Future of VOUCHERs in Splinterlands

In one of the previous town halls (maybe the last one), Matt said something needs to happen with VOUCHERs because as they are the source of continuous work for the team and more problems for the other tokens in the ecosystem. He also said he would prefer to have them gone, rather than a solution of compromise, but that he is opened to see the proposals that come up.

In the meantime, two proposals were drafted for a potential resolution of the VOUCHER-generated issues.

Source

In one of them, Hive account@cryptoeater proposes to "sunset Vouchers into DEC-B". Voucher inflation would stop completely, and all VOUCHERs in-game would be automatically converted to DEC-B at at rate between the market value of VOUCHER and its shop valuation (higher). Also, all VOUCHER-related use cases would be removed, except VOUCHER on Hive-Engine, which would remain tradable (when bridged in-game they would be automatically converted to DEC-B). The author mentions a number of community members worked on this proposal, including Matt.

The author(s) identified as cons:

• a reduction in rewards for SPS stakers and license holders
• potentially a short term negative impact on the price of DEC by the influx of new DEC-B (proposed solution: burning through it with 1-2 new promo cards)

The other proposal comes from Hive account@thepeoplesguild and they propose to turn VOUCHERs from existing utilities to having a use case in the Glint Shop (items that can be purchased exclusively with VOUCHERs). They even gave an example: to keep a few reward cards from the next soulbound reward set that can only be purchased with VOUCHERs in the shop.

They identify as a pro of this approach that SPS stakers and license holders don't lose a portion of their rewards. By comparison, the other proposal says the loss in rewards will be compensated by an increase in the price of SPS on the long term (by bringing DEC to peg and then activating the flywheel effect that supposes SPS being burned to create more DEC and bring it back to peg once it gets over it - in practice, this only happened once, for a short while, after Land 1.5 was released).

My Opinion

I believe technically and from the workload point of view, the first proposal makes sense. It also makes sense that VOUCHERs should stop take away from DEC utility. Reducing complexity for newcomers, I believe that should happen too with VOUCHER gone. I doubt it would lead to the SPS flywheel effect, if passed. Land 2.0 might.

It is however a proposal that probably won't pass, for multiple reasons, some of them being a matter of principle: this space and its community reacts quite adversely when something already earned (including future rewards) is taken away. And we've seen a number of such moves at Splinterlands in recent years.

The second proposal is... more of a premature band aid that came as a reaction to the first proposal. While there aren't enough desirable items that can be sold in a VOUCHER-only shop and that don't affect the gameplay too much (like cosmetics) - because if they affect gameplay they can create serious differences between the ones with large quantities of VOUCHERs and those with a few or none - having such a change doesn't help much. There is also the argument that such a shop would compete with DEC and Glint shops. I guess depending on implementation, it can or it can't.

Personally, I think I'll vote against both, not that it matters too much. Between the two, the first one is better thought out, but I'd rather not see something removed permanently when a better solution might come up in the future.