I've been reading discussions about scholars in Splinterlands, and one argument keeps coming up that I don't really understand. The basic complaint seems to be that scholars enter different game modes, earn rewards, and then extract value from the ecosystem rather than putting enough value back into it.
Maybe I'm looking at this differently than everyone else, but my immediate question is: Why make a game extractable if you don't want people to extract? 馃 That's not meant to be sarcastic. I think there's a genuine economic contradiction here worth talking about.
Splinterlands wasn't accidentally built with transferable assets. Cards can be bought and sold. Cards can be delegated. Cards can be rented. Tokens can be transferred. Rewards can be sold. Players can enter and exit the economy. That's kind of the point.
If we wanted a system where everything a player earns remains permanently trapped inside the game, we already had that technology decades ago. It's called a normal video game. 馃槄 You buy access to the game, acquire some pixels in a database, and the company ultimately controls them. When you're done playing, you walk away and generally take nothing with you.
Web3 was supposed to offer something different. So when somebody participates in the economy using the exact economic freedoms the system deliberately gives them, I don't understand why the participant suddenly becomes the problem. If the behaviour is undesirable, shouldn't we be asking why the system incentivizes it?
This is probably the bigger issue for me. Suppose I own a physical Pok茅mon card. I can keep it. I can play with it. I can lend it to somebody. I can give it away. I can sell it. I can stick it in a drawer for 30 years and forget it exists.
Nobody from Pok茅mon is going to knock on my door and say: "Excuse me sir, our community has determined that you're using your Charizard incorrectly." 馃槧
It's mine. So what exactly is the advantage of an NFT card if we're going to recreate social restrictions around what owners are permitted to do with their property?
If I own a Splinterlands card and want to let somebody else use it, why shouldn't I? If they use that card to earn rewards, why shouldn't they? And if those rewards are transferable, why shouldn't they be allowed to transfer them?
You can certainly design incentives that make some behaviours more attractive than others. That's part of designing an economy. But that's very different from treating people as though they're doing something wrong simply because they exercised the rights the assets were designed to give them.
Otherwise, I'm not sure we have stronger ownership than Web2. We just have Web2 with extra steps.
This is where the extractor label starts becoming especially confusing to me. Imagine two players.
Player A buys $5,000 worth of cards, plays for years, continually reinvests rewards and never sells anything. Wonderful ecosystem participant. 馃槆
Player B is a scholar. They don't own much capital, borrow/delegate somebody else's cards, play the game, earn some rewards and periodically sell them. EXTRACTOR! 馃槇
Okay. Now fast forward five years. Player A decides they're finished with Splinterlands. They sell their $5,000 card collection, sell the SPS they've accumulated, withdraw everything and go live their life.
What are they now? Did our saint just become an extractor? And if so, when? Was it the first dollar they withdrew? Did they have to withdraw more than they originally deposited? Does withdrawing their principal count? Do staking rewards count? What if they reinvested for ten years first? What if they sell their cards but keep their SPS? What if somebody buys a card for $5 and sells it for $500 twenty years later?
At some point we need an objective definition of the supposedly bad behaviour. Because if "extracting" simply means taking economic value you own out of an economy, then almost everyone who participates in an extractable economy will eventually be an extractor. That's one of the reasons people want ownership in the first place.
Here's where I think the conversation could become much more useful. Suppose scholars really are economically harmful.
Let's imagine the ecosystem distributes $1 million worth of rewards to scholars every year, scholars immediately sell virtually all of it, and the activity they provide creates only $100,000 of corresponding economic value.
Okay! Now we have an economic argument. The incentive mechanism is paying $1 million to acquire $100,000 worth of useful activity. That's a bad trade.
But the conclusion shouldn't be: "Bad scholars! Stop extracting!" The conclusion should be: "Our incentive mechanism is poorly designed."
Participants respond to incentives. If I create a button that says PRESS HERE TO RECEIVE $5 and thousands of people press it every day, I can't exactly stand beside the button screaming: "WHY DO THESE TERRIBLE PEOPLE KEEP TAKING MY $5?! 馃槶"
Maybe stop putting $5 behind the button.
If a particular activity costs the ecosystem more than the value it creates, change the reward structure. If ownership requirements are too weak, change them. If certain game modes overpay relative to the demand they generate, rebalance them. If reinvestment is economically valuable, create incentives that make reinvestment attractive.
Design the desired equilibrium.
Don't design one equilibrium and then get angry at rational participants for finding it.
I think there's another distinction getting lost in these conversations: Preference is not the same thing as system failure.
Baby does not like bedtime. In fact, Baby may have very strong opinions regarding bedtime.
馃ズ "I NU WIKE BEDTIME!!!"
Baby might pout. Baby might protest. Baby might present a detailed 47 page economic analysis demonstrating that bedtime reduces available play hours by approximately 33%. None of this proves bedtime is a poorly designed institution. 馃槶
My preference and the underlying merits of the system are separate questions. The same applies here.
It's completely reasonable to say: "I personally prefer players who continually reinvest their earnings into Splinterlands." Okay. That's a preference.
You can even say: "I would like Splinterlands to provide stronger incentives for players to reinvest." Now we're talking about system design.
But "I don't like that these people withdraw their earnings, therefore they're harming the ecosystem" is missing a step.
Show me the mechanism. What does their activity cost? What value does their activity create? What would happen without them? What behaviour would produce a better equilibrium? And how do we incentivize that behaviour without undermining the ownership properties we're supposedly building the economy around?
Those questions interest me much more than deciding which group of players deserves the label "extractor."
This is ultimately what bothers me about the whole conversation. One of the strongest arguments for blockchain gaming has always been that players can actually own things.
Not merely receive permission from a game company to interact with an entry in its database. Own them.
That ownership isn't particularly meaningful if we celebrate it only when owners make decisions we approve of.
"You own this asset, but please don't rent it that way."
"You own your rewards, but please don't sell them."
"You can exit whenever you want, but leaving makes you an extractor."
At some point I have to ask:
If we're going to dictate how people use their property and get angry when they extract value from an explicitly extractable system... Why not just stay Web2?
They already tell you what you can do with your stuff. 馃槄
I'm not arguing that every possible economic behaviour is healthy for Splinterlands. Obviously it isn't.
An economy can have unsustainable emissions. It can overpay certain activities. It can subsidize users who contribute very little. It can create terrible incentives. It can slowly bleed value because the system distributes more economic value than it generates.
Those are legitimate problems. But those are system design problems.
Calling somebody an extractor doesn't tell me anything useful about whether the underlying transaction is actually good or bad for the economy.
I'd rather ask: What behaviour do we want? Why do we want it? What economic value does it create? What incentives currently produce the opposite behaviour? How can we change those incentives while preserving actual ownership?
That's the conversation I'd like to have.
Because if somebody follows all the rules, uses assets they legitimately control, earns rewards the system deliberately distributes, and sells assets the system deliberately makes transferable...
I'm having a hard time blaming them for doing exactly what the economy was designed to let them do.
And if the system isn't actually broken and we simply don't like what the player chose to do?
Well...
馃ズ Baby nu wike bedtime either.
Bedtime remains unchanged.
