The Splinterlands Energy Fix

OK, so energy isn't broken. You get 24 per day and then you can burn DEC for more. Lord knows we like to burn DEC in Splinterlands. How else would we get SPS to pump?

But I'm going to suggest that we stop doing it. Let's stop burning DEC and not bother implementing the voucher discount they are planning. Instead, use an asset we get from the game — food. Or specifically grain we grow on land.

Feeding your monsters

The purpose in grain on land is to feed your monsters so they can work. They need food for energy. But in the card game, for some reason they don't need food. Instead just burn some DEC and they can play more. But I personally find that to be boring, and only shallowly beneficial to the economy because it doesn't encourage players to get more involved in the game. It's just pay to play more.

But what if we instead needed to burn grain? And grain is grown on land. And land of course is limited and requires locking up lots of assets.

Land the savior

Land was supposed to be the savior of the economy but so far there's only about 15% utilization and it's been stagnant for months. Land is not saving anything and cards are back at an all time low. If land is going to work, it needs participation.

If the only way to play the card game more is to utilize the product of land, whether yours or someone else's, you tie both economies together and give more aspects of game play greater value to more players. Many players right now have no interest in land at all but would if building up a few plots gave them ongoing extra energy to keep playing.

And once they got a few plots up and running, what's to say they wouldn't decide to bring up a few more in order to sell grain to others, mine $SPS, or just go all in on some research?

If we could pick up land utilization from 15% to 20%, that's 500 million DEC and 50,000 maxed cards taken out of circulation. On the flip side, how much DEC is currently being spent for more energy? I have no idea but even if its 1 million per day (which its probably not even close to), it would take 1.5 years to get 500 million off the market. And burning DEC for energy does nothing to remove cards.

It's about more than just land though

Using grain also means that players can sell each other energy. This was the spirit of land. Being able to use your old cards to produce new assets you can use in game or sell to other players. It also means grain becomes more scarce and valuable. And when the grain LP starts up, it will be much busier and more profitable to participate in.

Dynamic pricing is always better in dynamic markets

If lots of land plots open and grain goes down, it means people can play more for cheap. As play goes up, grain goes up encouraging more land to be brought online and more cards and DEC to leave circulation. And if you don't want to worry about fluctuating grain prices, you can just open your own plots. This means land comes online as more people want to play the card game but it also means the price of playing more games can fluctuate as the value of playing goes up and down. Right now the price of 1 extra energy in gold is 50 dec (5 cents) regardless to whether a win is worth 1 cent or $3.

Dynamic Pricing in a bull market

And this dynamic pricing makes a lot of sense when we're talking about the upcoming bull market. With the ranked changes, we're about to start getting more SPS per win in modern (and there's a growing rumble about banning bots from wild). With the bull market looking like it's coming quickly, we could be looking at not only more SPS but much more valuable SPS. Some people are talking about 10x more SPS per win in modern.

Let's say it's 5x and we get to 10 cent SPS. Right now gold can make 5+SPS per win so suddenly we're at 25 SPS at 10 cents each for a gold player. That's $2.50 per win. A 50% win rate on 24 games means a player is making $30 per day in SPS alone or $1.25 per game played.

So with that in mind, what are extra games worth? I'd argue its way more than 5 cents in burned DEC. Instead of 5 cents in DEC, it could be 500 grain. In todays prices grain is about .03 DEC if you buy it on the secondary market. It's 1 dec if you buy it through the game (but why would you do that right now?). So if we said 500 grain, you could play more games for a heavy discount of about 1.5 cents instead of 5 cents for gold. If we extrapolated that out, a champ player would burn 5000 grain or .15 cents instead of the current 500 dec or .50 cents. I know I'd be buying grain for my champ account right now at these prices.

But what if a game in gold was worth $1.25?

Grain to the moon means a Splinterlands life spiral

If a game in gold was worth $1.25, secondary market grain prices could skyrocket all the way up to around 1 dec (the price you can buy it from the game) because even at that price, it would cost only 50 cents to play a game worth $1.25.

What does this high value grain do in the economy and game?

Well in a raging bull market it makes playing an extra gold game cost 50 cents instead of 5 cents. Most of that money goes to players and to fees in the LPs. Some might take that grain money and buy plots instead if there are any being sold.

Land plots spike in value massively as people want to set themselves up or get in on selling grain for close to 1 dec each. Land adoption pulls tons of cards and DEC out of the economy, decreasing the supply just as demand is spiking. That could of course push SPS up further as assets in the game become more desirable and more people need to stake SPS to get those assets.

The LP explodes into profitability which puts us in the crypto spotlight and attracts more players, land buyers, and vital liquidity. If there's one major thing Splinterlands needs to be relevant in the mainstream, its liquidity.

It leads more people to just buy grain from the game by burning DEC. After all, if a gold game pays out $1.25, burning 500 DEC to get 500 grain is still very worth it. And that's 10x the DEC burned as they'd burn under the current system. All that goes back into the value of player owned assets.

About the numbers

Now, 500 grain for a gold game is just an example but you get the idea. If you compare this to the current system of burn a little DEC for extra games, you can see that there are a lot of advantages to using grain instead. By my math (feel free to check me) a common natural plot with 5 maxed gold common monsters from chaos legion and no bonuses would give you about 2400 free grain per day or about 5 extra plays per day. If you were a champ player, you'd need to get a little fancier or have more plots going. You may need to buy a few #runi also.

What are your thoughts?

Whether you're a small player who wants a discount on playing more while grain is cheap or a whale who has lots of land and would love to see more value given to their grain, this seems like it could be beneficial to everyone right now. But what do you think?

Would it change anything for you? Would you bring some plots online while they're cheap that are dedicated just to free energy so you could play more now and in the bull market? f you have lots of land already, would you like to see more value given to your grain? If you don't have land and don't want to buy any, would you buy grain at todays discount and play more?

If this did get you to play more (or even run a bot for more games) would that encourage you to stake more SPS or rent/buy better cards in order to make the most of it? Let me know in the comments.

All images courtesy of chatgpt. I love the calculator in the last one.