, Hive), the game doesn't have much of a future. Yes, the competition is disproportionate, and VCs throw money at projects on other chains. That don't make those options better for Splinterlands, particularly since Splinterlands has everything built for and around Hive, including the sidechain they initially designed, which suites their use cases for tokens and diesel pools (Hive-Engine) and Keychain, the funding of which was later taken over by the DHF.
But better managed, Splinterlands would be in a better position now and not needing any funding, from the DHF or anyone else. I feel sorry for Matt that he needs to fix things that weren't his doing, and that he is forced to ask for help "humbly" where in normal conditions maybe he wouldn't have asked at all.
So, Splinterlands is asking for 500k HBD from the DHF over a period of 6 months. What I really liked was that they won't outright sell HBD to HIVE and on external markets, thus creating selling pressure.
Instead they'll swap it to DEC in their LPs, and they have an option to convert DEC to USD.
They also have a proposal but with a different scope running for the SPS DAO, asking for an identical 500k USD, which is 40k paid monthly for a year or until the DAO votes against it (this funding is not for them, but for a firm which would work for the DAO). That would take 2 devs working on the SPS sidechain off the payroll of the Splinterlands company.
Hive, I guess we know what to do! The proposal's support is currently at 54% with a few days before the funding should start.