Hello all 
lover and Hive friends
Hope everything is good at your end.
The Staked Splintershards(SPS) token requirement instead of collection power for better ranked rewards in ranked play has been implemented in Splinterlands. The implementation went smooth and completed on time during the scheduled maintenance.
The Splinterlands team has already informed to the community about the upcoming changes well in advance and some of the active players were already accumulating the SPS token and taking the advantage of low price.
SPS Requirement in Ranked Play
The update were implemented with some changes and not as I understood from past publication by the officials account of Splinterlands team. I was assuming that the Splintershards (SPS)staking will be the must in the update. The players can play the ranked battle play and earn rewards even without the staking SPS but to get the better and more rewards the player must stake the SPS token in their wallet or can get the delegation from the market. Their is no requirement of collection power to play in any league, but of-courses in higher league the better is to play with upgraded cards as the other players will also play with league compatible cards. That means to ensure the win in higher league the card will play a major role and is must requirement if we talked about the game play.
Now the question comes into mind that So what are for the new update?
SPS as Multiplier factor in Ranked Battle Play.
As I mentioned in above para players are allowed to participate in any league regardless of their collection power. The league advancement is depends on the rating so more the rating means you can jump to the higher leagues. What here one twist has been added. The formula for calculation the ranked points has also consider the staked SPS in players wallet. If player do not have any SPS then also players will receive the rating points but rating points will be less as compare to the points earned by the players will good staked SPS in wallet.
You will see some changes in the battle page as the two new highlights shows the Boost and the Rate.
The boost in rewards is determined by calculating a multiplier factor based on the amount of staked SPS tokens in a player's wallet, including any SPS tokens delegated to them. However, the tokens delegated out by a player do not impact the earnings from the airdrop based on the staked SPS. The boost is likely designed to incentivize players to stake their SPS tokens and potentially buy/rent more SP delegations from other participants. By staking their SPS tokens, players can earn additional rewards or benefits based on the amount they have staked.
The Rate shows the rating points will be earned on next battle win.
The below table shows the staked or delegated SPS requirement to achieve different multipliers at various ratings based on the formula.
As observed for the table the their is not any requirement for Bronze III League (no multiplier if you staked 0.001 SPS taken). The moment player will entered in Bronze II the staked SPS play its role and the reward multipliers some in effect form 2x to 12x based on staked SPS token. For higher leagues like champion I the stake SPS requirement varies form 24387.50 to 1271901.71 for 2x to 12x rewards. The requirement is huge and at preset SPS market price it is more then 24K USD.
But keep in mind that the multiplier will be also increase ranked SPS earning which means the higher the staked SPS, more the SPS rewards from the ranked battle
The staked SPS increase the multiplier factor but the final rewards are still effected by the card used to play the battle. The cards of lower level in higher league has the negative effect on overall earning so it is not all about the staking SPS, the cards suitable for the league is still important.
Player can check the card requirement for different leagues by clicking on league as shown in the below picture.
I am battling in the Gold league so Lets check the card requirement for the Gold League (for full earing requirement).
Based on my understanding, if the player used the lower-level cards (lower then the requirement) that do not meet the specified requirements they will be panelize by reduction in rewards. For Gold League Gold League, players may be expected to use level 5 Common cards, level 4 Rare cards, level 3 Epic cards, and level 2 Legendary cards in order to access to unlock the full rewards.
SPS Delegation
The SPS delegation market is also enable along with the new SPS requirement update. The users with the spare SPS has option to delegate SPS to other players for three week. The un-delegation is not automatic so payers has to manually un-delegation the token. If forget to un-delegate the other will get the benefit lol.
The SPS delegation market is also a new way of earning the passive income. At present the most of the bids ae place at 0.008 DEC per SPS for one day, if we calculate for 3 weeks then this will be 0.168 DEC. The delegator will get the three weeks rent in advance and the SPS will be locked with the runty player. the changes will chage the splinterlands tokenomics.
I am using two alt account to play the game and those two accounts also have good card collection which are competitive to play in Silver league but to unlock the better rewards I have to delegate the SPS to the alt account. Will do some calculation to get maximum out of my holding. The price start increasing after the new changes implemented but at present it is slightly lower if check the last 24 hour data.
I have some GF legendary cards spare and I wanna rent them out. If you are interested in renting those cards for long term please feel free to contact me by commenting on this post.
What are your views let me know in comment section.