SPS Proposal: Allocate up to 30 million SPS to pursue exchange listings
7b14e264dfa6a97f13abba538b17fba64fb6cc18
Burn transaction: https://hiveblocks.com/tx/7b14e264dfa6a97f13abba538b17fba64fb6cc18
Proposal
The SPS DAO authorizes Blockchain Founders Fund (BFF) to spend up to 30,000,000 SPS on Exchange listings.
Purpose
Exchange listings provide more exposure to the SPS token and have the potential to bring new eyes and new investment into our community. Regional exchanges can add value by acting as a FIAT onramp for their user base while larger exchanges can generate excitement and exposure to the token that is difficult to achieve through other means. In summary, exchange listings are an important mechanism to gain new awareness of the SPS token, increase liquidity and provide new onramps into our ecosystem.
Execution
Should this proposal succeed, BFF will proceed with negotiations to get SPS listed on additional exchanges within the following criteria:
Up to a total of 30m SPS may be utilized.
- Up to 30m for either Binance or Coinbase (Top 2)
- Up to 7.5m each for any other top 10 exchange
- Up to 2.5m each For localized exchanges that support FIAT on-ramps
The allocation for 30 million SPS will be good for 1 year of this proposal receiving full DAO approval. Unspent SPS after that time elapses would need a renewed proposal from the DAO.
BFF will provide the above negotiation services at no charge to the DAO.
Background
This proposal has been crafted and approved by the Splinterlands' Community Leadership Council.
Both the community and the Council have become more familiar with BFF since the first proposal on this topic was crafted. To recap who BFF is:
- BFF is a large asset holder in the SPS ecosystem and has been responsible for each of our previous exchange listings (Gate #9, Crypto.com #16, Huobi #17, MEXC #19, Bitrue #24)
- They have significant experience negotiating in this space
- They are offering their services for free in order to help the DAO achieve its mission of promoting the SPS token.
While getting either Binance or Coinbase may be a long shot for even this amount of money, the Council believes that both the timing and the dollar amounts are reasonable for the benefits that could be achieved by additional listing(s) at this time.
The above being said, we have also heard objections from the community about the timing, the amount of SPS involved, and the readiness of the game to take advantage of new eyes and new funds entering the game.
From a timing perspective, Splinterlands and SPS have weathered the bear market much better than many other projects in the space, and our overall stability makes us an attractive listing at this time. BFF shared that based on preliminary discussions, exchange listing fees are currently at historic lows and that the fees are likely to rise faster than token prices. As an example, fees were as much as 90% higher during the height of the last bull run. The Council believes it is worth pursuing listings now to take advantage of these circumstances.
30,000,000 SPS is almost $900,000 at today's prices and the Council agrees that is a lot of money. However, 30,000,000 tokens is only 10% of the SPS that was set aside for the DAO in the whitepaper and is less than half of the SPS that the DAO has already earned from sales of the Riftwatchers' mini-set. Riftwatchers still has $10,000,000 in packs on the market which will likely lead to at least 150,000,000 additional SPS entering the DAO treasury.
In addition, Splinterlands has committed to releasing a mini-set that will be sold for DAO revenue with each main set for the forseeable future. 30,000,000 is a lot of SPS, but the Council has worked with the Splinterlands team to make sure any tokens spent for this purpose are fully replenished by the selling of future mini-sets.
Should this proposal succeed, it would likely be 1 to 3 months before the first listing(s) could be realized. This would allow the company time to:
- Release important parts of land 1.5 providing more use cases for cards and DEC
- Roll out various upgrades to the new player experience and streamline the onboarding process
- Maximize opportunities presented by token listings to onboard new gamers and collectors into the community.
The Council believes that the increased utility of assets and continued focus on improving the Player Experience would help increase retention of new players and collectors reviewing Splinterlands and SPS as a result of successful exchange listings.
Conclusion
The Splinterlands' Community Leadership Council is confident that pursuing exchange listing(s) at this time is a good use of DAO funds. Further, we are confident that the company is committed to improving the New Player Experience, the onboarding process and the game itself to make sure that the ecosystem receives maximum benefit from the proposed DAO expenditure for listing fees.
We ask that you also support this proposal, but also look forward to engaging with you in the comments and in the various discords where we all congregate and discuss.
Thank you for participating in SPS DAO Governance @spl.council!
You can place or monitor SPS Stake Weighted votes for and against this proposal at the link below:
Link to this Pre-Proposal
Updated At: 2023-03-24 15:06 UTC
I support this proposal primarily because of this amendment to the original.
While I'm no expert on the value of exchanges, I've heard positive things about their potential impact. But since 30m SPS ($900,000 at current historical SPS prices) is a lot of money, I was hesitant in the first attempt to pass this.
