Good morning Splinterfriends,
Today, I have come to a sad realization about Hive, Splinterlands and the ecosystem as a whole.
I wish this was a cut and dry issue but it isn't. It's not black and white. It is a tough moral decision but one that needs to be cast into the light for examination from the Splinterlands Team and Community.
I shall try to write this in a humorous way but I fear that regardless of how I write it, the outcome will negatively affect one or more parties 😓
I have been playing Splinterlands for 3+ years now. Yes... I was one of the CL Apes and somehow... maybe because I am a glutton for punishment... I am still here :)
However, it wasn't until I read a few key posts from @azircon about the Hive ecosystem that I started paying attention to not what I got from Hive... but what I brought to Hive...
In essence it boils down to this... regardless of what system is in play... if too many people show up, collect [Resource] and then ship [Resource] off to an exchange to then convert to [Crypto] or [FIAT]... those people are diminishing the value of said [Resource].
In Splinterlands it was the Bots that played tons of games to get DEC & Reward Cards... which got super overprinted... and their value just TANKED.
I can't believe I came in at the tail end of that :( UGGGGGGGGGH
The Splinterlands team has spent SO MUCH Time & Energy, not to mention Resources, trying to combat these issues because of the negative impact it has on the Game Economy.
Overprinting of Cards = Supply WAY UP thus Price WAY DOWN. Have you seen the price of a Djinn Oshannus?
This is one of the best, most used Legendary cards at 8 Mana... this guy is a POWERHOUSE... but look at those print #'s!!!
Total BCX 117,357! Holy crapoly!! 52,842 Cards?!? $.50 Low BCX PRICE?!?! That's an insanely powerful card for dirt cheap! Why? Printed to DEATH.
Let us examine one more... a common... used ALL THE TIME... Pelacor Bandit... Selling for just above burn value!
Houston... we have a problem... the interesting thing is... so many people focus on those who are taking advantage of a Reward System... we seem to forget... the actual problem is the FLAW IN THE SYSTEM... those who take advantage of it are merely a byproduct of said "Flaw".
In reverse... if that Reward System wasn't there and lucrative... would people have used it to their advantage and our detriment? Nope.
The problem was: There is a flaw, somewhere in the design the Reward System.
In Splinterlands, the cost of this flaw being allowed to proceed for so long was massive damage to the in game economy and the loss of many players as asset values plummeted. These ramifications are STILL being felt as accounts like Philip-Do or whatever burn MILLIONS OF DEC worth of Reward Cards...
The sad reality of it is: Splinterlands had a great idea with REALLY good intentions!!!
With this being said, I believe we can all agree:
Resource Extraction, without any reinvestment, inflow, or meaningful contribution from those extracting the resources... is bad for the overall economy of whatever [System] and those who are actively invested.
As crazy as it may seem... we are a web3 game and we are a Crypto based game... which is run on the HIVE Blockchain... yet as mentioned above, Azircon did some reporting and posted on Hive about it... but the amount of players who have > 100k SPS Staked but teeeeny tiny amounts of staked Hive (Hive Power)...
Ah hah!! Here it is: @azircon/hive-holding-of-splinterlands-players-20
If you haven't, you should probably check out that article...
Anyways, really long story SUPER short... I was whiny bitch back in the day... there were a lot of things that went wrong in my life and I took it on the chin. Again and again and again AND AGAIN...
For all intents and purposes... I should be writing this on an island somewhere, retired, adventuring and doing things for the betterment of humanity. But no. I screwed up by listening to others more than listening to myself.
I found Peak'd as a way to use my creativity and writing skill to "Make Content, Earn Hive!"... I followed the rules (I thought) and would sometimes get a few big upvotes from people like Arcange or Azircon or the Splinterlands account... but even though it says "Not guaranteed to get upvoted"... I was often passed over, despite spending HOURS researching and writing articles about Land, Battles, Strategies, etc etc etc...
So I quit. I came back. I wrote. I bitched. I quit again. I came back... Yes. I am stubborn.
Then one day Azircon had a frank conversation with me on Discord. Some people find this off-putting about him but my Grandfather is Old World German. That's how he talked. No nonsense, here are the facts, deal with it.
I explained my side of things... now... this may come as a shock to some... but if you don't just YELL and call people names... they listen...
Azircon and I had a rather pleasant, if not a bit terse and to the point discussion... but it wasn't a mean conversation. He wasn't being a jerk... On top of that... it was very educational for me!! I learned so much about Hive and Splinterlands in an incredibly short span!!
