Looking at Splinterlands Leaderboards

Introduction

I wanted to have a tool to be able to look at the best players in Splinterlands, the best players are likely to be in the various leaderboards. I have been thinking about this for a while, and eventually I reached the point where I just had to build the tool myself.

As Splinterlands has matured, it has become harder to answer what used to be simple questions. Who are the best players? Are they the same names we see on the leaderboards every season? Are those accounts actually being played by the owners, or are they powered by skillful scholars? And maybe most interesting to me: how strong is the relationship between leaderboard performance and staked SPS?

That curiosity is what led me to this Splinterlands Leaderboard Viewer.

Why I Even Wanted This Tool

Leaderboards are usually where people start when they talk about “top players.” And that makes sense as rankings are visible, measurable, and competitive by design. But anyone who has played Splinterlands seriously for a while knows that leaderboard position alone does not tell the whole story.

I wanted to look at:

• Who the best human players actually are, especially in Modern
• How leaderboard rank correlates with staked SPS
• Which accounts dominate Wild, and what kind of card power they’re bringing
• Whether SPS delegation patterns reveal the real pilots behind top accounts

In other words, I wanted to look past the surface-level rankings and understand the structure underneath.

Modern vs Wild: Two Very Different Ecosystems

One of the first things that jumps out when you start analyzing leaderboard data is how different Modern and Wild really are.

Modern League

Modern is where I believe the player skill really matters. Bots are not allowed and card pools are restricted, power gaps are narrower, and optimization matters more than raw collection size. That makes Modern leaderboards the best place to search for genuinely strong human players.

But even here, things aren’t as straightforward as they seem.

When I looked at SPS delegation data tied to Modern leaderboard accounts, I noticed a pattern:

• Some high-ranking accounts hold surprisingly low personal SPS
• Those same accounts often receive large SPS delegations
• Delegations frequently come from accounts that never appear on leaderboards themselves

That strongly suggests that in many cases, the leaderboard account is not the capital holder but an operator. And that’s important, because it reframes how we should think about “top players.”

To switch between Champion and Diamond and other leaderboards please select the appropriate value from the League dropdown and click Load Data button. You can also switch between Modern and Wild Format by selecting the appropriate value from the Format dropdown and clicking Load Data button:

Wild League

Wild is a completely different beast. Here Splinterbank (XBot) and Archmage bots dominate and card depth matters massively. Older reward cards, maxed legendaries, and historical collections give a huge edge. When you look at top Wild accounts, you’re often seeing:

• Enormous collections
• Very high SPS stakes
• A much stronger alignment between capital ownership and leaderboard placement

Wild leaderboards feel more like a reflection of long-term accumulation and investment, whereas Modern feels more like a reflection of current execution and skill.

SPS Staking vs Leaderboard Ranking: Is There a Correlation?

This was one of the core questions I wanted to answer.
Let’s start with the big myth this data quietly kills.

If SPS stake directly determined leaderboard dominance, we’d expect:

• SPS Rank ≈ Leaderboard Rank
• Top 10 leaderboard accounts to cluster tightly in SPS Rank

That does not happen.

Examples:

• housewifeftw: LB #1, SPS Rank #7 → very strong alignment
• bravetofu: LB #18, SPS Rank #1 → massive stake, not top leaderboard
• yabapmatt: LB #71, SPS Rank #4 → enormous SPS, mediocre Modern result
• cav0: LB #10, SPS Rank #1436 → extremely low SPS rank, still top 10
• dejota: LB #13, SPS Rank #2560 → almost no SPS, still elite performance

Conclusion:
SPS stake is a qualifier, not a driver. You need some SPS to compete in Champion, but past a relatively low threshold, skill and delegation structure dominate outcomes.

The Hidden Threshold: ~50k–100k SPS Is “Enough”

Once you scan modern ranks 1 – 100, a pattern becomes obvious:

• Below ~30k SPS → rare, but still possible (true operators)
• Above ~100k SPS → no obvious advantage from more stake
• Above ~1M SPS → no guarantee of leaderboard dominance

That means the real competitive question isn’t: “Who has the most SPS?”
It’s: “Who has enough SPS and uses it optimally?”

This is why players like cav0, dejota, gamer08, trespernas, megakyodaibanrai can outperform accounts with 10×–100× their stake. Another question is if these players are playing themselves or if scholars are playing for them, for example dejota is delegating their modern and brawl rewards to charlesftw and their wild to splinterbank the XBot service that playes the Wild battles:

Delegation Is the Real Signal of Skill

This is the most important insight in the entire dataset. If you want to identify actual elite players, don’t look at SPS owned, look at who receives delegation.

Clear pattern is that certain accounts appear over and over as recipients:

• charlesftw
• j3ff
• jadedaniel
• markboyespl01
• rapidsps
• monstergames
• wavesplinter4
• demon19
• bjyshadow

These accounts function as professional operators and importantly: many of them are not top leaderboard accounts themselves. This means that capital is flowing away from ownership and toward execution.

“Zero SPS” Accounts Expose the Operator Model

Some of the most revealing rows in the entire dataset are accounts with:

• SPS Rank = 0
• Staked SPS = 0
• High leaderboard rank

Examples:

• vorkus (#41) → 0 SPS, fully powered by lorkus
• autofeed (#46) → 0 SPS, powered by hanv and jadedaniel
• pfork (#75) → 0 SPS, powered by jron and jadedaniel
• wehaveall (#82) → 0 SPS, powered by darthsquirrel and bjyshadow

These are not edge cases - they are deliberate account structures.

Conclusion

Splinterlands has quietly evolved into a system where:

• Ownership ≠ play
• Stake ≠ skill
• Leaderboard rank ≠ capital size

The first thing that stood out to me is how weak the relationship is between leaderboard rank and SPS rank. Yes, you need some SPS to play at the top level, but beyond a relatively low threshold, having more stake simply doesn’t translate into better results. Some of the biggest SPS holders in the ecosystem finished well outside the top 50, while several top-10 leaderboard accounts ranked in the thousands by SPS.

That alone tells me Modern is not a “pay to win” league. It is a pay to enter, play to win environment.

The second — and far more important — realization came from looking at delegation flows. The accounts that consistently receive SPS delegation form a kind of hidden leaderboard of their own. These are the operators. These are the players other people trust with their capital. And many of them aren’t even the accounts showing up at the very top of the leaderboard.

In fact, some of the clearest signs came from accounts with zero SPS staked finishing comfortably inside the top 100. Those accounts only work if someone else is delegating stake into them, which means the leaderboard result reflects pure execution. These could be players optimizing their large SPS stakes like in the case of Lorkus / Vorkus. And there is nothing wrong with it.

At that point, it became obvious that Splinterlands has quietly evolved into a system of specialization. Some players are capital allocators. Some are operators. Some are both. And Modern league is where that separation shows up most clearly.

If you want to identify the best human players in the game today, you shouldn’t just look at leaderboard rank or SPS owned. You should look at who receives delegation, from whom, and how consistently. That’s where the real answer is.

You can play around with this simple tool here: https://seattlea.z5.web.core.windows.net/splinterlands_sps_leaderboard_viewer.html

Just keep in mind that Splinterlands API is rate limited so don't load data too rapidly it will cut off your browser from the API access and will make you wait :)

If like this tool and you have some staked SPS please vote for my SPS Validator Node HERE

I am also a Hive Witness and would really appreciate your vote for me as a witness: https://vote.hive.uno/@seattlea

If you wonder what is the best way to get involved you can use my link to begin your Splinterlands and HIVE journey.