Now with this commitment by the SPL team, they have significantly reduced the risk. It might take time to get our SPS back, but whether we succeed or fail with the listings, we have a plan to replenish the funds.
I urge everyone to consider this fact. Most of us are not experts in crypto, but we can evaluate risk and reward. And with all investments in life, the goal is to make decisions that give you the biggest upside for the lowest risk you can.
I'm voting for it now!
Hi Dave,
The only somewhat convincing argument I've hard for doing this now is "probably cheaper now than later".
On the other hand, at this point in time the DAO itself is a fiction and it really ought NOT be doing
anything at all until its legal standing is resolved.
anything at all cos an unstructured dao is effectively a partnership, so ALL sps stakers are exposed to joint liability risk.
Re the proposal itself, should we not have final say on specific listings, not just leave everything up to BFF?
I could happily support this proposal if the above issues were addressed but as things are, supporting it is a tad reckless and definitely premature.
Given the risks, please at least have a serious rethink about your vote and influence.
In addition to the points @davemccoy makes, the Council worked closely with the team to make sure they are committed to providing a fun and welcoming experience to any new eyes exchange listing(s) would bring to the project.
The team has made a lot of recent changes to make the game more accessible to players (Season Rentals, simplified energy system etc) and they expressed their understanding that more needs to be done.
We'll continue to work with them to identify opportunities for improvement in this area... and now we have a commitment from them to put more resources in as well.
I think with Land bringing increased utility to cards, additional gameplay opportunities with Land and Tower Defense coming online, a generally rising market and a commitment from the team to make sure we retain a higher percentage of new players that the timing is absolutely right to get some additional exposure through exchange listings.
marketing would have a better effect in my eyes. most people are on exchanges to buy low, sell high. they arent on there to look at tokens and then go check out the game/projects of the tokens. How did we get all the new players when the last bull market happened. We got them through marketing and so far that has been the best avenue of signups.
I agree 100%, but you can't pay for marketing with SPS. And if splinterlands ever tried to sell 30 million SPS in order to fund such marketing efforts it'd be impossible as well as tank the price in the process without it being listed on an exchange.
Exchanges provide liquidity, something we don't have right now.
If the dozens of Millions of SPS per year we are allocating to Liquidity Providers isn't actually giving us liquidity, then maybe we should reallocate the SPS away from LP reward pools and make a better use of DAO resources. In that case, liquidity via exchanges could supplement the drop in liquidity via LP, while giving more visibility. I would be in favour of that. But as-is, this feels like it's ransacking the DAO for a benefit that is likely to be short-term and increase volatility.
Also the argument has been that the current low price of listing is a reason to act now. But if the public trust in these intermediaries is changing, listing prices might not spike the way it did last time? Also, if we pay for a listing at current SPS prices, and SPS price does increase 2x (or more), then how much DID we actually pay for that listing? The value of those tokens, which we are just giving away, goes up with it.
I think we're looking at two different things here.
Again, what is the value of 30 million SPS when you are unable to sell them?
Looks good
i really support this proposal that great
Congratulations @spl.council! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain And have been rewarded with New badge(s)
Your next target is to reach 100 upvotes.
You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPCheck out our last posts:
Support the HiveBuzz project. Vote for our proposal!
i think it's a bit of an eyewash to say that the money will be recouped through mini sets. because without the issue the mini sets would be a profit for the dao now they would just recoup the issue to reach status quo. and somehow that doesn't fit with the fact that the dao has to accumulate a lot of sps to keep the game going for a long time when the sps distribution is over..
we might increase the token value. but we don't reach our priority target group the gamers. very few gamers are on the stock market. i think we could spend the money on better targeted marketing.
they seem to have made a cost-benefit comparison. but the risk-cost comparison is completely missing. as we are currently seeing, it could happen that we spend the money on the listing and the next day the stock exchange is closed.
Regarding your point about the mini-sets. The team doesn't have to give the DAO the proceeds from them if this vote doesn't pass. There is nothing stated they have to do such a thing. To me I'd rather have the assurance from the team that they will definitely make the mini-sets to cover the amount we outlay. But of course its possible they would still make the mini-sets for the DAO either way, I'm happy to not have to take that chance myself though.
oh so i thought it was clear even without the proposal that the dao sells the mini sets.
All good i'm for it - Let's roll
Are we really looking at the last bull run to determine the listng prices of the next run? Listings aren't worth what they once were. When I got into crypto, coinbase had 3 tokens. Any new add was extremely powerful and valuable. By the height of the bull market they were adding tokens daily and they didn't even get a bump anymore on listing because there were too many to care about. I don't think we're going to see those listing prices again AND I don't want more mini sets. We don't need 600 unique cards in modern. Also, the DAO shouldn't be relying on minisets to fund itself. This just further secures it in the minds of players that they DAO is forever reliant on a centralized team for funding.