More importantly, it opened my eyes to viewing Hive from a completely different perspective. I started following a bit more closely, reading posts about Hive AND Splinterlands...
I think we all received a dose of reality when Splinterlands put forth the proposal to the DHF...
To me, Splinterlands and Hive have a Symbiotic relationship at this point.
Could Splinterlands exist without Hive, on another Blockchain? Perhaps?
Could Hive exist without Splinterlands? Absolutely... but some of the major holders of Hive are affiliated with Splinterlands and Splinterlands tx make up a HUGE portion of the tx on Hive...
So what is the best relationship: a Synergistic one!
But the post I linked above shows we aren't very synergistic... yet. While I can't control others... what could I do??
I started stacking Hive. I changed my Author Rewards to 100% HP and started adding FIAT every week. I became a believer... a Bee-Hive-r?
I had set a goal for 10k staked Hive (HP) by 1/1/25 and BOOM look what I accomplished!!
@captaindingus/hive-power-and-sps-updates-where-will-i-end-2024
I know, this is getting a little long winded... and you're probably asking "what's the point Dingus?!?!"
Why on Earth... would anyone, especially the "Whales" support those who are only here to TAKE from Hive?
I had to ask myself... you need to ask yourself...
Are my posts REALLY worth upvoting? Is my content generating enough interest in Hive or Splinterlands to be worthy of an upvote... let alone a 100% Upvote or "Max Upvote"?
Ego aside, most of my content... your content... is probably not as awesome as we believe... because it may be entertaining... is it accomplishing the goal??
What goal? Oh right... you probably didn't have a "goal" when you made the content except "Make Content, Get Crypto"...
Needless to say, I didn't really have a "goal" before... 😬
Ok... no goals... well... I wanted "big upvotes"... we all do, right? Ok... well... what about MY Upvote? Was I staking Hive or adding FIAT so my Upvote became something OTHER people would want? 😬😬😬
Hard to justify a whale giving someone a "Max Upvote" or repeated "Max Upvotes" of $3... $7... $20+... when the account they are upvoting has a max upvote that has been $.001 since the beginning and they have just been taking that $$$ and shipping it off to Binance or somewhere else...
I was that guy... except I wasn't shipping off HP... I just wasn't doing much with it... I wasn't doing ANYTHING to support the HIVE Blockchain or enrich the Ecosystem. My value to the economy was minimal, yet I wanted to receive the votes from the big boys like Rancho, Trafalgar, etc
Over the past 6 months or so... my entire outlook on Splinterlands and Hive has changed. It's matured. All because I was willing to take some constructive criticism and see it for what it was: encouragement.
Yes, the Cabal Lord and Downvote Mafia Boss himself... was actually trying to be helpful - crazy for some people to recognize that... and I must admit... I thought he was being a jerk upon first read... but upon re-reading it... he wasn't being a jerk at all.
He was just super direct and pointed out things I was doing "incorrectly".
Well... NO ONE LIKES BEING TOLD THEY'RE WRONG. But I was. So instead of calling Aircorn a bunch of names... I started implementing those changes and learned some additional Hive etiquette. (Those are all nicknames he been called over the years apparently lol)
We spoke many times about it... and I am still learning, still growing - thanks to a push in the right direction. After all... the Blockchain isn't called "DingusChain"... It's called "HIVE".
It was their community, their etiquette, their reward structure... now... I consider it our community, our etiquette, our reward structure...
Which leads to me to the final issue... and one I am unhappy to write about.
Let me begin this part by saying, I bet this isn't the only area where this happens. But it was one I looked at quite often, as it is/was my favorite... thus it was the one I recognized.
Every week, in order to generate Community Engagement and Content, the Splinterlands Account "Steemmonsters" will Upvote posts via manual curation.
There are several categories such as Social Media engagement, Art Contests, Community Engagement and more:
I personally am very grateful for the support of Splinterlands, Steemmonsters and the Curation Team - thank you for what you do! Without you, growing a Hive account and increasing the community interaction on Hive via Peakd/Ecency/LeoFinance/Splintertalk and the other Front Ends would be very difficult.
Unfortunately... a reward system like this, is very similar to the reward system seen in the game Splinterlands... and can be taken advantage of very easily if one has the ability...
As mentioned before, I am a huge fan of the Splinterlands Art Contests and here is Splinterlands Art Contest Week 328
Something in the back of my mind started to "itch" - that's the best way I can describe it... After a week or so, I recognized what was causing it...
