Last night, like many others, I participated in the presale of Splinterlands Rift Watcher packs, which has been a highly anticipated event for many months already, though the actual time date of release was only a couple weeks ago. There was a lot of speculation about how long the 500,000 packs would last, with my own prediction on Monday night being under 15 minutes, but in the end, it was:

1m39s

That 99 seconds. 33 Hive blocks.

In that time, 2.5 million dollars worth of SPS was spent by users, plus the value of the 500,000+ vouchers that were used, which were at the time, around $400 dollars worth. Three million spent in less than two minutes on digital assets.

But, what was more remarkable perhaps, was that throughout the day in the hours prior, as SPS rose, the Validator Node licenses that had been trickling in sales for the last month or more, started to move rapidly. And after the presale of the RW packs, it took about another four hours for them to be sold out from tranche 1.

As I saw it, there were over 1500 left at the start of that 24h period. And I took this shot of the last one in that tranche.

It has been about 20 hours since that and since then, there has been two sold from tranche two.

This is because there is a higher price with each tranche sale, so the difference between that last of Tranche 1 and the first of Tranche 2, is 2000 dollars worth. However, there is a discount using vouchers for up to 50% - which means that the 3000 price of Tranche 1, was effectively 1500 + 500 vouchers worth 3 dollars each for the buy, but 70c to buy each voucher or, have for free from drops. And Tranche 2 is 2500 + vouchers. A significant bump.

But, at the time of the presale, SPS was valued at 8.3 cents, but after the presale, price went to about 9.2 as people were looking to get hold of the Validator Node License. Saying the average was about 8.5 (I haven't looked into it yet), that means that the 1500 licenses sold, burned 750,000 vouchers (~$600K worth) and collected and burned 80% of 2.25M in SPS, which is about 27M tokens.

Quite incredible.

That means that while the total supply of SPS was reduced by about 21M tokens or about 2.5% of the total supply, the Splinterlands DAO collected about 35M SPS (~$2.9M @ current price of 0.083) for future community actions and activities. Again...

Quite incredible.

But....

Not everything went to plan

There were some UI hiccups where the UX wasn't up to scratch and due to the 99 second to sellout time, quite a few people missed the first 500K presale without knowing it. However, while it sucks to miss out, I am on the fence about what to do in the future about this.

A proposal is being put forward with three points, two of which are to fix the errors due to UI design - which makes a lot of sense. The third however, is to extend the presale out to everyone who bought within the first three minutes, which essentially increases the presale by about 50,000 packs, and therefore, the print-run of the presale reward card would have 10% more supply too.

This is not a big deal.

But, the problem is, people are always going to be on that edge, no matter what concessions are made in the future, and that is a good thing.

As said,

It sucks to miss out

But it is the chance of missing out that has driven people to plan ahead for this, spend countless hours and a massive amount of financial thought into being prepared for what they are going to do when the sale opens. Yes, there are always going to be fringe reasons why someone can't participate physically, but it is the FOMO that makes people prepare.

FOMO is part of the gamification model and if there was no way to miss out, there isn't the drive to actually take part early, which then takes all of the

Fuck, that was fast!!

out of the presales.

And we can see that in the Validator Node Licenses, where they have been sitting there for months now, slowly getting nibbled at, but once they started to sell quickly, the FOMO set in and they flew off the digital shelves. I bought an extra last night when there was 950 left - five minutes later, that was 850 and ten minutes after that 700.

That extra almost 3M dollars raised worth of SPS and vouchers was only possible in that time frame because of the FOMO. Some people were of course prepared, but some people were scrambling, as they knew that if they sell through, their next opportunity is at least 1000 dollars more expensive.

I was one of those, so I borrowed 500 Vouchers from a friend and I will pay them back later - hopefully after Runi. ;D

The FOMO is massively beneficial for these kinds of events and it is the reason that so many people get so emotionally invested - and then, when they do "miss out" on getting what they want, that anticipation emotion is going to vent into disappointment, frustration and anger. It is okay to be angry now, but,

better luck next time.

