It's the end of the year and a good time to have a look back at some of the predictions I made around the Hive Blockchain and Splinterlands around 12 months ago also looking forward trying to making an educated guess what will happen in 2022...
Looking back at 2021 Predictions
So I had 2 posts with different predcitions. One for Hive & Leofinance (Link) and another one for Splinterlands (Link)
For as far as Hive goes, my prediction was for the price to go up from 0.1226$ to somewhere around 0.82$ good for a 6x keeping it real on the conservative side. The price turned out to have gone to 1.86$ by now which is absolutely great. For leofinance.io and the LEO token which was worth 0.4725$ I expected only a slight increase to 0.75$ which for most looked like a very depressing prediction. The concerns around the valuation and what it is backed by were not all that wrong and it did worse than I anticipated with the price of LEO now setting at 0.2518$ now.
Splinterlands totally stole the show and I guess Hive managed to ride that wave in some way while LEO is less linked to it. I don't think anyone could have seen the absolute explosion in player base coming, but I would say the devs fully deserve it from all the work they have been doing!
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Looking at the chart of the total value of Splinterlands cards, it got totally crushed not only because a lot more cards got printed but also because their average value just skyrocketed. A similar thing happened to Dark Energy Crystals which went from 0.00075$ trading below the peg to 0.005$ now trading above the peg which is amazing. My general expectation of the game slowly but surely continuing to grow to 10k average daily players with DEC trading below the peg without any mainstream adoption turned out to be totally wrong as things really blew up. SPS pretty much made this happen as it gave incentives for players to hold and buy in-game assets which increased the prices especially when Untamed packs got sold out. This price increase made everyone earn a lot more which gave more eyes on the game in the crypto space and things snowballed from there. Overall everyone that was in Splinterlands in 2021 did extremely well
2022 Predictions
On to some predictions for 2022 now...
Hive
I think the main reason Hive did well (aside from the general crypto market being bullish) was because of Splinterlands which created a ton of new accounts from who likely quite some also discovered the great blockchain it runs on needing some Hive to get Resource Credits.
I see continued adoption and development for Hive as social tokens might be one of the narratives of 2022. The reality however with price going up is that this comes with increased selling pressure as it remains a post2mine chain. I don't see the same adoption explosion happening for hive as what happened to Splinterlands as hive itself is rather something for a niche audience and developers building on it. I don't see anything bad or crazy good happening to the chain and for it to just slowly but surely continue to grow in adoption where a price can be maintained by the end of 2022 after possibly some big spikes up as the current bull run comes to an end.
Hive Price Prediction End 2022: ~2.00$
Some Predictions
1. The Team Will Continue to Work Hard
They have done a great job in 2021 and there is no reason for this to change in 2022 as they look to have their best interest in the game and the economy performing well. They have also been quite good to come up with ways to keep the economy up and I would not be surprised for something else to be introduced in 2022.
2. Players Can Earn Good Money from the Game in 2022
Similar to 2021, I think that players that play it smartly will be able to make some good money with the game even though I think the explosive growth is behind us already. The combination of playing daily, bargain hunting, renting cheaply, blogging in 2022 should allow everyone who is willing to put in some time and money investment into the game to get more back at the end.
3. Slight DEC value Drop
One of my main concerns has been the DEC price as right now many are holding it just for the airdrop. Once that incentive is gone it will be a matter of having the selling pressure compensated by players and guilds to buy DEC to level up their Buildings in the guild and on the land. In the end, DEC is created out of thin air each and every day. I guess the demand can offset the price decline in some way but I don't see the price going up above 0.01$ especially after the Aidrop is over and when the printing of DEC gets doubled once the split is here between Wild and Modern Format
4. SPS Selling Pressure & Use Cases
SPS had some good use cases so far with the voucher system giving those who staked it direct returns selling them to what in my view are whales who don't care about money and just want the exclusive cards or players that just paid way too much from them. From what I understand, SPS will become part of the ranked battles and guild rewards and I guess staking will be required to earn more. The main appeal to me for SPS is for it to be a token representing a share in the company and the direct earnings they make which I don't think is the case right now. There is a long period still for the tokens to be released and I can't help but think it will put a lot of pressure on the price. I'm glad to have what I earned staked and will likely just keep it in place for the long term as a bet on the team with some faith that future projects also will be supported by SPS. I have no real way to making an estimation how much it is supposed to be worth so I won't make a price prediction.
5. Chaos Legion Public Sale
I first thought the Chaos Legion Packs could sell out within minutes but right now I guess I see them selling out within 1 or 2 months. It will be an excellent way for all the new players that came in to get some in-game assets. Older players also earned enough to get a lot of packs, bigger investors like the guilds also likely will be interested to get a lot of cards and many are going to want to potentially flip a profit on packs selling them on the market once they are sold out. So I still see enough demand even though the market will get flooded by cards making everything really cheap compared to where prices used to be. I assume a function in the game to directly buy packs from the 2nd hand market will be implemented
6. Land Expansion
Aside from a smaller expansion like the DICE set just to burn DEC, I believe Land will be the main expansion for this year without there being another set like Chaos Legion in the next 16 months. I honestly have no clue what to expect from the land expansion aside from the fact that I doubt it will be all that fun and that it all will be more a way to keep up the economy having cards staked on it while investors are able to mint spells and items. At the start when it goes liven the prices of spells and items likely will be ridiculously high which will also reflect on the price of the land itself and that might be the time to take some profit as prices likely will come down as more and more of the items minted from the land will come in circulation.
Conclusion
I can see Splinterlands still doing well in 2022 but I honestly don't expect an exponential growth similar to 2021. I guess 1 Million daily active players is a goal that could be achieved which would help to keep the prices up of all the Chaos Legion packs that will be opened. I do think it's not too late for new players to get in still if they have a very rational approach to it all not just blindly buying packs or cards. I intend to keep playing myself while taking some profit along the way on the actual earnings no longer blindly accumulating and holding on to everything. This might however be my last years playing Splinterlands unless the development focuses more on making the game itself a lot more fun to play since it kind of has lost me after 3 years doing the daily grind.
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