Long ago, Splinterlands introduced a barrier to playing by requiring that players own a certain value of cards in order to advance into the higher leagues. Now they prepare to change things up by removing that restriction and adding a new formula that encourages players to hold staked SPS tokens to improve match rewards.
Since the introduction of their SPS token two years ago, the Splinterlands teams has slowly and steadily worked on integrating the token into their game system and making it the backbone of the entire Splinterlands ecosystem. So it’s really not a huge surprise that they announced plans to use staked SPS token as a new measurement for generating rewards.
In the current Splinterlands system, players have a Collection score. Collection scores are calculated based on the number of cards a player has in their account. Collection scores gate access to higher-ranked leagues. Even if you are an amazing player and don’t need a huge collection to win matches, if you don’t have enough card value in your collection, you can’t advance to higher leagues.
Personally, I never liked this system to begin with. But since it’s introduction they’ve added a card rental system, and everyone has just gotten used to it. But now, this pending change upends the previous status quo, and there will be some shockwaves felt!
Stake SPS for Extra Rewards
The new system, expected to launch on July 6th, will use staked SPS as part of the formula for generating reward points. Reward points are used to determining the amount of SPS won from a match, and the number of daily and seasonal chests players earn. Staked SPS will offer a reward points multiplier. This multipliers is factored in after the current modifiers for things such as gold foil cards, win streaks, etc. None of the current reward points bonuses will be changing.
And the best part of this new system is that it removes the hard gate to higher leagues. With this change, anyone can reach any league ran, without needing any staked SPS at all! However, if you want to earn some decent rewards, you will want to have some staked SPS.
The chart below gives a general outline of how much SPS you would need for certain rewards tiers. For some context, to receive the same rewards as you do in the current system, you would want to reach the 10x column. The rewards point multiplier from staked SPS can reach as high as 13.3x until it caps out.
If you want more details, you can read the official post about this change which includes all the formulas used in rewards calculations.
Delegate or Rent SPS
Splinterlands already offers a delegation system for staked SPS tokens. And to help out their players, Splinterlands will also introduce an SPS rental market. Potential renters will put out bids with an amount of SPS tokens they wish to rent and the price in DEC tokens they are willing to pay. Orders must be filled in full (no partial fills). All rentals automatically expire after seven days. This official rental system is fairly basic, and lacking many features. But the Splinterlands community already has a number of sites developing useful tools and utilities for the game. So I would not be surprised to see some additional SPS rental / delegation functionality offered by a third party site in the near future.
Final Thoughts
This will certainly shake up the card market. Accounts that were holding cards just for Collection power will no longer need to do so. A lot of these cards will hit the market, depressing the prices on common and lower-valued cards. However, these lower prices and rentals may also make it a bit easier for new players to build their own collections. Additionally, this change frees up cards for merging and staking in the next phase of land gameplay which should arrive in the next few months.
This change will also bring increased value and utility to the SPS token, which is what you want for your ecosystem token. In fact, we’ve already seen a 6% increase in the value of SPS tokens since the official announcement earlier today!
To learn more about Splinterlands, read our game guide. You can also visit their website, follow them on Twitter, and join their Discord server.
