The New Rewards Structure Still Has Not Run Off Bad Actors
Rather than go on a long monologue about changes, bots, and win trading. It's easier to showcase your hero/role model's last two opponents. Once it was very obvious that they were win traders, it was very easy to put together a team to mow them down because these bots are not designed to face more skilled opposition outside their farm.
@synist3r can certainly appreciate this one. Follow him on PeakD and on YouTube (congratulations on passing 1k subs).
So let's get into this massive problem.
Exhibit A
So we have some obvious win trading activity here. In fact, in this individual's 20 most recent matches including against your hero/role model, 17 were examples of win trading.
Exhibit B
Another case of win trading in Splinterlands. In this bot's last 20 matches, there were 12 obvious cases of win trading.
What do our two win traders have in common?
Both have the roughly the same amount of Collection Power.
Let's figure out the ownership here and see what is going on. Isn't the blockchain fun? We can all be investigators!
Who is behind these win trading bots?
The same seller consortium (or one individual behind them all) putting out in-print rewards cards at dirt cheap prices (appreciate the deals, but the win trading is bad for the game/ecosystem), it is all there on HiveBlocks.
Just go to Exhibit A's HiveBlocks page and you'll find this.
Exhibit B's HiveBlocks page gives more insight.
So here is what is clearly happening and the operators really think we're all stupid.
There is ONE operator (it can be a corporation/individual) who has multiple seller accounts to make it seem like there are multiple selling participants. They have bot farms engaged in win trading that feed into dedicated seller accounts to keep the illusion that these seller accounts are distinct and unconnected. It does not take long to figure out that these parties are connected and it is very clear that they are engaged in misconduct.
It took 1-2 minutes to dig this up, it took more time to actually write about it. @splinterlands is completely asleep at the wheel on this, this should have been easy to root out. Is this an intentional oversight or pure incompetence? Maybe that's for another article.
Crootin, Private Detective signing off.