This past week has been a wild ride in splinterlands, with several updates, community reactions, and even a load of drama that got everyone talking about the game again. Let's jump in and unpack.
Voucher Exploit
For those not following on splinterlands discord, a bug in the game's code allowed millions of Vouchers to be minted out of thin air, which caused a crash in voucher prices and a lot of panic among players. The team had to scramble to fix the issue, taking the game offline for a couple of hours and then pledging to buy back and burn the excess Vouchers to restore balance.
The team followed up yesterday evening to provide a further update on the player who was banned when the initial exploit was discovered. The team confirmed that the player was acting as a white-hat and was not doing it maliciously. The reality of this whole incident is that splinterlands tokenomics is in bad shape where an exploit of relatively small value ($12k -- in the grand scheme of crypto) can cause a ripple effect through the splinterlands economy. It is concerning and suggests that further work must be done to address the risk of vulnerabilities arising and preventing them in the first place.
Voucher Discount Changes
Continuing with Vouchers, there were also changes applied this week whereby Vouchers can no longer be used for in-game purchases like Energy and the Wild Pass. Also, the price of Rebellion packs was lowered, but Vouchers are unable to be used anymore to get further discounts. I am still on the fence as it feels like these changes are adding more complexity and creating a moving target that players constantly need to adapt and change to.
First Voucher Shop Card
Speaking of changes, this week also saw the introduction of the new Voucher shop with the first card being made available for purchase -- Mana Warden. Each BCX of the Mana Warden will cost you 30 Vouchers and therefore to get a maxed copy will set you back $120 (@ Voucher current price of $0.01). Look, I love new cards and the strategies they bring to the game, but if you're going to put these cards behind a high paywall, then you are not catering for the masses.
Regardless, these cards are now available on the secondary market and can be bought at a discount on the current Voucher price.
Long-Term Future of Splinterlands?
There have been many discussions of late across many different social media forms, whether all the changes that splinterlands has made over the past year are too focused on catering for whales.
Regardless of your opinions, whales play a critical role in any game's ecosystem. They provide that flow of capital that helps keep the lights on for some games. Many keep saying that we just need to wait it out until the masses come back pouring into Web 3 and NFTs, but from having skin in the game -- it seems retail investors have moved onto meme coins and the like.
Should splinterlands factor that into their strategic planning and therefore only account for the whales that are heavily invested in the game? Personally, I think we need to find a middle ground. Yes, whales are important, but so is the rest of the player base. I got burnt badly by the Chaos Legion set spending thousands to only see it over-printed into oblivion and therefore never got involved in anything Rebellion related. Even if I did want to get involved -- it was priced out of my bracket and therefore alienating me to only acquiring Soulbound cards.
So, where does all this leave us? splinterlands is at a bit of a crossroads. On one side -- you have a fiercely dedicated community that adores the game. On the other side -- you have significant challenges -- tokenomics stability, new player attraction, and retaining a non-whale player base.
Wherever you stand on the splinterlands situation -- let's find a respectful way to voice concern or praise of the splinterlands team. The team did a good job in responding quickly to issues like the Voucher exploit, but there is more to be done for splinterlands to rise again.
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