How do Splinterlands’ “SPS NODES” and “LICENSES” work?

Best regards Splinterlovers 💚

Something I’ve noticed isn’t discussed much out there is “SPS Nodes,” which form the backbone of the SPS network—where transactions take place, and, in short, the economy operates. This is where rewards are distributed, but many people aren’t aware of this and don’t realize that these nodes can generate daily income. but it’s a process that requires following a step-by-step procedure and making an investment. Don’t worry, though—in this post, I’ll cover every possible aspect so you can have all this information if you weren’t familiar with SPS nodes.

That’s why, if you’ve been living under a rock and don’t have the faintest idea what “SPS Nodes” are, this is the post you need to learn everything you need to get started—or at least to grasp the basics—so you can fill in the gaps through your own research. Although, if you ask me and I see enough comments on this post, I’ll write a more advanced post on this topic.

So, if you want to learn about “SPS Nodes” and licenses, stick around until the end of this post. Without further ado, let’s get right to it.

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What are SPS NODES and Splinterlands LICENSES?

As I mentioned in the introduction—and I’ll reiterate here—SPS NODES are the software required to process transactions and distribute in-game rewards. Essentially, they’re like the workers responsible for carrying out all these tasks, except in this case, it’s software that handles the execution. but it doesn’t do it on its own—at least not within the “Splinterlands” ecosystem.

This is where “Licenses” come into play, because the two work together as a team and depend on each other:

What are Splinterlands Licenses?

Licenses are an asset in Splinterlands, a type of NFT “item” whose role is to enable the “software”—in short, the “nodes” I mentioned earlier—to carry out all the functions I described. This pertains to the blockchain itself; however, there are other functions as well, namely that anyone with at least one active license can receive automatic rewards from the fund allocated for the nodes.

Now, I imagine you’re wondering how many “Licenses” there are in total. When they were first released, the agreed-upon supply was a total of 60,000 Licenses, which were sold in phases. However, if I’m not mistaken, only the first phase was sold out; the rest have been being traded on “Hive-Engine” and that is where I recommend purchasing the “Licenses” if you wish to venture into this way of earning passive income in $SPS by becoming a “Validator Node” on the SPS network.

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What is the “Earnings Mechanism”?

This is where things get interesting, because this is where I’ll explain how earnings work and show you what the “Top Performers” are earning and how they’re doing it, what the requirements are, and how it all works, so keep reading because we’re going to look at some numbers and calculations—though they’re really very basic; there’s nothing complicated about it. We’ll just use the data we already have by default, which we can see for every “Node” that’s active in the system, thanks to @peakmonster displaying it on its interface.

But let's get right to the calculations, although first we need to go over a few details below:

• For “Validator Node” rewards on the SPS network, the team has a monthly fund of 3,750,000 SPS. This is what incentivizes users to maintain the network. Furthermore, it is only natural that they be rewarded—or rather, that this activity be rewarded—since they are helping to decentralize the network and, in addition, keeping it running.

Great, now let's move on to calculating these profits, which is done as follows:

Calculation of Profits

The first thing we need to know is how the group is divided, because even though the nodes operate using the licenses collectively, the reality is that we also receive a reward for having them. However, for this to be worthwhile, it’s best to combine it with one or more licenses, and you’ll see why:

• Validator Pool: This pool’s reward is 10% of the total, which means that anyone with a validator can earn a share of that 10% total, which amounts to approximately 375,000 SPS per month. This works practically the same way as a “Validator Node” on the “Hive” blockchain: you must obtain votes from people who hold SPS to receive a greater or lesser percentage from both pools.

• License Pool: This is where the majority of the rewards are concentrated, which is why “Licenses” are expensive: the more you have, the greater your earnings will be, so those rewards are directly proportional to the number of licenses you hold. That is why this pool accounts for the remaining 90% of SPS, which amounts to 3,375,000.

Analysis of Real Data (Based on the Top Current Validators)