We're overpaying for this.
Money first and then new players? Seems a bit backwards to me. What happened to improving the new player experience first?
that was destroyed by this stupid, mobile game "energy" crap.
I have one thing to say to the people who say "that's a lot of money"
It's only a lot of money if SPS can be freely and easily exchanged. Right now it's no different from any other in game currency. Spending it outside of splinterlands is very difficult and doesn't have the liquidity to even handle it.
If we were to attempt selling 30 million SPS the price would plummet to almost nothing. This is exactly why exchange listings and having a robust and liquid market is important if we ever want to view SPS/DEC/etc as anything beyond in game currency. As it stands now, the exit of a few whales alone could tank the economy.
If we're going to insist these are real assets, then we need to take steps ensuring they can be transacted like real assets can be. This involves getting listed on exchanges.
I dont understand the goal here, we are not in a bull market. this will have little to no effect on anything. Crypto.com had no actual benefit to the game and we saw that when it happened. No price increases, no new players. The only thing i see people wanting is "the coinbase effect" where we see a tiny bump in price, just so they can dump their assets. That is indeed alot of money for something to be done during a bear market and at a time when crypto is being cracked down on world wide. I just dont see the cost/risk benefit playing out as it is proposed here. As others have stated in the comments, the dao funds are what will keep this game alive in the future and mini-sets were always supposed to be dao funding to my knowledge or a burn mechanism. I just dont understand the end goal for this besides a quick pump and dump.
It made it much easier for me to quire my 30k SPS. Before Crypto.com I barely had any. I was already a player and could have probably figured out a way to buy that much anyway but maybe not
ok but as you stated, you were already a player and it just makes it easier to get sps. fair point, but then why the need for top 10 exchanges at such a steep allocation of 30mil sps. The fact that its on cdc now makes that a moot point. it just seems this proposal is attempting to pump the price of sps so a few can dump. Imo, it wont bring new players. That would be a different statement if we were in a bull market, but we are not and intrest in crypto is low, even lower for crypto gaming. i just feel marketing would give us much better results for the cost. Where did the last wave of new players come from? MARKETING. people definitely didnt come here because of things being on exchanges. Most crypto games arent found by exchanges, they are found by ads and articles or YT videos.
Very Clear No!
The long term benefit of this will be close to zero.
Instead we should work on making SPS accessible to GAMERS outside of the cryptospace. For example by buying SPS with Credits or PayPal.
Stop putting short term gains over long term success.
I'm wholly onboard with this in theory but the basic economic principles don't make any sense. There is basically zero chance splinterlands would ever agree to become the market maker as they don't have the cash liquidity to payout all SPS if there were a run on it.
But let's say there can never be a run on it and it'll always be a slow trickle of people taking profits and/or exiting. Again, they have zero incentive to do this simply because then they are holding crypto which can only be redeemed through themselves and thus worthless.
Splinterlands growth is flat. They are not getting any big influxes of new credit purchases nor summoners spellbook fees. The amount of SPS redemptions would far outstrip new user income. Not to mention operating costs and salaries. You can't pay taxes, server costs, nor payroll with SPS.
I don't think @elon777 was suggesting Splinterlands would need to be market maker on both sides. SPS can be sold on various markets, so SPL doesn't need to make both sides of the market - it could actually just capture a small markup on selling in-game, but not offer any redemption ability. However, there might be some KYC and anti-money-laundering reasons against directly selling the currency in-game.
I my opinion only Binance or Coinbase would add any value. Spending 7.5M SPS on other exchanges would be a waste. It would have to be combined with a full on marketing effort. 30M SPS sounds inexpensive for a Binance or Coinbase listing. Congratz if that could be done.
Can we ammend this to have a clause that dictates that tokens spent on the listing have a lock-up period? Otherwise we're going to experience some extreme volatility.
From experience, paying for things with native assets is never a good decision if liquidity can not support it.
Fees may have been 90% higher but token price was also 98% higher too.
Aggy about a year ago in a Townhall: We will never give these exchanges any money for listing us. They will eventually want us to be listed!
Aggy 2023 in a Townhall: I think it is a good idea, it has never been cheaper than now. What a great idea!
Well, the money is now coming from the DAO as apposed to the company itself paying for it, which I think was always the preferred course of action for the team. In the early day of SPS I was watching Infidel1258 on youtube and he was suggesting this idea 1.5 years ago. To me, it has always been the best way to expand the market of SPS. Only being able to buy on exchanges like Gate.io and various pools will always bottle neck the onramp of new players.
I know the community can be split on this, but I personally am 100% behind being listed on Binance.
Wen Binance listing!!! lol
i had already asked aggy about it. he said something like: he no longer thinks that it will come so that it was a misjudgement at the time. and yes just the known that it is now much cheaper.
i mean it's good if you learn from mistakes and can also admit them.
