Is Splinterlands decentralized????

I was going to recap the town hall but it's already the end of the week and there are plenty of people who recap the town hall. So I wanted to take a look at voting and the idea of a "decentralized" Splinterlands.

The aftermath of the Riftwatchers' presale has caused a lot controversy, conversation, and more. @luke-wtp did a video which is actually pretty good and I actually watched it before I did this post. I had started it with the town hall recap but decided after watching the video to switch it up.

So when I started playing Splinterlands it was after a long stretch play a mobile game where I spent tens of thousands of dollars over several years and that same amount on the account my better half played. We are both gamers, we found Splinterlands through @dbofficial125 who overall is also a gamer. We found out we could play the game and earn and / or at the very least if we decided to set the game down years in the future be able to sell our assets to get some, most, all, or make money from playing the game. So we decided to give it a try and this was overall our first experience with crypto. Laz doesn't play Splinterlands as I am as it just wasn't her kind of game. Her account is used for renting cards though she does play to play the tower defense game when it comes out.

So I am here first as a gamer then a crypto / investor. The biggest thing I have noticed while playing the game is the majority of the talk around Splinterlands is seldom the game play. I hear all the time about the current "meta" but if you go out and try to find video explaining the "meta" you will not find them. The best you can do is watch streams and pick it up from streamers playing the game.

So when I watched Luke's video it resonated with me a lot. The work the team is doing with "fixing" the economy first is definitely more about the de-fi / crypto over the game. How ever I do agree having heard some of the stories around other crypto games believe the a solid economy will help Splinterlands grow as a game but only if the team at some point focuses on the game.

So what does all this have to do with if Splinterlands is decentralized? So I only started in Feb of this year 2022. So at that point land was already put on the back burner. So it was interesting to me that it was the decision to do this to get SPS out that cause land to get put on the back burner.

With SPS comes the the "idea" of a "decentralized" game. Voting on proposals is then based on how much staked SPS you have. So why is idea and decentralized quoted well lets start with how hold a lot of staked SPS the first and foremost is the Splinterlands team. With know all the accounts they have and the names the overall total SPS the Splinterlands teams holds is unknow but I remember looking during the first proposal and calculated roughly 15 - 20% of the voting power was the team. No obviously this isn't enough to pass a proposal solely based on the team.

So why the quotes? We the first proposal, the test proposal, failed. While this was a test of the system, it was easily a test to see how much weight the team and the whales had over the community. Most of the community voted no just because it was fun! But after that proposal we were from 75% of the vote to pass a proposal to 66% to pass, what did this do? This weighted the Splinterlands teams with an extra 9% weight over the community so now they need only 40 - 50% of the community to agree instead of 50 - 60% of the community.

Then came the Riftwatcher proposals after the average joe spent some or all (I know I spent all but 400 SPS I had previously staked almost 28K to buy a node and 181 RW packs). So who had staked SPS to vote on these the SL team and the whales. Then came the land and TD proposals again most people haven't had time to build back up their SPS.

Land owners who bought land at $20 a pop and got a large amount from free were already handsomely rewards during the SPS airdrop, a land is already 8 X the original amount or 17 X if it was $10 I wasn't here for the sale but I believe the original price was $20. So do land owner need further incentive? While I believe they have already gotten their money's worth I am okay with those rewards starting early because it has been pushed back so far and generally the community agree with land passing by 88%. So again this seems decentralized but we have to look at who owns the most amount of lands SL team and whales so they will always vote in their own interest in this case the community agree.

Now the TD proposal, a pre-sale is usually 6 months even for none de-fi games so why are we taking about paying them out early when we are told TD is 6 months out even if it's a year out. We'll we were given some BS explanation about how it is good for the economy but overall if this is the case it would be good for the community when it start now or in 6 months. We keep hearing from the SL teams game play, new player experience, etc will be worked on after the economy, tech modernization, and licenses. So why do we have a push to pay TD buyers out before these are done? This could easily be bad for the game and community. A lot of people who can in during the last boom are disgruntle, lefts, and / or have an overall bad taste. While not all the boom can easily be seen as bad for Splinterlands so why are we being told we need to push the economy before all the things they said they weren't ready for in the last boom which has pushed a lot of the game play updates back still are not in place?

So this leads to what Luke talked about in his video where the team is focusing more on de-fi / crypto over game play. The whales in the game are the same way where many just bot their cards verse actually sitting and play or rent their cards out. I believe the community sees this and why originally the TD proposal wasn't going to pass. Then Agro went on stream and got one of the biggest single investor in the game to push it and the land proposal. Now the TD proposal will pass with a small margin.

Agro, Matt, the Splinterlands team members will always carry weight while it's "decentralized" they can easily flip the votes. The TD proposal takes 10% of the rewards away from the players and rewards the Splinterlands team members and whales. So now the "game play" rewards have been reduced. You may say but I bought a pack or 2 or 10 well once the SPS starts for just holding packs those with DEC, the above mentions will buy more and right now a single TD pack will pay you I believe the math is 0.28 a month or 3.20 a year and if the game goes live in 6 months that is 1.60. Well that isn't a lot but the whales that thousands of packs will now get $1600 in SPS further giving them the ability to keep the large one million SPS amounts staked or stake more to further manipulate proposals.

This wasn't something the community want and at the previous number of needing 75% it still wouldn't have passed. So now we have the fact the amount to pass a proposal was reduced and Aggro went out into the community to "throw his weight around" to get the proposal to pass. All to reward the whales and "help the economy" SL has said they aren't ready for yet which all just lines the pockets of whales to help further stake SPS or spend it on Riftwatchers packs or convert to DEC to spend on CL packs. Lets not forget those most of the same people who will benefit from SPS airdrop on TD packs to "help" the economy are the same people still sitting on millions of DEC which part of the "economy" that will change is DEC will return to peg making those millions of DEC worth 30% more.

These last sets of proposal is the first time since I joined Splinterlands I felt like I've been "drinking the Kool-Aid" everything up to point I felt like the overall goal was a decentralized game in the hands of the community and help everyone regardless of what Agro uses "spawn point inequality" but they have created "spawn point inequality" in Splinterlands, all the people that spawn in at the start of Splinterlands are the "whales" because lets face it not all the "whales" actually drop 100 of thousands of dollars to be whale. While they might have some a decent amount of money a lot of their "whale" status comes more from being here early then the amount of money they have spent.

Anyone entering the game now has to spend 10 to 100 times the money other "whales" have spend to be earning close to what early "whales" are earning and over all those early "whales" are the ones who profit from the current two proposals.

Closing

Sorry this became a wall of text but I do also believe it is an aspect of the Splinterlands community people need to be aware of. This doesn't change my overall value of Splinterlands it changes more my expectation of what I will be able to achieve in Splinterlands. I've put a far amount of money into the game possible more than "early whales" and I will continue to struggle in gold (because I've forced there to earn though I agree with and voted with the redistribution of the SPS). I will continue to slowly grow my account until I can make a break out but I will never receive the returns other who have spent less will because I spawned into the 5 years after them and the over proposal system will always be profit over game play driven by the very centralized Splinterlands of the Splinterlands teams the top 1$ the whales.

Signing off

Come join the Splinterlands community.