The purpose of this proposal is to address concerns that there is no risk or loss of opportunity for players that want to mass join tournaments since the entry fees have been removed and that there are also no economic benefits for the SPS DAO in hosting these tournaments. I'll first discuss the concerns and then propose a solution so that we can gauge stake-weighted consensus on this proposed solution as well as gather feedback in the event that aspects need to be adjusted or a different approach is required.
One complaint that has been made by some players is that by removing entry fees, they often face many flees in round 1 of a tournament and it's been pointed out that this is theoretically exploitable by signing up many accounts for a tournament to push other accounts to qualify for prize payouts. While there are clearly more flees in tournaments without entry fees, I think it's important to look at the benefits and quality of life improvements that have come from removing the fees:
Now to address the economic concerns, there have been players that feel we should have entry fees or cut tournament inflation because they feel that there is no value being created for the SPS token. I personally feel that tournaments are meant to add value to cards and encourage SPS staking, but I do also think there needs to be a major rework on tournaments overall to make them more attractive to users. That said, we're not going to get a major rework on tournaments anytime soon, so let's look at a possible near-term solution.
I've been gathering feedback and pitching out ideas when I have spare time as well as having conversations with the devs and even Matt himself to determine what can be done in the near future to make tournament entries more dynamic without detracting from the generally well-received changes that have already been made. To be clear, the scope of work for what I'm about to propose has been approved by Matt and I spoke to the tournament developer, 
If this proposal passes, the SPS DAO would like to request the Splinterlands team to implement a modified "energy" system for tournaments. The purpose of this energy system is to make which tournaments a player chooses to enter more meaningful as well as to create a new DEC sink for the SPS and DEC flywheel mechanic. It should encourage players to sign up for the highest level of tournaments they are qualified for while removing the incentive to join lower tier tournaments with smaller prizes.
The specs for this new energy system are as follows:
The purpose of the 2 tournament entry limit and 2 additional purchases per day limit is to essentially give players access to all 4 tournaments that are run per day without allowing tournament entries to be "banked" to prevent card swapping exploits.
The purpose of the 2,500 DEC burn is to encourage players to choose the tournaments they have the best chances of winning the largest prizes in while discouraging "smurfing" in lower tier tournaments with these same accounts which will likely be unprofitable.
Having to actively choose 2 tournaments per day (or 4 with additional purchases) should help to prevent players that are indiscriminately signing up for tournaments in which they have no intention to actually play.
Obviously this is solution cannot solve every possible problem, such as people using alternative accounts to qualify for lower tier tournaments, but I think it would be a noticeable improvement to the current tournament environment while providing a new DEC sink without rolling back the positive changes that have been made in the past year.
