If you guys have been hanging around in the discord you know that arguments and discussions are always happening, and yesterday while Troy G (
For those who don't know, Aggroed is a founder and the CEO of Splinterlands, and before I show you what he said about it, I want to provide context for those who aren't as familiar with the Guild System, and how it all works.
Guilds and the DEC problem
Guilds are a feature of Splinterlands and for you to create a new one you must pay 10k DEC. Every guild have structures and each structure provide something back for the guild and/or guild members.
The Guild Structures and what they do:
- Hall: It determines the number of players and the level that you can upgrade any other structure.
- Lodge: Provides DEC bonus from battles and Shop discounts.
- Arena: Larger arenas allows more players to participate in Brawls, and allows guilds to participate in higher brawls too.
- Barracks: Barracks give you Tactics, which provides advantages for your team when in a Brawl.
- Store: Store provides you with bonus Merits from Brawls, and the higher the store the higher the Merits.
Now, the problem that Troy G. was point out is the fact that prices for upgrading structures haven't changed since the guild system was introduced to Splinterlands, and that has a lot of implications. Since upgrades can only be paid in DEC that means that although the DEC price hasn't moved, the dollar price has increased more than 10x if you take the DEC price of today as a comparative.
As of the time of this writing DEC is priced at $0.0106, compared to the $0.001 pegged, which the guild prices were based on. For the purpose of time, I'll round DEC price as $0.01, exactly 10x the pegged price from now on.
That means that if you want to start a new guild when the DEC was at pegged value you'd pay around $10, while at today's valuation of DEC you'd pay ~ $100.
The 10k DEC that you pay to start a guild is not that much and could easily justify it, but once you go into the structures of the guild things get considerably crazy.
Take the Guild Hall as an example. This is from the Guild I'm in, and to take the Guild Hall from Lvl 7 to Lvl 8, it would take 500K DEC. Meaning $500 if the DEC was pegged and ~ $5,000 in today's valuation.
That same pattern will follow from all other structures in the guild, and although the Hall is the most expensive one, everything else is inaccessible just as well in today's prices.
To sum all up, that is what Troy G. was trying to address that day on Discord, and you agree or disagree with him, but the solo fact is that prices as they stand today are a real problem if you want people to participate in Guilds and all the social interactions that Guilds provide, such as Guild Brawls, which are a lot of fun!
Splinterlands Position
I believe that what aggroed says here summarize the Splinterlands position in any matter relating to game economics, and although I don't agree completely, I do understand their stance.
Splinterlands tends to remain neutral in all things related to prices, and the "Let the market do its thing" is the main approach. If you agree or disagree with that, I totally understand, and in my opinion is great to be reassured that founders won't be changing economics drastically and we have to give them credit for it. The other side of the argument is just as true, and the problem itself was pretty much created because founders didn't really foresee the growth, development and explosion of prices. In a way, it's their mistake to fix.
One of the solutions would be to put the price of upgrading structures in Dollar and the amount could be paid in DEC, SPS, or any currency they find reasonable, always fluctuating accordingly with the USD price of the upgrade.
Hopefully I presented both views truthfully, and feel free to comment any doubts, corrections or complements.
Governance is coming?!
As we interacted with Aggroed on discord, the concept of Governance came up.
Although I completely agree with letting the stakeholders decide, as of now this is not a feature of Splinterlands. And when asked about dates, I was quite surprised by Aggroed response.
Yeah, you're reading it. We can dream of having governance implemented by the end of 2022. That is crazy fast, we haven't even experienced the whole of Chaos Legion, and Land is just around the corner too. That only reinforces my conviction that 2022 will be a huge year for Splinterlands, and if you blink you'll miss it!
The Challenge of Governance and How Hive will Help
As governance arrives several challenges will be presented to the community, and discussions will have to be handled a lot better in the future. One thing that will become more and more relevant as time goes by is the distribution of SPS among players, and you can check that out on Splintercards Richlist. But that only shows the top 200 holders, and we'll need better data, which I'm sure the community will gather from Hive.
More important than the data itself, we'll need communication, and this will be the key for a bright future. I truly believe that Splintertalk can provide a great platform for people to materialize their vision and ideas for Splinterlands. The blogging environment can quickly reach lots of players, and as the player base grows, I expect that so does the Splintertalk network.
Splinterlands future can some times seem slow since we're daily playing and experiencing little changes, but once we zoom out for a second it is clear that things are moving faster and faster. Chaos Legion is upon us, Land is next. Governance is coming, and we don't even know what else!
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