Each Year, I try to make some predictions around Splinterlands and the ecosystem and that time has come again. So today, I'm breaking down what I think the Rebellion Era will do for the Game.
2023 Review
This is how things went for Splinterlands in 2023 during the Chaos Legion Era.
Card and collection prices pretty match continued to get crushed with the total market cap of cards going down from 75 Million to 50 Million (-33%) which is in reality a whole lot more since so many more cards got printed. So anyone who has been holding cards with the idea that over time they should become more valuable (including myself) absolutely got crushed hard in a year where BTC from 16k to 42k.
One of the reasons for the decline is basically measures that were taken so value from cards was transferred into SPS which increased from 0.023$ to 0.035$ (+56%)
Last Year Predictions
My predictions of what was going to happen in 2023 can be found here.
Prediction #1: Prices of cards will go down more first and go up again later in the yearI was right now the first part but not on the 2nd part as card prices just continue to go down and down and down since the demand isn't there especially since there is no longer an obligation for players to have collection power and because older cards get stripped of most of their utility.
Prediction #2: the extra costs to mine Spells and Items on Land will be so high that returns will get crushed on them.Honestly, I can't really judge on this as land just totally doesn't interest me. I have 3 plots and waited a long time to even set them up. When I finally did it took a lot of time for a building to be completed and in order to now produce stuff I need grain which is crazy expensive in the store and very confusing which got me to delay things more and I'm thinking about just selling everything around land so I don't have to waste time on it as it's just not my thing.
Prediction #3: The Team Continues their Direction toward the SPS Flywheel Usecase which won't see any effect yet in 2023They did exactly do that and the point where it kicked into gear actually happened.
Prediction #4: More Bot Farms will close & more real players will start using Bot Services
Bots got banned from modern which seems to be a success for Modern players giving more value to newer cards and incentives for players to buy them as earnings there are much bigger. Bots got moved to Wild causing a lot lower earnings and all the soulbound rewards along with the removal of Packs makes it no longer worth it for bots to really be that active.
Prediction #5: SPS is close to the bottom and will be higher by the end of 2023!SPS wasn't really close to the bottom around 0.023$ at the start of the year going as low as 0.0127$ (-45%) which honesly isn't that much in crypto. It did end up higher than where it started in the end.
2024 Predictions
Splinterlands In General: The way I look at it, Splinterlands has evolved from a ponzi-feeback-loop game where players invest to earn rewards with a combination of limited supply (during beta & Untamed Era) and player greed causing prices to go up which increased the rewards bringing in more players pushing everything higher. This was followed by dev greed who ramped up the printer reversing this loop making everything get cruhed. Rewards have also been nerfed to the ground and I no longer really consider Splinterlands Play2Earn since most rewards are soulbound now. Spinterlands now is a proper game where players just own their assets that they are able to sell if they are done playing and want to move on without too many earnings along the way.
Prediction: Fun Gameplay will be more vital in 2024 to get adoption.
The reason Splinterlands saw crazy adoption in 2021-2022 was because of the SPS token being printed out of nowhere and the airdrop which causes prices to skyrocket as not that many new players needed to come in given that there simply wasn't enough supply. This effect will be hard to reach again so in order to attract new players, the experience and gameplay needs to be better.
Rebellion Card Prices: With the current dynamic and no reward packs in chests (yet) everything is set up so that cards during the print of Rebellion to stay close to what they are paid for. Most likely, this will start to go down once there have been a couple of airdrops as those will get calculated into what players paid for them. Regardless what happens, it's safe to say that Rebellion cards have no real upside price potential anytime soon.
Chaos Legion Card Prices: Assuming the game will get some more adoption and new players, Chaos Legion cards naturally should go up in value as they are the most affordable way to get in the game right now
Prediction:Chaos Legion Card Prices will go up
Rebellion Card Prices will stay stable and eventually start decreasing in price.
Rebellion Pack Sales: So far, roughly 1.1 Million Rebellion packs are gone from the supply with only 500k of them opened. an equal amount are burned and 10% of those roughly are in the DAO. So it cant be said that the sales right nog are that crazy and I kind of feel this will stay this way. The tricky thing though is that it always becomes less favoriable to buy packs as the best time to do so was during the pre-sale as that gave the promo cards and most of the aidrop.
If we get in a bull run there likely will be an increased rate of sales but it's hard to see crazy sales as the only real way to get a new Splinterlands Craze is for prices to go up to insane levels and there are no ponzi mechanics right now for this to happen while the gameplay ifself doesn't convince outside players yet.
Prediction: Somewhere between 2M-4M packs will get sold out of 10M
Land: I'm not a fan of land and see it as a lame game of staking cards for potential future returns where you have to put up with way too many costs while the value needs to be brought in the future which most of the time is underwhelming. So I believe the overall returns for land will be rather low even though they will try to shift value from other assets in the game toward Land.
I managed to get my 150k+ stack from the airdrop while adding when the price went below 0.02$ (Link) so I'm happy to keep it staked earning rewards in the meantime going along with the ride. I do see SPS at some point reaching 0.15$+ in 2024.
Prediction: SPS will Reach 0.15$+ in 2024
Prediction: There will be a Brigde to Solana to open the Splinterlands Ecosystem to more players
Conclusion
Even though Splinterlands is a great game with the potential to be even better, it remains the fact that price increase was followed by adoption in the previous cycle. With rewards being nerfed all over the place this past year, it's hard to create another bubble where this happens all over again. So for 2024 I see a slow steady growth mainly of 'real players' who are come for the game and are happy with the idea that assets can be sold the moment they move on. For all I know though, crypto could go crazy and SPS might be speculated on creating another bubble that lifts all other Splinterlands assets causing the next adoption boost with ridiculous prices again across the board. I guess only time will tell...
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