Splinterlands | Why I'm Voting NO on DEC-B Proposal
Important: These are just my own personal views on things and I'm always open to change my mind if better info is presented to me. So feel free to argue for this proposal in the comments!
My General View On the Current Splinterlands Situation
Right now I feel that there is a big conflict between the Developers needing/wanting Revenue and players/SPS holders wanting their fair share of this in the form of earnings from the game. Mistakes have been made by overhiring and overprinting pretty much everything (DEC/Vouchers/SPS/Cards/...) which makes the outlook for the Rebellion expansion not the best unless DEC gets back to peg. The devs are sitting on a lot of DEC which they considers company revenue and I assume there are also some whales that still have a ton of DEC. So this entire narrative of putting priority on getting DEC to Peg so the 'flywheel mechanism' can come into play to possibly push that price up more feels to me like a play to make money go to the devs instead of the players.
I would argue that for players it is not an issue that DEC is trading a lot below peg because that makes everything more affordable with the main issue being that SPS and Vouchers right now have too little use case. The introduction of DEC-B won't change any of this and might even make things worse.
Arguments against DEC-B
These are some reasons why I voted against DEC B
So the problem right now is that there is too much DEC and not enough demand for it which keeps the price low giving players discounts on both packs and DEC burned for Upgrades. The way DEC-B tries to fix it is to basically create more DEC with the difference that part now will be locked and it can only be used for upgrade burns. The reason more will be created is because it will be given at a discount and also it allows Vouchers to be burned for it. While this might create a pump in the short term, in the big scheme of things it makes things worse.
Basically this:
We Don't need another Token!, so far problems have always been fixed by creating yet another token, First DEC and when that didn't fully work anymore SPS was Introduced with Vouchers. There is land, SPT, Totems, GLX ... we don't need another token to overcomplicate things even more. It will also be a burden unless there is some kind of end date before the DEC-B totally expires.
Prices aren't known yet, so getting a 20% discount turning DEC into DEC-B is mostly for something we have no clue what it will cost yet. Things might be crazy expensive which I kind of fear seeing how they introduce something as the potions for land openings giving those that use them a higher chance on rarity or in other words those that don't use them indirectly get screwed over. Also, it could very much be that the prices just went up +20% to what they were supposed to be not giving any discount at all.
Voucher Value should not be determined by the team. Right now there is little to no use case for vouchers at least compared to the 40k that are printed each day. I don't like the idea how an arbitrary number of 0.005 Vouchers for 0.8 DEC is set as a way to burn vouchers creating more DEC. This means that the value of Vouchers is not worth more than 0.16$ based on the price of DEC at peg. I prefer a system similar to SPS were a certain dollar amount of Vouchers need to be used to get something meaning more will get burned if the price is low and less when the price is higher depending also on the demand.
More Reasons To Delay Land. So one of the reasons that land has taken forever is because the devs got all the money from it upfront at the start of the previous bull run which made it less urgent. Now locking in DEC for future use-case is pretty similar to this if you ask me. It's just better to use and burn the DEC at the time the land gets here and it might even be cheaper that way for players as overall there will be less DEC around when also counting the DEC-B.
The Main reason to Burn DEC is to Expect more back in the future. One of the issues with creating even more DEC is that the main reason players burn DEC to for example upgrade buildings in the guild is that over time they expect to get more out of it. This is pretty much the entire nature of Play2Earn games. I'm not sure when doing the actual calculations it all is actually worth it right. So creating DEC-B as a band-aid will likely in the future fire back similar to how the massive DEC printing in the first place along with the massive pack and reward card printing got us to this situation now.
How To Fix The Problem
I would say that the team likely needs to cut costs more to be sure to survive this bear market without the need for DEC to be at peg so they can sell their bags. Eventually, when land comes there should be enough use case for DEC and it slowly but surely will get burned potentially make the 'flywheel' a potential use case for SPS.
Give SPS & Vouchers Real Use Case! So far I would say that the main use case for SPS is to get more SPS, to get the GLX Airdrop (which is yet another created token) and to buy Riftwatcher Packs. Personally, I would not mind if Riftwatcher packs were sold in the form of 5$ worth of Vouchers. With 2 Million packs left this would mean 10 Million Worth of Vouchers while there currently have been 14.5 Million Vouchers created. It's far easier to give vouchers a proper use case keeping their price high as there is less supply while it directly gives SPS more value since they can be minted by staking SPS. Needing SPS staked to give the upcoming soulbound reward cards to turn into real reward cards also could be a proper use case.