Is this unfair?

Yes.

Because opportunity always is, and none of us can take all opportunities available, all of the time. So, we have to try for what we want and accept that sometimes, luck doesn't fall our way.

But, without the fear, there is no excitement, no anticipation, no urgency. We need it in so many cases in order to get our metaphorically and often literally, lazy asses up from whatever we were doing, and act. Take out the urgency, take out the buzzer-beater shot, take out the "near death" of it all, and what is left to drive us to act now, and not tomorrow?

And, you can say that it is easy for me to say this because I didn't miss out on what I wanted, but this is not my first rodeo in the crypto world of presales - I have missed out on plenty. But, just like the lottery effect of random, the FOMO effect of well planned failure, is massively attractive.

Just imagine the person who was hustling to try and gather the SPS for a Tranche 1 node license, trying to pull it in from BSC or buy it on HE, watching the supply dwindle down from 700 to 500, 100 left, 50.... and then getting their transfer in, clicking refresh and seeing... 5000 available, from Tranche 2.

does it feel good?

Fuck no.

Will the person want to feel that way again?

Fuck no.

Next time, they will be better prepared.

Some will argue that it is a bad user experience for those who miss out, and this could be true if you count their emotional state at the time, but what if they were just on the "winning side", would they still think it a bad experience?

And then, there is the whole idea of the presale concept that is incentivized and encouraged through exclusivity promises. If there is no cut off as to who and when someone can benefit, there is no exclusivity, which is again, a major drawcard for gamified sale experiences. The entire concept of the presale reward card is about exclusivity - it is valuable because it is either scarce, or only those who managed to jump certain hurdles have access. If everyone can have one, what is the point of a limited run?

But, as said above, I am actually all for the extension period to three minutes on this particular presale, but not on the basis of people who missed out because they were physically incapable. I am for it because the user interface and functions were not clear and I almost made the mistake too. I checked and double checked and even took a screen shot, but if I had checked one more time, I probably would have missed out also.

In the case of the physically incapable, one of the massive drawcards to Splinterlands for me is, the community. There were plenty of groups getting together to make bulk purchases as a collective to increase their buying power, so why not join one? Why not be part of a community of people where that is common practice, like many of the guilds? Knowing of personal limitation, why take the risk, knowing fastest finger is a factor?

There are always reasons.

And, even with doing this, some people would have missed out, because in those first three minutes, 550K packs sold regardless. But, everyone interested knew well prior, there were only 500K on offer. And, because of the UI error in not cutting off and rejecting the transaction past that point, I am all for making those people whole in this, either through honoring the buy or, refunding the buy. Because, if they are buying in those first minutes, they are obviously looking to get in on the presale, otherwise, they wouldn't be rushing in full of FOMO and the speed of their finger wouldn't matter.

But value the FOMO

Understand that it is because of the FOMO that at times it sucks for some, but it is also a massive value driver for all. It is because of the FOMO that the community DAO has ~3M more SPS in it. It is because of the FOMO that SPS rose. It is because of the FOMO that people like me have bought tens of thousands of dollars worth of cards from people who got them for free, or close to free.

Respect the FOMO - don't kill it.

And on that note, take the lesson from the Validator Node License sale last night and apply it to all of the assets in the game. When they start to sell, the closer to the end of the sale it gets, the faster they are going to move.

Chaos Legion is 43k packs away to entering into the final third of the sale and while I don't expect the next 25% to move too rapidly, that last 10% might be gone in short order.

It is a harsh reality we have to contend with in this life, as opportunities come and go and even when we can see how valuable they are, we aren't always capable of taking advantage. However, one thing can be said about Splinterlands, the opportunities keep coming. So, if you want to have access in the future, be prepared to be ready earlier than you might be planning, so you don't,

Miss out.

And don't forget, luck plays a hand as well.

There are no guarantees.

Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]