A few days ago I was happy to invest another $850 into @splinterlands, now I'm not so sure!
@splinterlands recently announced that they are going to reserve 27000 of the first 30 000 plots of land from the first pre-sale for individuals or pools buying whole regions (1000 plots in one go), with only 3000 plots left for those interested in buying tracts (100 plots) or individual plots.
This now means that most of the cheapest land in that first pre-sale is going to go to large buyers, rather than smaller buyers like myself, and a further corollary is that smaller buyers are now more likely to have to wait until the steeper prices in the second or third presales.
There's quite a difference in price:
- Presale wave one: a tract costs 850K DEC
- Presale wave two: a tract costs just over 1M DEC
- And the full market value for a tract is apparently going to be 2M DEC.
I get the argument for giving the largest discounts to larger buyers, as they're taking more of a risk, but this has left a bad taste in my mouth, and a lot of other mid range accounts too judging by some of the comments on the announcement post and the Discord chat recently.
And by 'small' I mean accounts with over $1000 invested, so actually not that small at all!
I feel as if I've been promised something at a certain price, then that changed to 'potentially' at that price with the three waves (which weren't mentioned first off I don't think) and now it's 'you'll probably need to buy that tract for another 200K DEC mate'.
Now, until this announcement, honestly, I was just going to get online in a few days time and just BOOM invest another $850 in Splinterlands, and now I'm thinking 'fuck that' if that's how they regard my middle of the road money.
The plan was to buy a tract, guarantee myself a Keep, and a couple of dozen plots in the same area, and then sell/ gift the rest, however, now I'm not so sure as this announcement also made me look more carefully at the maths behind the risk of buying 100 plots....
I'm not sure they'll be that much demand for land
There are going to be at least 150 000 plots available in total (NB I think there are more, that's just what is for sale, there's the uniswap pool Land to add on I think), but let's stick with the 150 000 figure.
There are only just under 6000 active players. October saw almost 0 growth.
Many of those players are either too poor or don't care enough to even buy one plot of land, many more might buy just one or two, so that accounts for maybe 10 000 plots in total. I think I'm being generous here.
Around 300 players are very active, playing tournaments, these are the ones who will want larger stakes, maybe even whole tracts each, but given that you are going to have to pay to build things on the land, and maintain the land, and stake monsters, most of these accounts simply don't have the funds to manage anywhere near a tract.
Simpler maths tells me there is currently enough land for 25 plots per 'real player' (150 000/ 6000). That sounds like about what I intuit what I'd want, and I'm one of the more active and invested players.
Whales will buy and have to sell cheaper than expected
I think that's a very likely outcome from the pre-sale, several months down the line.
Of course we don't know how land is going to work exactly, but it looks like there's going to be costs associated with doing everything, and that's going to limit the manageability and profitability of land.
And more importantly I don't think there's going to be that much demand for the stuff, given that practically every player I know is going for a small-in during the pre-sale.
It might be more profitable to keep my DEC in the liquidity pool.
I originally put 500K DEC into the liquidity pool then pulled it out thinking I'd want to buy a tract, now I've put it back in again! I'm on for around 25-30 plots with my stake, possibly more if a good wedge of that DEC gets pulled out for pre-sale one.
And no, I won't get land in the same region, I might not get a Keep, but I figure I'll probably be able to swap land/ trade at a small loss and buy 20 contiguous plots on the market for not much more than I'd get them for in the presale.
I mean, remember the Untamed Kickstarter - the prices of the packs ended up being half what you paid for them during that!
I'm still undecided
I might still buy a tract in the pre-sale, I've got a couple of potential pool offers but TBH this announcement has left me a bitter, more over a little analysis of the lack of growth of the game has really made me think twice about investing this much.
The next couple of weeks might just be a good time to sell a good chunk of my DEC, this might well be the peak of excitement over land!
Finally, very finally, there are LOT of unknowns about this land pre-sale purchase... that might be the nail in the coffin for my tract purchase, well that and the zero growth in the last month - there's going to be precious little demand for any artefacts that come out of the land usage as far as I can see.
My hunch ATM is that if I buy a tract, I might just be forced into selling most of it at a loss in 2021!
HONESTLY, up until that announcement, I was HAPPY to invest another $850 in the game on trust, NOW I'm not, not at all.
In fairness to the @splinterlands team, they don't have to offer anything at a discount to anyone, there are options for everyone with a little DEC to get something, and it's up to us individuals to make our own risk assessments and buy, or not buy accordingly.
At the end of the day, I think what's really lost me is the fact that they mentioned (never promised in fairness) a price and then kind of reserved that for the larger buyers, leaving only a very small possibility of smaller accounts getting a tract or plots at the same price.
I can't stand that one rule for the rich and another for everyone else mentality.