SPS Governance Proposal - Halt Soul Keep Rewards
This DAO Sponsored Proposal has been drafted by myself at the request of many community members and was subsequently approved by all three board members of the SPS Foundation.
EDIT: 11/8/24
The board decided to skip the draft phase after gathering more feedback on the situation. They feel this exploit warrants a swifter response.
The purpose of this proposal is to address the numerous concerns that have been growing amongst the DAO stakeholders as they relate to the Soul Keep game and the SPS rewards allocated for it. The Double Coconut team has been working to address concerns as they are brought up, but many DAO users do not feel that enough is being done to combat abusive farming tactics in the game and feel that rewards should be halted until the game is more mechanically sound.
If this proposal passes, the SPS DAO will stop all SPS rewards that are currently being issued to the Soul Keep game. Double Coconut will be able to appeal this decision once the game has been developed further and the community feels that the exploits have been properly resolved.
A new proposal may be put forth at the request of the Double Coconut team once the development of the game is further along. The proposal should detail what steps have been taken to address the concerns and limit abusive behaviors and the DAO will have to vote on whether or not it would like to reenable the rewards.
Thank you for participating in SPS DAO Governance @clayboyn!
You can place or monitor SPS Stake Weighted votes for and against this proposal at the link below:
Link to this Pre-Proposal
Updated At: 2024-11-14 08:20 UTC
This is a regrettable, yet understandable proposal. It is unfortunate that is was able to get to this point... but here we are.
Before I continue, let me say that I am in agreeance that something must be done to prevent this issues from continuing... because what has happened could have and should have been PREVENTED... but it wasn't... so it must be rectified.
For those who don't know me, my name is Jim but on here I go by "CaptainDingus" or "The man with the LlamaKron tattoos".
I started playing Splinterlands over 3 years ago (#BullMarketThings) and then started playing Soulkeep after the release in late June of 2024.
You may be wondering, "why is any of this important"?
It is important because I am about to link an article I wrote that details most of the issues and challenges Soulkeep faces and proposes simple, low cost (resource/time/effort), ways to solve them - for the most mutual benefit to all three parties involved: The Players, The DAO and Double Coconut.
Your next question would be: "Why would he link this article" - which is a sound and reasonable follow up question.
The answer is just as simple and reasonable: many of the DAO members and Splinterlands players, especially the "whales" - have no interest in this game nor have they played it... yet they are about to cast their rather significant vote on something which will have monumental consequences for those who do play it and who did spend $ on assets to play it... without understanding WHAT is happening and HOW it could be fixed.
I understand many of you will have varying levels of this understanding but many will have little knowledge so I wrote it as if the person reading it didn't know anything about Soulkeep and it's mechanics.
This isn't hearsay - I was there for everything. It's a first hand account. From "the man with the LlamaKron tattoos"... and while I may not have hundreds of thousands or millions of $USD tied up in Splinterlands & Soulkeep... I have more "skin" in the game than many 😉 (get it 😏... tattoos... skin in the game...)
Anyway... here is the "Solutions" article, I encourage you to read it for better understanding on what you're voting on.
https://peakd.com/splinterlands/@captaindingus/soulkeep-simple-solutions-to-improve-this-game-for-everyone
If you would like to read the article about all the things that frustrated me and led to this point... here is that article as well 😅
https://peakd.com/splinterlands/@captaindingus/soulkeep-fuckery-the-latest-shenanigans-from-double-coconut-and-the-state-of-soulkeep
Thank you for your time,
Thanks for sharing! - @azircon
I'm voting for it. I think its weak that DC didn't halt it himself once it was brought to his attention. I think its the only way we can get his attention.
I don't mind funding the prize pool, but I don't like the DAO being ignored and having our concerns taken for granted.
No one should be getting that % of the prize pool, its just that simple. Games that want to succeed should understand this. And I want Soulkeep to succeed for sure.
I am voting to stop the payout and abuse. Unless someone can convince me otherwise
Isn't it funny how the voting system got abused again?
Like 10 whales voted against it and the proposal was rejected.
As long as the voting system is not based on 1 KYC account vote = 1 vote, splinterlands will never grow in a way it could attract more players again.
