Sustainability, and random thoughts about the future of Splinterlands

By belemo | belemo | 12 Aug 2021

Yesterday, Splinterlands went offline for a few minutes for some maintenance and judging by the improvement, they weren't bullshitting.

The Play2earn model that the game has been championing has brought in quite the crowd to slug it out in ranked battles. This interest has led to a lot of glitches and lagging in the game.

I tested out the game yesterday evening and it was printing very tiny amount of DEC for winning ranked battles. However, by the time I played it again this morning, the DEC printing rate returned to normal.

What will happen if DEC printing reduces?

Right now, there's no problem with the rate of DEC printing. If anything, the game is even designed to print more DEC because of that 1k DEC=$1 limit that we've long surpassed.

With that said, I like thinking about what will happen to the price of DEC if printing from ranked battles actually reduces? Will It be good or bad for the system?

At this current printing rate and price of DEC, winning ten ranked battles could fetch you a couple of dollars. However, if printing were to reduce, invariably injecting even more scarcity into the system, the price of DEC could theoretically pump even more.

In this hypothetical situation though, some people might see it as an intentional ploy to make DEC even more expensive. It might not sit well with some people but for investors who have held on to their DEC tokens for a long time, it might be a welcomed development.

This also assumes that players won't lose interest in the game because of the increased scarcity.

Just thoughts about thoughts

Even if we were to inject scarcity, I'm pretty certain that the market will just eat it up and the dollar value of earnings will stay the same. So, we could get to a point when 10 DEC is equivalent to $1 and a ranked battle will pay like 1-3 DEC, depending on rank and capture rate.

I'm quite certain that reducing the printing rate of DEC would work in the long run because of the amount of interest. However, is there really any need to tinker with a working concept?

Judging by the very interest that makes me believe it works, it is also possible for us to get to a point when 10DEC will be equivalent to $1 and we'll still be printing DEC at the current rate of 40-120 DEC per battle. That'll be insane and just the thought of it gives me a stiffy.

Back to reality

I like to play with different ideas and imagine how things would be if something were to change. These thoughts ensure that I'm proactive and that things don't take me by surprise.

Anyway, things are still awesome as they are and while something could go wrong, I'm a glass-half-full kind of guy. Most times, we prepare our minds for things to go bad and act in that manner but Splinterlands has taught me about the importance of also preparing for a best-case scenario.

As you develop a strategy that caters to when things go wrong, do you have a strategy that'll take effect when your bags begin to the moon? Do you have that contingency plan or are you just doom and gloom?