What Are the Most Valuable “Assets” in the Splinterlands Ecosystem? (PART 1: SPS/LICENSE)

Best regards Splinterlovers 💚

Since 2018, Splinterlands has been creating not just a conventional card game for fun in an “autobattler” format—which is great; I like that the battles are fast-paced and frenetic. This is really good because it lets us play a lot without getting bored—nobody likes battles that go on too long; it’s tedious—but Splinterlands handles this very well. However, something even more important than that is that behind this game lies an entire ecosystem—we could say it’s financial—since every “item or asset” in the game has real market value. So, not only can we play, but we can also earn real money in the process, and that’s what makes Splinterlands even cooler.

But there are currently so many assets in the ecosystem that it’s very difficult for a new user to know which ones are the best, which ones to pay attention to—in short, which ones are valuable and why. This is important because to make progress in the game, it’s practically mandatory to take them into account—without this information, you won’t be able to do anything. So, if you want to start off on the right foot and need a crash course (haha, even if you don’t), this post is very important.

But don't worry—it's not going to be an encyclopedia. I'll try to keep it very simple so that any type of player can understand it, even if they've never heard the word "Splinterlands" in their life. So, stick around until the end so you can learn.

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Analysis of Key Assets in Splinterlands (SPS and LICENCE)

In this section, I’ll list them in order of importance—based, of course, on my own experience and what they mean to me. This isn’t an official list from the team; it’s what they mean to me as a player. So it’s very important to keep this in mind, since I don’t want it to be mistaken for an official team list—it’s just my perspective. I’ll also explain why I’ve ranked them this way, giving a reason for each one.

I know I've shared some similar posts before, but they always seem to get forgotten, and as we look ahead to what appears to be a new bull market that we're about to experience, it's essential to brush up on all of this. So, now that we're all on the same page, let's get started:

Splintershards (SPS) – The Governance and Economic Power Token

This is the main token of the entire Splinterlands ecosystem—undoubtedly the most important one of all. As of the time of writing this post, it is priced at $0.003482. This token allows you to influence decisions made regarding the game’s ecosystem—covering many aspects, primarily economic ones—but it also influences operational decisions and, if desired, the game’s gameplay. Additionally, it currently serves as the game’s reward token.

• Specific uses in the game: Okay, you can do a lot of things with SPS, but one of its main uses is staking, which not only helps you earn an APR of 8.04% at the time of writing this post, but also acts as an “RSHARES Reward Multiplier.” So, the more SPS you have staked, the more SPS you can earn. In addition, thanks to staking, you also earn VOUCHERS—and, of course, the same principle applies: the more SPS you have, the more VOUCHERS you earn. This is a very important token because it grants you access to various “PREMIUM” features within the game.

• Demand: Since it’s the game’s main asset, it’s natural that demand for it is very high, especially because you absolutely need it if you want to earn SPS for each battle won in “Ranked” mode. However, even with this truly significant utility, the price continues to fall due to burn events, meaning that “Supply” exceeds this demand—and that’s what we need to address. Even so, the market situation is changing, and right now the price has been rising.

Validator Node Licenses (LICENSE) – SPS Network

This is one of the most important assets, although most regular users don’t pay much attention to it—and that’s because, in reality, it isn’t talked about much. however, the value of these validator nodes is quite high; in fact, in the game’s official store, a LICENCE token costs $5,000 in SPS. Of course, if you want one much cheaper, just go to “Hive Engine,” search for LICENCE, and that’s it—the price per token is around $174.36 at the time of writing this post.

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Profits - Mining - Demand

• Specific Uses in the Game: Strictly speaking, it doesn't have a specific use within the game itself; however, it is the cornerstone that underpins everything that happens within the Splinterlands ecosystem, since each of these nodes supports the SPS network. It is essentially where transactions, cards, purchases, sales, transfers—everything that happens in the ecosystem—are recorded.

• SPS Mining by Nodes and LICENCE Tokens: By running these nodes, you earn a daily SPS reward from a monthly pool of 3,375,000 SPS. To give you an average, each active node can generate around 1,060 SPS per hour, including block validation rewards, which, as I mentioned, are roughly 0.434 SPS per block; however, part of these rewards is closely tied to the votes you receive from the SPS community. So, it’s not just about running the node—you need to build a community so that SPS stakeholders vote for your node, and the more SPS you have staked, the more you can earn. The idea is to get votes from as many large accounts as possible.

• Demand: These validator nodes are in high demand among a certain type of player—not everyone—specifically those who don’t have time to spend much time in the game, can’t play, but still want to be part of the ecosystem. As a result, the earnings are relatively passive. However, keep in mind what I said about the community, because we must add value to secure the votes of the major SPS holders.

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Conclusion

With all this information, I’ll wrap up this post here. However, I’ll continue this series, since there are more valuable assets to cover. But this post ended up being quite long, so I’ll leave it at that for now. These are the two main tokens in the ecosystem, but we still have a lot to discuss and much to learn, so in the next part, I’ll expand on all this information.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.