This game will slowly die, but devs are too braindead to notice this.
I voted for this. Soulkeep is a secondary game in the Splinterlands world, yet a handful of players there are able to earn more SPS than is ever possible in Splinterlands. I've been playing Splinterlands since 2018, battling in Champion a lot of that time, and I've earned like 200k SPS. There is one person in Soulkeep who will earn that much in just over 3 weeks. Sure, he's spent a lot of money, but that was on him, and we've all spent a lot to play in Splinterlands as well.
Indeed, the top player in Soulkeep should earn a decent amount of SPS, and more than anyone else in that game. However, 8000+ SPS a day is rindonkulous. Ludicrisp. I think their rewards structure would have made a lot more sense if more people are playing the game, but it's ripe for exploitation right now.
They're so slow to make any changes in Soulkeep and I feel like this proposal is justified to light a fire under their collective tuchus. If they can't get things under control, then they shouldn't be able to give out SPS anymore. They should have to come up with their own token and give that out instead. Then no one will really care if one dude is getting 8000 of them a day.
I'll support this wholeheartedly.
Negligence and incompetence should not be tolerated. It is clear DC will not act effectively without motivation.
Happy to reassess if changes are made
I also voted yes even though I'm getting some SPS from my daily Soulkeep game in League 3.
If anything, Soulkeep should come up with their own sustainable reward model first instead of just giving out all the SPS they get from the DAO mostly to a handful of players. If they implement things that actually benefit the Splinterlands ecosystem, some SPS from the DAO can be rewarded on top.
Imo what Soulkeep should do is create some kind of investment fund that indirectly backs up the assets while the yield is paid out as sustainable rewards.
if there is clearly abuse, how about just skip the draft proposal phase?
I will bring this suggestion to the board and see if they agree. If so I'll see what the options are.
Please
It looks like you got your wish. That happened faster than I thought it would.
Cool, decisive board members :)
Yea it was decided pretty quickly and investygator helped to shutdown the draft proposal.
This sounds kind of serious but I'll let those more knowledgeable decide the fate on this one. Never played the game, don't care for towers, and haven't spent a Splintoshi on SK.
Delegate Tokens and HP to Fallen Angels to earn weekly rewards!
Delegate | Join to the guild
Hell yeah stop this. I stopped playing the game because only a few people get the rewards anyways which is dumb. That game is sadly just a total failure so far.
A easy fix would have been to just better split the SPS rewards across MORE people. Spread the rewards instead of consolidating them. Spent $500 in packs and I can't make a single SPS. You think anyone new is going to come in and play lol.
They took our SPS! When will the madness stop? 👀
what? that's not even what I said lol
I just thought it was funny that's all I didn't mean to misquote you.
Ah my mistake it's always hard to tell online haha
Spreading it out more is a good idea, but then they need to significantly reduce the cost of tickets.
some spent much more. this game is very difficult, in some ways more difficult than splintelands. Therefore, there is a sharp difference in the performance of players. those who play for fun and those who take a more or less professional approach to studying cards and achieving the maximum score.
As a result, those who fail to get to the top start looking for a black cat in a dark room. and it's certainly easier to blame other players for being bad guys and shouldn't receive rewards.
Posted using Splintertalk
Says someone with a bunch of accounts, some even in the same league.
I'll tell you a secret. I leveled up accounts in almost every league.
this gives me the opportunity to understand the problems of the game a little better
Posted using Splintertalk
It's not really it's nerfed there's like two cards you need that are OP if you didn't get lucky in your pack openings they are now $10+ on the market so you can clearly see how op they are compared to everything else.
I've opened over a thousand booster packs. the law was already on my side in large numbers. and I don’t agree that only 2 cards are needed. you need 20 major and 5 minor for a comfortable and top game
Posted using Splintertalk
!PIZZA
$PIZZA slices delivered:
@danzocal(4/10) tipped @clayboyn
The average daily SPS reward of 8000+ is very ridiculous.
Even the top players in SPL Champion I, they only can earn daily 1000+ sps.
Even if include tournaments, you still need to rely on luck to earn 2000~4000 sps, and only twice a season, let alone when you are unlucky.
