SPS sliding again? I thought Splinterlands had gamed this one.

So my last post was prior to Splinterlands shifting from collection power as determining rank to requiring the staking of SPS.
Here's that article: https://peakd.com/hive-167922/@methodofmad/sold-the-sps-bought-the-hbd-what-about-the-license-nodes

As usual, my luck was not great.

I sold SPS at it's lowest point and a few days later, Splinterlands changed the rules of the game to goose up SPS. I am not complaining, but it is hard to make good decisions when the underlying structure changes. So for a few weeks, SPS took a nice bump up. About 30%. That's because players needed to buy SPS or lock up SPS to maximize rewards. And the only reward that is tradeable at this time is SPS.
So what happened?

SPS is sliding again. Sure, market is down some, but not that much. SPS has dropped nearly 20% since the bump. I think the issue is players who play to earn are selling SPS again. And there's really no new players to lock up the supply.

I sold out at $0.0164 and SPS has slid back to $0.0176 as of today. Will it keep sliding? I think so, but of course, I was wrong before. And check out the APR return above for SPS staking, it's at 12.43%. HBD is 20% and Hive curation makes about 12%. At least according to this article https://peakd.com/hive-167922/@taskmaster4450/the-strong-apr-of-staked-hive-over-12

So just on staking value, SPS is struggling to keep pace with Hive and lags greatly behind HBD.

Why will SPS slide more?

The supply keeps increasing and Splinterlands will have to goose up the system again (maybe require even more SPS) to earn maximum rewards. But you can only go the well so many times before you hit bottom. Each higher requirement tends to make the entry point more difficult for new players.

And what did the changing from collection power to SPS for ranking really do?

It's a balloon, squeeze here for constriction and watch a bulge elsewhere. However, the actual amount of air is the same. The squeeze was on card values. Since players need less cards to reach higher levels, the rental market tanked. And now the value of cards is sliding as well.

Do you remember the original premise of Splinterlands? Play a game. Earn NFTs (cards). Trade and sell those cards for profit. Maybe land will come out. Maybe that will make cards, NFTs, more valuable again.
Or maybe it will be just squeezing the balloon again.

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