In 2018 I started playing a new blockchain game that had just recently launched on the Steem Blockchain. This game was called Steem Monsters, and it has since become the rebranded Splinterlands and has moved to the Hive blockchain.
The overall look and feel of the game has not changed much but the overall user count of the game has exploded, and we now know these cards to be called NFTs. I remember earning cards and battling other players and enjoying the overall experience the game provided. It sure was a lot easier to earn packs of cards back then.
Fast-forward 3 years later and here I am again, logging into my account and figuring out all the things I have missed. One area where Splinterlands had taken huge steps forward compared to when I last played was the card editions. My card collection included a few Alpha editions with most of the collection being Beta cards. There were 52 cards in total and many of my cards had been leveled up. After spending some time and calculating the value of these cards and how the airdrop rewards holders of Dark Energy Crystals (DEC tokens), I decided the best path to maximize overall rewards from the airdrop was to sell the cards!
My thinking behind this move was simple, with the cards in my collection I would receive around 10,000 airdrop points per day, which was based on collection power of almost 10,000 and about 350 DEC tokens in the account. Based on the airdrop rewards I would receive about 1.5 Splintershards (SPS tokens) per day in rewards. With the current price of SPS I would be earning about $1 per day and about $250 throughout the remaining airdrop. This wasn’t bad and it's almost free money, but I thought I could maximize this further.
The Collection Value Sure Grew From 2018
I estimated my collection of 52 cards to be worth around $3000 USD or about 250,000 DEC tokens. With that amount of DEC tokens in my account, I could generate about 260,000 airdrop rewards points which would equal about 31 SPS per day. If I was to earn 31 or more SPS per day, that would equal about $14 per day and total about $3500 over the remaining 250 airdrop days. What a huge difference from the $250 I could have possibly earned in the first scenario.
The exciting part about what you can do from here is, every day I earn more SPS and can transfer more DEC and SPS into the DEC:SPS liquidity pool and earn double the rewards on the DEC within those pools. You see, during this airdrop there is a lot of value in holding DEC tokens and being rewarded very generously for holding the tokens.
Now the downside of selling my collection is, of course, I do not own all the cards I once had but I thought of that as well. As the airdrop nears completion there will be a huge rush to sell large amounts of both DEC and SPS that players were holding to increase airdrop rewards, once those rewards stop, some of that money might leave the game. I am planning to sell off all of my DEC before the airdrop finishes, let the token dip, and then as they say, “buy the dip”. This should increase the amount of overall DEC I would have previously had without a further investment of cash. I could then purchase any cards I want in the marketplace afterward, while still capitalizing on the airdrop rewards!
What If You're Wrong?
Now this plan could backfire, and the price of DEC might not drop like I think it will and buying my cards back might be more expensive than I think. If that turns out to be the case, I don’t need to buy all 52 cards back, I can simply buy the specific ones I would like to hold in my collection. The prices for cards could see a sharp increase once the airdrop is finished because people don’t want to part with DEC right now and lose out on the airdrop rewards. With the airdrop completed, you could see the DEC crystals find their way over to the marketplace and drive card prices higher.
Well, that is the system I decided to use, every day I add my airdrop rewards into the DEC:SPS liquidity pool and increase my overall airdrop rewards points. I hope this gives all of you something to think about and I hope it can help someone in maximizing their rewards from the airdrop.
Let me know in the comments what you think of my strategy and how I might have done it differently. I will be writing a post in the next few days showing step-by-step instructions on how to move your SPS and DEC into the liquidity pools further increasing your airdrop rewards.
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