I think SK should issue its own incentive token.
And provide indirect beneficial effects for SPL, which is in line with the original purpose of developing this game.
Otherwise, this situation will just continue to extract value from DAO.
And the guy getting 8k SPS a day is only doing one run most days lately, and not even actually playing. He's been getting a couple hundred points a day which means he's probably just putting down one tower or something to get a run in and collect that SPS.
8k a day is just outright radicicolous and the fact that it's had to come down to a proposal like this for people to start talking and doing something about it is very worrisome. A lot of coasting along collecting money for doing nothing going on in a number of key places lately and I for one am sick of it.
so the problem is that in the championship league more than 1000 players are fighting and the best receive 1000 SPS, but here yesterday 45 players fought and the top 1 will receive 8000 SPS
Since the vast majority of players are not ready to invest decent resources to be at the top, there is no competition, which leads to such false abuse.
Posted using Splintertalk
They rely solely on the SPS token for any value in prize to get people to play and that's not going well lol. It just proves there's something fundamentally wrong with the game as I don't think anyone is really playing it. At some point they would have to have their own rewards which comes from profits from the game. We don't even get any breakdowns such as how many new players, how much in sales were generated etc. Seems crazy the DAO doesn't get these details as a monthly report for sponsoring the rewards pool.
I think that the splinterlands team sometimes are like a Labrador Retriever on methamphetamine. They have too many pans in the fire as the old saying goes. Would be best to just focus on the core game and address the issues with it.
I think that used to be the case when aggy was in charge and this is a hangover of those days. The team got spread way too thin but things seem to be coming together now in my opinion.
Hello everyone! I'm the guy who's been getting 8k sps a day for the last couple of weeks.
I just wanted to say that this isn't the result of some kind of magic, but rather the result of a lack of competition. I was almost the only person who invested money in promoting the account from day one, I bought the most tickets, played the most games, and later bought all the soulboxes that could be bought.
I get 8k sps a day because I'm the only player in league 10. But if a few more people like me had been investing in their account for a few months, then there would be a lot of people in league 10 now and the prizes would look more modest.
It's like there was only one person in the SPL championship because the rest of the players decided not to buy cards and not stake sps.
All I want to say is that the Soulkeep reward system would work fine if there were 500+ players in the game, and at least a hundred of them were actively playing and investing money.
Hi - David -- CEO of Double Coconut -- here.
Ok, you have our attention (always had it TBH - but we clearly haven't done enough to communicate or address key issues swiftly enough!)
So here's my stump speech, from my heart:
Vote NO!!!
This proposal would throw out a gurgling, cute baby along with some admittedly scummy bathwater.
Soulkeep has a lot of ardent long-time players and is gaining new ones each day. The game has garnered strong reviews and attention across the web3 and wider game world. We genuinely believe it is a bright spot in the HIVE / SPS universe and a net-positive in terms of a vehicle to bring new people into HIVE and Splinterlands. We are actively raising funds and putting partnerships in place for marketing to wider audiences. If SPS rewards stop, it will of course be difficult if not impossible to keep the momentum going.
Over the past months we’ve taken some major steps to try to placate those who were (rightfully) worried about giving away SPS rewards without getting value: We now burn half the DEC the game brings in and and we require significant SPS staking to play in higher leagues. We understand that for some people there is never going to be "enough" and they just don't care... but I believe most good-faith community-members can see that the game is constantly improving and making efforts to grow while also trying to be really fair to existing players.
As was brought up on Discord, we indeed think an IMMEDIATE reset / new season is warranted. We want to make sure it's possible for those who invested their resources and time already to rise again swiftly through the ranks with solid gameplay -- but in an equitable and balanced way, now that we believe exploits have been plugged.
We were always planning to move to a season-based model along with larger features / maps / leagues we were developing -- along with new NFTs (Heroes and Towers and Spells) and rule sets with a "Battle Pass" mechanic... and we still want to do such releases thoughtfully and with a lot of new content. But we can start with an immediate reset.
We also were on the cusp of rolling out a more balanced reward scheme that doesn't allow any specific individual / small group to "run away" with the lion's share of rewards. We can accelerate this update.
