Introducing Herons Unlimited - automatic staking management for Splinterlands

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I've spent the last few weeks on a project to build a system that allows for staking accounts on Splinterlands - card owners can delegate to one of our accounts, players can play on them with no up-front cost, and revenue is automatically shared between them.

How does it work?

Herons Unlimited operates a number of accounts named after herons, cranes, and other waterfowl. When a delegator signs up, they delegate a functional full team to one of our accounts, and determine what share of revenue they wish to seek. Then either they or we find a player to take over the account.

When a player signs up, we send them a posting key so they can sign in to Splinterlands, and they simply play. When they finish a daily quest or a season, DEC is swept into their Steem-Engine account, and Reward Edition cards are automatically converted to DEC through the @ottermaker service. Then the DEC is automatically distributed between the owner's and the player's Steem accounts according to the agreed upon split. Dec is also swept every 2.5 hours, for play outside of the daily quest.

Tournaments which pay out in Steem/SBD work the same way, with distribution happening immediately when the prize arrives. Tournament splits can be set independently of DEC splits.

Herons-Unlimited automatically starts daily quests at the minimum possible time, and if the account has an empty splinter it will reject those quests automatically as well, so card owners only need to provide four splinters worth of team.

How fast is it?

This fast:


sweep.png

The next one was a Unicorn.

The cards are already gone and the DEC is swept before I can finish opening my quest rewards. For card owners, this means you never have to worry about the player taking the best cards. Because the accounts never hold assets, the most a player can take is the owner's share of 2.5 hours of DEC earnings, which isn't ever going to be worth losing the account over.

Fees

We don't take a percentage of earnings. Our fees come from the differential between the DEC value and the market value of cards sent to Ottermaker. This solves the problem of how to fairly split Reward cards between owner and player while also paying for the service.

Looking for both card owners and players

@nealmcspadden is our first card owner, and when I started writing this post he had one Champion-level account running and two available. I had to stop in the middle to set up one of the new ones. I expect there will be plenty of players looking to participate, including for Silver, Gold, and maybe even Bronze-level accounts, and given that I hope we can attract more owners as well.

For owners we have several advantages over the rental market:

  • Delegate full teams at once
  • Get value from non-max cards
  • When a player leaves, we switch the player not the account, so no cooldown
  • Payouts in percentages of earnings, so no risk of setting the wrong USD price

Further Details

Program basics and news will always be available on the posts of the @herons-unlimited account.

In order to sign up or ask us questions, please come to the Otterworks Discord.



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41 comments
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(Edited)

I actually had no idea that quests were being automatically managed also!

Amazing stuff.

#steemleo

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I probably underplayed that to you because I've had that bot for months.

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lol and keeping it to yourself.

What other goodies do you have in that hard drive?

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I was going to release it as a service but I ended up not doing it because it would have required giving me posting authorization and I wasn't comfortable with having to be secure for everyone's cards.

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To listen to the audio version of this article click on the play image.

Brought to you by @tts. If you find it useful please consider upvoting this reply.

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(Edited)

If you want to attract new users consider how you're writing to them (or the card owners even).It took to long to understand it for me. BUT BUT... if i do understand it correctly I think what you're doing is pretty awesome!! Honestly this is really quite great!

And it doesn't have to be pitched as some sort of competition between rental market. There are tons of owners that have cards sitting there not on the rental market and they may love to use this depending on how hard it is to set up (also an issue for rental markets). They're both filling a role some people just want something easier with less management no matter the ROI difference. And seems like this role is for new users so I'm hoping to see a really nice site that is pretty intuitive because I really want to see more players and burning the cards and giving them DEC is honestly an awesome thing.

What i don't understand yet is how you switch accounts... do you change the private key for each user cuz that's pretty cool.

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You can pitch this as a way for users who are busy some weeks to set up a delegated account they themselves can play most of the time and keep the rewards and then when they're gone they can hand over the reigns to that account to another user and be earning while they're not using it.
Heck that makes me even interested. It's a decent amount of setup but still pretty cool if i were looking to farm daily rewards and DEC more often.

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If you want to attract new users consider how you're writing to them

Yeah, it will need some more basic tutorials if we get enough teams available that recruiting users becomes an issue. I'm not really worried about that, though.

What i don't understand yet is how you switch accounts... do you change the private key for each user cuz that's pretty cool.