The same people kept winning the Art Contests week after week... For obvious reasons... They are SUPER TALENTED!!!
Ok, not really a problem... so I stuffed it to the back of my mind.
A bit later... I thought to myself... you know... I interact with and upvote a lot of those Art Posts by the Artists each week... I comment, compliment and interact with them...
99% of the time, I received a "thank you" of varying composure.
Also 99% of the time... I did not receive an Upvote on my comments. Which is whatever... I wasn't doing that to receive "thanks and upvotes"... but thinking back to the conversation Az and I had... he mentioned people like Galenkp and Taraz... and how they interact with everyone and are phenomenal at community engagement and GIVING as much as, if not MORE THAN receiving...
So I stuffed that to the back of my mind too...
Shortly after that... another random set of neurons fired and a memory bubbled up to the surface. A screenshot in my mind of something else I saw on Discord... it reminded me of me... because it was literally the dichotomy of old me vs new me...
The amusing part is, I once complained that I wasn't getting very far with my posts, content, etc... even though I wrote stuff and people said stuff like "bro that's hilarious, I love your writing style!!" quite often... I wasn't able to generate consistent upvotes to justify the time investment I was making to write them...
I have changed things, improved things, learned, grown and both the amount of MY Upvote as well as Upvotes I receive... have increased 🐝
The reason I remembered this post, in this content... was because he was talking about the Splinterlands Art Contest...
So that was three pieces of a puzzle that I didn't even realize I was constructing... floating around in my head.
The final piece was when I thought about what else I saw when I viewed the artists profiles over the years:
Holozing Art, Splinterlands Art, Alien Art Hive stuff, so many contests were being entered by these accounts... very similar contests... across a variety of sectors...
Obviously, in my naive state, my first thought was: oh... it's so cool these artists play these games and enjoy them enough to where they create fan art of them!!
For better or worse, that is my default way of thinking about things... See the world through rose colored glasses 😎
Over the weekend I decided to do some looking... one of the coolest things about Blockchains like Bitcoin or Hive... you can see all the transactions, if you know where to look!
For Hive, Peak'd makes it simple:
Step 1: Go to an account profile and click the dropdown next to the "Others" Tab.
Step 2: Click Wallet
Step 3: This is the Wallet Tab... Scroll Down until you see "Power Up/Power Down" on the right side
Step 4: Click the "Power Up/Power Down" box and it will filter ONLY THE POWER UP/DOWN Actions taken by this Wallet [Account] (I'm using mine for this example)
Presto: A comprehensive list of Power Up vs Power Down... so if you wanted to ask the question... "Is this person here to grow as part of the Splinterlands & Hive Community?"... or "Is this person here to extract resources from Hive?"... this is the first place to look...
The second thing to look at (imo) is this:
If you hover your cursor over the word "Stats", next to the Twitter Icon, this infobox pops up with... well... with the account stats!
A. How long have they been around?
B. How big is their vote value?
Comparing Length of Time on Hive with their Vote Value gives a superficial glance at their account value.
This is useful because if someone has been on Hive for 3 years... and their vote value is still .001Hive... that means they have taken every single cent of their Rewards... and extracted them from Hive.
The biggest reason this is a "bad" thing... is because it creates "Sell Pressure" and drives the price of the Hive Token down. Worse yet, it means the Author sees no value in Hive, except as a means to generate income, at our expense...
I mean, even going into the Bull Market Cylce, the only difference I made on my Author Rewards is that I switched back to 50/50 HBD:HP so I could continue to power up while at the same time creating some liquid rewards in case Hive does something crazy!
So what did I find when I started digging...? Let's take a look at some of the more frequent winners. I won't name them, but you guys can go take a look for yourself, it's REALLY EASY to find them.
It seems, pretty much across the board, as fast as they receive Hive, they unstake it and extract it.
The entire reason I even bothered to look into this was this:
When I read that... I immediately stopped scrolling and thought: "Wait a minute... these packs are pretty rare... what if... WHAT IF THEY DON'T EVEN PLAY THE GAME?!?!?"
A couple of clicks later over to Peakmonsters...
Yup... buncha Rebeliion cards, couple of Rebellion Packs and NO SPELLBOOK
Another account...
Six Rebellion Packs... No Spellbook...
Another one...