We commit to doing the reset and reward re-balance within a few days of this proposal being voted against.
We also commit to being more transparent about not just a vague roadmap, but specific feature ideas or significant changes. Everything we do is never going to please everyone. But we will absolutely incorporate more outside thinking on all of our key decisions and, at the least, give everyone more heads up to plan properly.
Those who voted yes .. I respectfully implore you to rethink your vote. And others who have not voted yet, I request you consider voting against.
I believe we're on the cusp of another great era for crypto gaming and a new crypto summer... Soulkeep on HIVE & Splinterlands is positioned to genuinely be a rare "shining light" of sustainability & community-focused gaming in an otherwise scammy and shadowy web3 gaming world.
Let's do it together!
Thank you for making that response. As I already stated in the Discord, we will need better and clearer communication on what's going on with the game, what your plans are, what you intend to do when, and so on.
I appreciate that you want to change things for the better and I'm removing my vote for the proposal on that base. I believe SK can be an awesome addition to the ecosystem and it totally can draw in a lot of players that wouldn't be particularly interested in a trading card game. Let's get this thing back on track again.
Not convinced.
Keeping my vote as is. I haven't seen any plan to stop abuse. The fact that this proposal was required for you to even talk about this is a good sign.
Even if he didn't have a plan, he could voluntarily stop the distribution of SPS until he made one. We really didn't need to have this vote at the DAO level, this could've (and should've) been handled on his end when @clayboyn directly discussed it with him.
Having said that, I hope he voluntarily stops the distribution of SPS immediately. That would go a long way in showing me how seriously he is taking the concerns.
Also this response from him shows that he is trying to negotiate from a position of power. He has none. Community overwhelmingly supports this proposal
This proposal has put a knee on his throat. It is hard to think that there will not be permanent resentment for the embarrassment and deep cracks in the relationship between the DAO and DC. Assuming that DC is able to gain enough votes to block this it would be prudent for them to prioritize regaining control of their asset and start issuing their own reward token together with SPS. I would not want to own a valuable asset that others could derail so easily no matter how much they said that they would only act in good faith.
there is no faith in crypto
DC and the SoulKeep gamers should farm their own token and NOT SPS
There is nothing holding you back from stopping the SPS distribution until you resolve this issue that many people clearly care about. In fact, we asked you to stop the distribution until you could find a solution.
That wasn't agreed to from my understanding, thus we have no choice but to put up and pass this proposal because you didn't act when you were given legitimate concerns.
I would love for you to immediately stop the distribution of SPS voluntarily until you can fix things, and would also like to see you respect that we don't want anyone to take advantage of rewards that we feel are valuable.
--
David, you were given a legitimate chance to handle this properly. You stalled, ignored, and eventually turned down efforts to deal with this issue.
I will be the first one to change my vote once you STOP the SPS from being given out unfairly. But the ball is in your court and you should respect that we have legitimate concerns that can't be kicked to the curb.
If you want to do something together, then act like it. Respond back to @clayboyn, make decisions that protect the people that are helping you to be successful, and do more than just implore us. Take action and admit you made a mistake.
We - the SPS DAO - are a very caring group of people that want to see Soulkeep not only survive, but definitely thrive. And fortunately for you, we are determined to help you make that happen. But its your choice, and we are waiting to see if you will finally do what is necessary to protect the integrity of not only SPS, but also of your game as well.
Can you prove to me and show stats about how many new players there are each day and how many of them are actually playing and buying something? Joining and actually doing something are two VERY different things. My suspicion is you have far less players and it continues to go down.
The games legit broken at the moment with like two crazy OP cards and without them you just suck lol Just spread the rewards pool greater instead of reducing it. What really concerns me is how slow and how long it's taken to do anything about these things when you must have clearly seen player numbers falling quickly.
From what I can tell like a whole 20 people are playing and ranking on the leaderboard. DO BETTER. Show you're committed to fixing this and making it better and I'm sure we the community will vote SPS back in.
League 4 player here myself. 1 account, good player but not one of the really good ones. I see the vision DC has expressed and believe it possible. This could be an amazingly popular mobile game and if even a fraction of that comes into the ecosystem it could be quite a lot of new player growth.