Whether you believe him now or not is up to you in the end.
i personally believe him.
but i still don't think it's a good idea.
apart from all the risks of the current situation.
i think you can spend the money on more targeted campaigns,
if you really want to spend it.
we already have a pretty unbalanced ratio between players and investors for a game and with a listing you don't address the main target group (the players).
so in the end the ratio is even more unbalanced.
support this proposal too
I usually vote for/against proposals I'm interested but I never usually join the conversation. In this case I feel like this proposal comes in simply at a very bad time, this is something that should be done during a bull market (or at least not when the whole financial world is burning). I don't even really care about the huge amount proposed as I don't believe it'll significantly have a negative impact in the long term.
With the current state of the markets (not only crypto) I don't believe this will bring as much attention as it could. Even if it brings a good amount of attention, it will still only bring a fraction of the attention it would when the market is at a better state. After all this years without a top #2 exchange listing.. Why now? Why in the midst of land development instead of when it is a fleshed out experience that is actually live?
To anyone that cares about the longevity of this game, please reconsider this proposal before voting in favor just because you want to see your SPS bag rise in price. If the intention is purely price raise then the timing might be as good as ever (since it's low it might easily pump harder) but in my honest opinion I think this would be better at a time where it would actually attract more players (when there is more engagement in crypto), not only investors which are almost all that remains searching for opportunities during bear markets.
If we want the game to have longevity, we need new players AND investors. Both are required for the game to succeed but in a bear market most likely the percentage of players will be very low when compared to investors and it just strikes me as wasted potential. We will only be listed ONCE in Binance/Coinbase and this seems like not the right time.
I hope I'm wrong since this is apparently going forward but this just looks like a greedy move..
Id like to get some roi as swell as i invest as a part of how i play he game and deffinately will not say no to selling into coinbase intial demand prob spikes the price up high and will be able to sell at a multiple of what you can buy back for after wards and it stablizes also it may have a pull up effect on glx which willl be good for most sps stakers
I put my trust in you. Keep it up👍
! PGM
It seems to me that someone wants to get rid of large amount of SPS very fast and at any price, the future of SPS looks vague that way...
testing 1,2,3
This sounds like a great plan.
I already purchase SPS on the Crypto.com exchange, and it's been a very handy way of obtaining SPS to transfer into my game without having to use a credit card or to spend other crypto. That said, I'm limited on how often I can transact on Crypto.com due to the limitations of connecting certain bank accounts to Crypto.com.
Listing SPS on Binance and/or Coinbase would be, in my opinion, GAME CHANGING! I conduct the majority of my transactions on Coinbase, and adding SPS to Coinbase would make SPS way more accessible to players like me who frequently use Coinbase. Binance would also be a good choice for the same reason, despite being a little bit less flexible than Coinbase.
Speaking of Binance, I noticed that the proposal did not distinguish between Binance.com (the global exchange) and Binance.US (the United States exchange). Assuming SPS would be listed on Binance, would that mean that SPS would appear on both Binance exchanges? Or would it be limited to either Binance.com or Binance.US? That is something that needs to be considered before going forward with the proposal.
That said, I will vote in favor of the proposal.
Coinbase yes, Binance no.
Why? Because I am invested in another project since 2017 where they are very active in cooperating with governments, strictly following KYC and in addressing any concerns large corporate partners have about security and stability. They applied to Binance and it legitimately won every public vote to list it. Binance would not list it and wouldn't give a valid reason why. I suspect the CCP told CZ not to list it because it was a real threat of mainstream crypto adoption and would compete with the the China CBDC which had not come out yet.
The same country had mining pools that tried to destroy the project by mining empty blocks and backing up the mempool into the thousands and dumping the block rewards daily for BTC. It forced the project to become a hybrid "moderated blockchain" where the validators are "qualified" which is now mostly non profit entities and things like universities.
Anything the CCP has even the smallest chance to corrupt I say no to. So that is why I say no to Binance.
CMC is owned by Binance so whenever you look at coinmarketcap understand what/who controls what you are seeing there. There used to be this group called something like Blockchain Transparency Organization or something like that and they would analyze the monthly trading volume for all exchanges and it was full of wash trading and their CMC list looked a lot different than CMC's.
Understand the exchanges wash trade on purpose to create this false huge trading volume in order to get you to pay them the listing fee, it's a racket.
I don't want our SPS getting wasted on an exchange that is showing false trading volume. Please do your research to see if they are wash trading sh**coins before applying to an exchange.
Please try to time this so that the movie studio partnership card deck release is used to maximum benefit if possible.
That being said, I guess we have to take our shot, don't screw it up. You get my upvote this time.
Esperando sea para bien de todos