ARE YOU F#$%#$ KIDDING ME????? No Spellbook... FIFTY ONE REBELLION PACKS!!!!
Account Stats:
WHAT ABOUT POWER UPS/DOWNS?!?!
Transactions...
It would seem my favorite weekly activity from Splinterlands has been perverted into one giant Resource Extraction Farm 😭
I believe we can see that these accounts exist for the sole purpose of extracting Hive from Splinterlands, Holozing and every other way imaginable...
If so... you may be wondering WHY I kept them anonymous. You may be wondering WHY I didn't blast them all over Hive for everyone to see...
The answer is simple: I try to be a decent human with some empathy and compassion.
Before you turn into Tarsa, grab Grum and the Boyz and march the warband off on a WAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHH! Hear me out.
Was I pissed off to discover this - yup. Did I feel "cheated" or "robbed"? Sure did! I want those Rebellion Packs!! I PLAY the game! I have so much in CL and CL Airdrops and CL Reward Cards, it isn't funny... I have put THOUSANDS of dollars into cards, thousands more into land, more into SPS, etc etc etc... yet... they are Extracting thousands of combined dollars worth of Hive??? Winning REBELLION PACKS? WTF?
But there is one other thing most of these accounts have in common... and it's the reason I didn't go Bananas like my friend @sharkmonsters...
Hahaha jk, Sharkmonsters isn't a raging lunatic but their name is "Bananas" in Discord. #puns
Because many of those accounts also share one more thing in common: a lot of them are from Latin America.
It quickly occurred to me: "I have often dreamt of acquiring enough wealth to retire to a beach in Latin America... you wouldn't nee much income..."
So then I thought: "Oh no... what if THIS is how they put a little extra aside... what if this is how they feed their family? What if this is their way out of the rat race that seeks to consume us all"
Do I believe the Reward Structure needs to change, especially on the Art Contest Challenge: YES. IMMEDIATELY!!!
FOR GODS SAKE PLEASE STOP GIVING AWAY REBELLION PACKS TO PEOPLE WHO DON'T EVEN HAVE SPELLSBOOKS!!!
As for the "Rewards" via the Manual Curation Team... I don't know what to do. As a community we must weigh the Pros/Cons and the Cost/Benefits...
The first question that immediately jumped in to my head was: why do we have these Art Contests?
I am not sure about the why... but I really enjoy seeing what is created! I think it is a marvelous use-case for Hive (when it works as intended):
"You there, art community, please create works of Art centered around this "theme"... and you can earn money for doing it" - this is AWESOME. So many artists would LOVE this!!
The next question is: What does Splinterlands GAIN from these Art Contests? I am not certain but I believe it definitely needs to be answered...
The third question is: Why are we giving out these rare Packs to people who turn around and sell them or open/keep them... but don't play the game?
The fourth questions is: What does this cost Splinterlands and HIVE, knowing that almost 100% of the Curation Rewards given out through these Art Contests are then extracted?
The final question is: What happens if this continues vs What happens if it stops.
If it continues, I suspect much won't change, especially with the looming Bull Market... It would technically alleviate a tiny amount of sell pressure... but I think it is negligible on the grand scheme of things.
If it stops... these people... not bots, actual humans... people... lose a revenue stream that is ~$20-$60/wk... To us... that may be trivial... to them... that may be how they feed their family... pay rent.
I don't have the mindset "they live in Latin America, they must be impoverished!!" That's bullshit.
But I have traveled a significant amount... I have visited places where $10 goes a LOOOOOONG way... So maybe that 100 Hive per week is the difference between having an apartment and being homeless...
Or maybe it's just blown on Bottle Service at der clerb who knows...
Either way... there's the data... 👀
I think the Splinterlands Team, Curation Team and those in charge of making decisions like that need to know the information.
As a "Thank you" please feel free to send any and all Rebellion Packs to @captaindingus lmaooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo just kidding.
That's all I have for you today folks!! Thank you for reading and I would LOVE for you to join me in game!!
Naturally, after everything leading up to this moment, I do think Splinterlands and Soulkeep are some of the BEST web3 games out there!
They bring the #play2earn feature to the forefront of development as well as many opportunities for people to earn rewards - whether Player or Investor!!
If you're interested in the future of gaming, it's worth checking out!
You can sign up here: Splinterlands
Cheers 🍻,
- CaptainDingus
#Splinterlands #Hive #Soulkeep #play2earn #web3 #NFTGaming #Rebellion #Conflicts #TowerDefense