Can we get a compromised slight adjustment to this that may work for most?
@clayboyn , @davemccoy , @captaindingus , @azircon , @werefox
DC has said below they are basically ready and willing(or can be quickly) to "end this season" & reset leagues to some extent and roll out a reward re-balancing. That will immediately address many concerns with past exploits now fixed. For the most part if you've been a higher league player in the game to date you should have made back at a minimum your ticket costs. I feel it safe to say you've at least started paying off any card costs you may have but that really depends on how much everyone has spent. The game is still expected to go for years one should hope yet so that will be answered over time. Honestly I'd say go a bit further on this reset idea though and here I think I may see pushback. I say reset everyone league 4 and up down to league 3. That removes any unfair advantage earlier players had for bugs/exploits. Going forward however, with fixes in play, we can then run with a more normalized league drop per season perhaps and not be so drastic. Edited to add: I include 4 in the reset to 3 because some players like myself in league 4 were in league 5+ before stake requirements where added.
An "end of season" reset is the first fix called for in captaindingus's summary and suggestion thread below. I'm guessing here but imagining the price of soulboxes could be adjusted quickly/easily as his suggested fix for that. So 2 of the 4 fixes right there.
The third is certainly something that should be fixed & sounds like Splinterlands already has the fix there. I'm not sure how easy/fast it would be for them to make it like Splinterlands though.
Finally is the multi-account issue. I'd be agreeable to the proposed fix of random rules per player for the day on the same map. Everyone in the same league will have the same map combo's to work at each day but under different individual random rules of the day. The rules should be the same for each subsequent replay for that day though imo. It shouldn't come down who pays more each day to not have tower blocker in play. Everyone should have a chance then to spent their tickets on a good day for their shot at being a high scorer. If I'm understanding right this was something already in game at one time? In theory I see why it may have been changed, so everyone fought the same fight. I agree that had the unintended consequence of giving to much power to players with multi-accounts. I further agree captaindingus's suggestion should mostly fix that issue. If each account is under different rules, they will not all be placing every day. There will still be advantage in that at least 1 account should have favorable conditions each day depending, but still not all of them will. Once more I'm not sure on time to implement/how easy to do maybe DC can comment on that for this fix and the one above.
So what if we halt rewards at the end of the vote until DC does rollout the reward changes and reset they are planning on doing anyway. If DC says the other 2 are possible quickly and agreeable with everyone, we can implement the other 2 abuse fixes identified as well and then automatically turn SPS rewards back on with maybe an agreed to 3-6 month test to see if everything is working?
I don't want to see plans DC has in the works completely shut down. There is always the possibility that a majority of the DAO could continually vote off restarting rewards since they will not be able to see that changes are actually working as we will not know if the changes made are going to work or not with out testing them. There will be no real reason to be playing the tourneys if payments are turned off. Especially if players do not know if even the souls they acquire will be kept or if another reset of some kind is coming before we turn things back on.
Also @werefox can we please get word on how easy/fast it would be to switch gateway maps to replay-able after completion. Player's really need the ability to practice maps. Could we open each map up so it can be replayed for no fatigue cost or rewards earned. No soul tokens, SPS, packs etc will be earned for the maps and will off set not costing fatigue imo. Fatigue will then only be required when you could get something out of your playing. Super bonus points if we could toggle different rules too so we can practice that but don't put off replay for it.
Thoughts here? I think if we had gone with the draft stage as normal this could have been worked out during that time if DC is as close as they think on some of this, but now it is all quick quick all or nothing and maybe that isn't absolutely required.
Its really easy for me. @werefox understands we don't want our SPS prize pool being paid out improperly, as even he admits it is now happening.
So he should stop the SPS distribution on his end immediately. Then he can do whatever he needs to do in order to properly make sure the game has integrity, and thus we don't have these exploits draining the rewards pool.
I think its a very fair thing to ask - and I note: AGAIN.
Given that we already had requested this prior to making a proposal and were turned down, we had no choice but to bring a proposal. So how can you compromise with someone that ignores your needs?