I'm slightly worried about the removal of Collection Power and it being replaced by SPS Staked as the Collection Power really helped to create more even matches and needing both a card investment + SPS Stake investment for new players will be an even bigger step to overcome.
Vote Status
It looks like a close call right now and I assume it's because both the Devs and some Whales want this to pass. There are still 6 days to go though. Expect Voucher prices to go up and DEC to get a brief pump to dump back down again after the conversion period is over.
Conclusion
To me, this so far has been one of the worst proposals similar to how there was a proposal to switch SPS to DEC for Riftwacthers packs. DEC being low is good for players but bad for team revenue and I would rather see the focus go to downscaling operational costs while giving SPS and Vouchers more actual use case instead of this 'Flywheel' idea. This vote gets a NO for me even though I will respect if it gets voted for. This being said, the blind trust I once had in the team is slowly but surely fading away because of proposals like this and the entire conflict between the company revenue and the lack of SPS use cases.
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Looks like it is important to vote for once. I am on your side and will also vote "No".
The way it looks now it will pass being at 69%, still quite some time to go and it looks like it will be close.
I voted no as well. It really reads like an exit mechanism for whales. Get the masses to burn up DEC in a non-tradeable token and then the value of the tradeable token rises for a short period so those with boatloads of DEC can cash out. On the plus side, we can now vote on changes and proposals. I am glad that there is some self-governing in the game. Of course, those with the most have the biggest vote.
The problem I have with the voting system is that it feels so random, they can put Soulbound reward cards in the game, create a ton of promo cards, do crazy discounts without any kind of vote. In the end, a minority of big stakeholders along with the devs can force pretty much any outcome they want. That being said, it's still nice to have some kind of voting system and discussion in the community.
I should know by know that there's always a façade and the reality. I just have a hard time seeing past it.
I appreciate you working through your reasoning. The SPL system is so complex with a million moving pieces and so many tokens already. About the only thine we have been able to count on is overprinting of assets and depreciation of value. And of course the whole enterprise getting less and less attractive to newcomers. It is very worrying for SPL, and even more frightening, I do wonder what this scrambling in SPL can be doing for overall Hive value.
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The overall sentiment around the game right now indeed is pretty bad with all prices continuing to collapse. I'm quite sure things will get better again at some point and not everything is bad. I would argue that the state of the actual game itself is way better now compared where it used to be.
We'll see how it all plays out
I remember from the old noise.cash days that you have been a good player, trader, and investor in the game. I am not very good at any of those things, but do still enjoy playing in brawls. Otherwise, I guess I would say that a lot of my hopes are in my lone plot of land and for the tower defense game to be fun.
Looking at the challenges the SPL team has faced, it seems like even the slow-grow established games can get caught in over-excited growth. I remember all those posts about SPS millionaires back in the summer after SPS was launched. Must have been irresistible to plan for even more growth.
I have pretty much lost faith in the Splinterlands team at this point and considering selling the last I have and just forgetting it exists. I'm not always amazing at articulating my point of view so I'll be linking a few people to your post, explains it perfectly.
I wouldn't say I fully lost faith, it's just way lower than were it used to be. I do anticipate another adoption cycle which most likely will be the time to take profit. Right now at current prices, I'm actually still reinvesting and accumulating where I can.
I voted no too. I want DEC-B to be Soulbound and not tradeable on the secondary market. My guess is it's probably going to pass as is, whether we like it or not.
DEC-B is going to be soulbound, so it will be almost like discounted Credits with less functionality.
I think you might want to re-check the Splinterlands Discord with this assumption. Time-bound is not the same as soulbound.
This is from the proposal.
UPDATE: As a result of an informal poll in the comments, this proposal is being updated so that DEC-B tokens will be soulbound, meaning they will not be transferrable or sellable and will only be able to be used to make eligible purchases within the game, much like the existing Credits token.
Interesting. Thanks for the info. I didn't know they changed it.
Happy to share. There seems to be a lot of confusion around this proposal and all those he said / she said going around. If DEC-B wasn't soulbound, I would never vote for it as we do not need another tradeable token.
And yes, it is another token and could confuse newcomers, but if it is not tradeable, they won't even care too much about it. Look at it as a reward for sticking with the game for the next 6-12 months.
Thanks for sharing! - @yonilkar
TAMBIEN VOTO NO
totalmente de acuerdo