NEW RANKED SPS REWARDS AND FUTURE OF DEC TOKEN IN SPLINTERLANDS PLAY-TO-EARN GAME

Splinterlands rollercoaster is about to thrill us one more time with another massive update, and this time it is a thunderclap that will change the course of Splinterlands rewarding system into something more lucrative than ever.

Of course, we have been hearing about this news for quite some time and the Splinterlands team had been issuing statements in the town hall meetings and regular Hive posts.

Some of us have already read that update news on the official channel and Splinterlands Discord, but we aim to simply that update and let you understand the upcoming changes in simple words. So, here we go to shed light on the expected big change for the ranked rewards.

SPS REWARDS FOR RANKED BATTLE

Currently, we are receiving liquid DEC tokens for winning a ranked battle and for opening a focus or season chest. Once the new update will be live, hopefully by the end of August 2022, Splinterlands ranked DEC rewards will be replaced with SPS tokens and players will start receiving claimable SPS tokens from chests and winning a ranked battle.

This is an expected update as described in the Roadmap issued by the team. This update is part of the 3rd quarter of 2022 and the update has achieved a 55% of the target according to the Roadmap Docs as shown in the image below.

Update Release Timeline: There are 2 release dates according to the Splinterlands' Hive post, the team will attempt to update the game on Tuesday 23 August, but if any further tweaking or testing required to streamline the processes, then the update will be moved to Tuesday 30 August.

WHAT TO EXPECT IN RANKED SPS REWARDS

Since this is going to become one of the potential changes in the game's reward system, we will observe a new mechanism for receiving these rewards. Following will be some of the changes we need to familiarize ourselves with:

New Rewards: SPS (Splintershards) tokens will be received as rewards from loot chests and ranked battles instead of DEC tokens.

How to Claim SPS Rewards:

• SPS tokens earned in the game through ranked battles and chests will not go directly into the player's wallet.
• Players have to visit the updated Dashboard page to claim SPS rewards.
  
• Unlike DEC tokens, SPS rewards will not be in liquid form, once claimed the SPS tokens will be staked/locked into SPS governance.
• If a player wishes to receive liquid SPS, then he may use the "Unstake" option and wait 28 days to receive 100% of claimed tokens in liquid form.

SPS Reward Structure:
The new SPS reward structure is based on the rewards allocation according to the SPS Whitepaper, initial reward pool size will be 7.5 Million SPS tokens per month.

The reward pool will further be divided into 4 categories and players will receive rewards from that pool for 1) Wild Format Battle, 2) Modern Format Battles, 3) Daily Focus Chests, 4) and Season Chests.

SPS Reward Pool Distribution:
The following table shows the average SPS rewards and their equivalent in USD* amount:

Enhanced SPS Rewards:
If we look at the reward structure closely in terms of USD amount, the players will now receive almost 7 times more rewards than the previous DEC rewards structure. This will provide the players an opportunity to earn more rewards being in higher ranks.

SPS Rewards for Wild/Modern Ranked Battles:
The players will receive SPS rewards for winning a battle in either format according to the previous R-Share percentage and Energy capture rate. Although, comparatively these rewards will be higher than that of previous DEC rewards in value due to the current market price of the SPS token.

SPS Rewards from Focus / Season Chests:
According to Splinterlands Hive Post, the players will receive an average amount of SPS per chest based on their league stature. the following table shows the average amount of SPS tokens a player might earn in different leagues of Wild and Modern format battles:

FUTURE OF DEC TOKEN

As we strongly believe that the DEC token is an integral part of the Splinterlands ecosystem and serves in the game's economy as a core token. If we need to buy or rent anything from the markets, DEC fulfills our needs for various purposes including liquidity pools. It has a strong use case in the game and we think that without the DEC token, Splinterlands in-game and 3rd party markets will suffer a price backlash if served with any other token.

Obviously, DEC token will remain in the ecosystem and keep serving the markets and liquidity pools due to its strong utility. But, we also expect a reduction in the supply of DEC tokens after the new ranked reward update, since the big driving force of DEC tokens will be cut off soon.

This change in the reward system may help achieve DEC token its intended price value of 1000 DEC = $1, although it will take some time, eventually, at some point, the demand for the token may rise due to cutting off the printing source, in this case, the Splinterlands team has developed a new mechanism, which might help the players to cope with the increasing demand of DEC tokens.

Burn SPS to Mint DEC:
Since we have SPS and DEC tokens in the game's ecosystem, SPS for governance and rewards, and DEC for markets, both tokens will play a vital role in the game's economy and also support each other to keep the supply and demand in control.

While the intended price of 1000 DEC should be $1, to achieve this value, the Splinterlands team will introduce a burning mechanism of SPS tokens to receive DEC tokens worth $1 SPS.

But, here is a catch whenever someone burns $1 worth of SPS tokens, he will receive 975 DEC tokens in return and not 1000. This is to control some sort of price manipulation exploits according to the Splinterlands team.

Although burning SPS for DEC tokens may also help reduce the circulation of SPS tokens and maintain the price in long term, we expect a big flow of SPS tokens in the market due to the new reward system.

CONCLUSION

We feel that this new reward system will provide some new opportunities to earn SPS tokens after the SPS airdrop. The reward structure is also beefed up to earn more in terms of value than the previous DEC reward system.

We also expect that the prices of both DEC and SPS to become either stable or increase due to the burning mechanism and governance of SPS tokens.