Yeah, eventually I'll just be issuing a new private posting key for each user, but right now I'm just giving out the existing one and changing it if we have to change users. Neal's mostly looking for long-term players, I'll definitely need to get new keys up when looking into your idea.

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Yeah just watched @nealmcspadden video and he did a great job explaining it to me in that video.

And yes if you're doing longer term players then it's not as vital. But changing the keys would require that user trusting your system with even more than the active key which is what I assume is needed for now... but there's really nothing in the account anyway.(Or shouldn't be anything in there)
So yeah that would be cool to have that programmed into it.

As for the reward cards... i feel like the UI you showed made it look like the cards were immediately burned for DEC. BUT... sounds like they're what you're taking as payment for setting up the system?

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I own the accounts, so I have all the keys. The user is just delegating to them.

Ottermaker buys the cards for DEC, it doesn't automatically burn them. The system sends the cards out and gets 101% of the burn value in return, which is distributed to the player and owner. Ottermaker then does whatever I feel is appropriate with the cards.

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You've been busy. I like the idea. Time to build up cards. Anything recommended?

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To participate in this you need four balanced splinters, so the player can continually do daily quests. (Though if you have a smart player it can be good to have one a level above the other three and have them play up before they claim.)

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Sounds perfect! To switch player - Not card. Just write a short 1 2 3 4 step by step manual and I want to try.

Posted using Partiko Android

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Tutorials are on my list once I work out some of the launch issues.

Are you looking for one from the player's perspective or the owner's?

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I have around 2K cards sitting in my account. I don't have time to follow the game.
Tried to delegate but it's too complicated.
Could this be useful for me?

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Possibly. If you want to have me manage the cards for you and set up the delegations I can do that in a few days after the initial rush wears off. If you'd trust me with your account temporarily and with choosing which cards to level.

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Thanks.
Let me know when you'll have time.

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Wow, that's interesting :) Are you planning web interface?

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We'll see how much work it becomes not having one. I'd basically have to relearn web programming from scratch, so I'm in denial about hoping I won't have to.

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I have trouble understanding this.

What's the benefit for the player?

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You get to play with high level cards without paying for them.

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Ok thanks for replying, but do they get a share of the DEC, rewards or is it just the high level experience?

Posted using Partiko Android

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They get a share of the DEC and the tournament winnings. Specific shares are defined by the card owner - we have some 50/50 and 60/40s going right now.

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You are an incredibly smart person. I have a couple of alts with mid-range decks, which I don't have time to play, personally. This sounds like a fantastic option.

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Quick update for anyone considering this; I couldn't be happier. The guy playing my cards is climbing and earning; and cards that were just sitting there are now back in the game.

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this is a great idea and a win win situation for both players and delegators. Will definitely use your service once i have the required splinters.

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I would certainly be interested but have two questions:

  1. If I delegated to an account how would you find a player for my level 4 summoners? They seem quite low level to me and not worth someone elses time for a 50:50 split of the DEC.

  2. If I was a player what sort of commitments do I need to make i.e. hours per day to avoid being kicked off the program. I'm sure if I only played 3 games a day that wouldn't cut it.

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  1. Neal is setting up some Silver level accounts today, and I guess we'll find out if there are players for it. My feeling is that we won't have trouble finding as many players as we need, and that card owners will be the bottleneck. But that's about to face reality and we'll see.
  2. You need to be able to do your daily quests everyday or approximately so. Taking a day off and then doing two the next day is fine. (Some delegators may have additional conditions.)
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Wow, this seems a great idea, and a chance to maybe get used to higher decks! And thumbs up on the chosen names for the accounts! 😉

Posted using Partiko Android

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Started playing an account this afternoon, and I was surprised to see that I finished the daily quest and within seconds the DEC was moved. I decided to play a bit longer to end up in silver (as the account was starting from scratch) as I hoped to play a tournament tomorrow (unfortunately I can't play due to an appointment I forgot haha.. but then I noticed that the DEC was moved again.. So that's really cool, no waiting until the end of season, but instantly getting rewards for playing.

Really really great service and I highly recommend it to everyone that is looking for a deck to play.

Great job!

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Hello, good night, I'm not very good with English. I'm looking for the opportunity to get me an account in this monsters account, I have enough time and dedication. That I have to do?

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