I personally want to see the game do well, and I think DC made a mistake by thinking we couldn't or wouldn't do anything if he failed to act. Now I hope he understands we care deeply about the funding we are providing.
We want to see this game take off, but we also want to see fairness and respect for all players in the process too.
Thank you for getting involved @ocoma and hopefully this is just a bump in a very long path going far into the future!
I'm agreeable to immediately ending rewards until the rebalance and league reset sure. I'd just like to see some specifics maybe about what needs to be done to have things start paying out again.
Most of what was used/exploited to get people into the higher leagues faster has been fixed so that isn't happening again once we reset. Nobody is going to be exponentially leveling faster than most the rest now. The reward rebalance should probably include a cap on how much any single account can win at once so we can't have anyone winning 8k SPS per day again though maybe. If leagues are going to have seasons and reset, there will always be someone getting into the highest current league first and having that pot to themselves though or times where leagues may have only a few players while others are getting close to leveling. What does everyone consider fair here then? How much of a league's pool should a single player be able to make, 5%, 10%, 20%? Or do we set a max SPS reward per person per day like 1000 SPS max or insert whatever number?
I really just don't wanna see rewards voted to stop and then nobody can agree later what is acceptable to have them started up again.
I appreciate you taking the time to read what I wrote but the Rulesets must change each map to eliminate the Multi-Account chance of success via the "multiple free attempts" route.
The Maps would stay the same for every play in a day... but it may look like this:
Attempt 1:
Spawnier 17%, Mightier 1%, Tower Lock
Attempt 2:
Spell Freezer, Better Ability 20%, Can't Slow Me 5%
etc, etc, etc - that way no one knows what rules they will face going into the map and they won't have any advantage over someone else by playing multi-accounts
Honest question... does the multi account player not still have advantage there? Maybe even more so?
With 1 account I would get 1 free attempt, then 1 cheap attempt, then 1 more expensive etc. to try again and hope for better rules that allow for a higher score.
With 2+ accounts I would have 2+ free attempts. I would also have 2+ cheap attempts, 2+ more expensive etc. The more accounts one has the more attempts at favorable rules they have and chances at cheaply placing well for that day.
If rules were set per day, a player with multi accounts would still have more chances at better rules for the day since 1 of the accounts will have more favorable rules than the others, but they would also be stuck with some accounts with horrible rules for the day. Would this not be more fair to those who do not have multi-accounts or tons of DEC to spend since statistically everyone should then have days where they have good rules and days with not so good ones?
Edit to add: For the record I'm down for some type of KYC system with limits on both how many accounts a player can have and restricting things so multi-accounts can not be in the same league. Imo anything else is just Band-Aid fixes.
I didn't realise the extent of the exploit. Obviously something must be done as soon as possible whilst a new reward system is put place. It's a shame double coconut didn't do anything about themselves as they must have been aware of the issue.
I changed my vote to no. If Double Coconut is willing to halt the SPS rewards themselves and work on some solutions, that's good enough for me. I'm disappointed it even had to come to a proposal, but I understand why.
I do play the game and I've invested a fair amount into it, so it's not as though I want the assets to go to zero. It's precisely because I have some stake in the game that I wanted to see some changes made. I was worried about where it was heading. Right now, with the combination of the same maps and rulesets for everyone in a tournament, every account getting a free first attempt, and such high SPS rewards, it was ripe for multi-accounting exploitation. And, frankly, it was getting a little boring.
If Double Coconut makes some changes to all of that and willingly halts the SPS rewards themselves, then I don't feel like the DAO needs to force them to do it. If the changes are made before the end of the proposal, I'd be fine with it being canceled. Ultimately, I don't like the idea of people who don't even play the game being able to vote to take away its rewards. It was really a matter of not feeling like the concerns were being paid attention to or addressed.
I've now changed my vote. For now... The team seems like they got the wake up call and it's unfortunate it had to come to this for them to start acting and listening. That being said I've changed my vote to allow SPS to remain since they are talking about pausing it until they fix things up. But be very sure if they don't act and act fast I'll personally be putting this proposal up again and voting to remove those rewards.
As of today, this proposal is about doing something that has already been done. Just saying.