I love Splinterlands. It's a fun to play game, and having greater control of in game assets is a plus that's provided by blockchain. I'm really excited to see the project grow. But I'm also really worried. The primary focus of discussions used to be playing. What cards are best? What strategy is best? Right now, almost all discussion is focused on price action. There's very little discussion about the game itself. It's not surprising considering DEC is trading at 7x its normal peg, and prices of cards are blowing up.
But to ensure that these prices are sustainable, the game needs one thing: a constant influx of new and active players. Unfortunately, most people are still new to crypto. It might be easy to get a new player on board, with a little help, but if they're going to actually buy assets, they'll need to add some cash to their account. Easy, when fiat options didn't require you to give the company your identifying information just to pick up some cards using fiat.
This choice, while protecting the company, also hurts the game. It slows the rate of onboarding, when we need as much onboarding of active players as possible. New registrations are not enough. We need new active players.
I do understand the issue of fraudulent transactions, but Splinterlands should either find another third party payment processor, or work with Paypal to reduce this issue. One option would be to set a limit for unverified purchases. Most systems that require KYC have this: $100 or less a day? No problem. No KYC needed.
I want to get as many new players into the game as possible, and I know that I'm going to have a lot of trouble explaining to a new player, who isn't really accustomed to blockchain based systems, why they need to provide a photo ID and a selfie just to buy some cards.
Again, it's great that the SPS token and DEC are "blowing up" and that prices of cards are going way up, but we need to make sure that people can play the game and have fun otherwise this whole thing just becomes a Ponzi scheme. And that's not what I want from a game that I love.
Final reminder: If the current meteoric rise in prices for game assets has you on edge and wondering if it can continue, get more players into the game and keep playing to keep the ecosystem healthy.