Greetings
I have come across numerous articles highlighting the benefits of a particular change. However, I believe it is important to consider the potential dangers it could pose to the Splinterlands ecosystem.
In this discussion, I will also include some mathematical analysis 😆
Potential danger no.1 - Insufficient SPS
Let's begin by examining the total supply of SPS in Splinterlands:
At first glance, it appears that there is a significant amount of SPS in circulation. However, when we refer to the Richlist, we find that:
The top 200 holders possess 359,217,832 SPS.
The top 200 holders have 288,987,363 STAKED SPS.
There doesn't seem to be any reason for these holders to dispose of their SPS, especially since some of them are held in cold wallets.
So, subtracting the SPS held by the top 200 holders from the total supply, we get 397,083,542 SPS available for the rest of the players. While this may seem like a substantial amount, it becomes inadequate when we consider the number of players.
I couldn't find up-to-date data on the number of players in each league. The only available table I found was from last year on Discord:
If you have access to more recent data, please let me know, and I will adjust my calculations accordingly. For now, let's proceed with the available data for further analysis:
One important note: I obtained information about the number of players per league, so to estimate the distribution for sub-leagues like I, II, and III, I simply divided the total number of players by 3.
The conclusion is that we would need 2,098,355,053.09 SPS to sustain the reward levels for all "Wild" players. However, we only have 397,083,542 "free" SPS available. We require at least five times more SPS than what is currently available. Even if we reduce the number of players by half, the demand for SPS would still be significant.
What will happen to the SPS price?
I don't have a definitive answer. It is likely to skyrocket, or perhaps many players will accept the fact that their earnings will be reduced.
Potential danger no.2 - Significant drop in the card market
I have come across statements suggesting that the card market will remain unaffected because players still require cards to play the game. Let's examine this claim, similar to how we analyzed the SPS situation.
From the rich list, we know that the total CP (Card Power) balance is 6,991,647,000 CP. The top 200 holders possess 1,811,797,209 CP. However, the difference between SPS and CP is that CP holders can rent their cards to other players who need them for gameplay or to meet specific requirements.
Now, let's consider some example decks for different leagues:
For Diamond and Champion, I took maxed deck.
And here is the table:
We can observe that the total CP required for all "Wild" players exceeds the current total CP balance. This disparity is partly due to using player quantity data from last year.
In conclusion, all "Wild" players currently require 9.3 billion CP to meet the requirement. However, after the proposed changes, the CP required for a single example deck would be 2.25 billion CP. Even if we double this number, we are left with less than half of the CP that nobody wants.
While some players may have more than two decks, many will not even have a single maxed deck for their league.
Imagine the impact on card prices if we were to cut half of the demand.
Furthermore, these calculations were based on player quantities from last year. Considering that we likely have fewer active players currently, the numbers would be even worse with updated data.
Take a moment to reflect on this. If you are considering selling your cards, I recommend utilizing monstercards.store 😉