Zombie Guilds

Guilds and Brawling are a way of life in the Splinterlands. The Duelling arenas on Mount Mox represent the highest form of combat for would-be champions.

However, the development process for Guilds is unlike the rest of the game. We can't just start a guild, and buy your way to the top tier. The only way to become a Top Tier Guild, is to battle. And Win. For a very long time... You need to earn merits and build a personal gladius collection. Gladius are portable. But you also need to build your guild up. That takes DEC, and crowns from winning.

For a long time, the DEC contribution was not portable. Now, thanks to the recent Guild Power update, guild contributions benefit the guild, but if circumstances change, your contributions aren't entirely locked in a guild.

But we still have a problem.

The Problem is Crowns belong to the Guild Owner

For a long time, many people felt that the DEC contribution was the most valuable part of the guild. This was especially the case back when the Lodge bonus was the only economic benefit. But we are past that now, and Guild Power has a huge impact to reduce disincentive for guild member contributions.

But crowns remain a real problem. The guild earns crowns together. No single player guild will earn enough crowns to grow meaningfully. But we loyally give all those crowns to the Guild leader and sometimes that backfires and the guild leader disappears...

Just how big is this problem?

Just for context, there are 2015 guilds right now.
I scanned each guild and checked their leader's battle history with https://api2.splinterlands.com/battle/history2?player=LEADER...

Would you like to guess how many of those guilds have a guild leader that has exactly zero games in their public battle history? The answer, I found, was 1221 - that's over 60%...

You might think it's because there are so many abandoned zombie L1 guilds - and yes, there's a lot of them. But only 626 guilds have a guild rating below 300, so that's only a part of the story.

Focusing on top 300 active Guilds

So instead, let's just focus on the top 300 guilds alone, there are 70 guilds where the guild owner isn't battling, brawling or botting.
These are high performing, active guilds... ones that we see brawling every week, and they don't want to leave their guildmates & friends, and neither do they want to give up the thousands of crowns they have accumulated together.
Some of them have a Guild Bank as an owner. But many have owners that left without warning and haven't returned. Or sold all their assets and burned their gladius. Here's the list of guilds in the top 300 with leaders who haven't seen battle in recent history:

Ranking	Guild	Leader	Members	Total Crowns
13	Legendary Dragons	legendary-pool	26	16865
22	Legendary Raptors	raptobank	26	9273
23	PeakMonsters [Legion]	tacoma	26	7903
26	PeakMonsters Pirates	monstersales	25	6731
30	PeakMonsters [CHAMPS]	peakfighter	27	8860
33	PeakMonsters [Hurricane]	jarvieguest	24	4046
35	Peakmonsters [Asia]	peak.asia	23	4904
38	CLOWN CORNER	dustinjoy420	25	4401
40	NFT Italia	gienpeart	27	5150
43	PeakMonsters Embryon	sorrynotsorry	27	6684
47	GOAT Gang	steemgoat	29	5895
52	Digitspin FuriousChickens	digitspin	25	7339
56	PeakMonsters [Vikings]	peak.viking	27	7427
67	Albion	paleshelter	21	616
74	Immortal Gods 4	steemmonstergirl	22	10920
77	Cardinals	cardi0	21	5795
78	NEW BOT ORDER	aruchard	22	3808
81	PeakMonsters [Archon]	monsterworld	24	5320
82	[KoG] Cards Of Fury	m0r0s	22	6243
87	PeakMonsters Landlubbers	peakphoto	23	4494
90	🦉Owly Farm🦉	donma	21	4182
94	Admiral - YiSunShin	thrallbro	15	0
99	Secret Stachers	cryptostache	21	4706
108	The Furious Chickens	trashdragon	21	3109
130	The Shadowalkers	shadowalker21	19	2871
147	YGG Splinter Sharks	liljami95	20	2372
151	ZZ9PZA	zaphod-42	28	5218
155	EMP Money Emperors	emp-money	23	1361
169	[TYC] Québec	blutengel	20	3231
172	Samurai Soul 🌸 LLAC	ss02	21	5987
176	Hyper Splinter	collywobbles-hs	23	1206
184	Canary Island	legendarycanary	23	1596
185	Broke Plebs	absea	18	1833
187	Surging Bulls	nidorino	22	3502
190	Blazar Force	blazar-force	22	2632
191	Humen not welcome	hive-vault	19	3670
192	Fallen Angels	fallen.angels	19	3594
195	Splinter Ro	zimos	17	2924
196	GOAT Monsters	goatgang	22	2569
197	Bitcoin & Brews	captaindingus	19	4174
203	MetaCult	icecreamtony	26	2492
205	Raccoons of the North	plakanc	18	3751
215	TEAM KR	glory7	29	2493
219	Immortal Gods 7	youlose	20	4284
222	PeakMonsters - Feeder 7	peakfeeder7	19	507
223	Draconian	dragunovz	13	107
224	The Syndicate	mavrik	17	662
226	NFT Warriors	ivan23	21	3174
231	Pirate Archers	betaaaa	13	120
232	Phoenix Uraenus (‿!‿)	john-chen	21	3551
234	T&A Legion III	jph007	18	3096
238	Landlords	candice-d	19	2977
240	Spirit Animals	cheesenoodle	21	1558
241	YGG Roosters	jackal-bandit	15	3523
246	HD2 MARAUDERS OF CROM	darkse1d	21	7572
250	SplinterForge.io	splinterforge	17	2106
251	Tokrz	midnightokr	20	2500
252	PEAKMONSTERS [BRASIL]	darketernals	22	2595
253	Hall Of Göndul	agustuszarko	23	1217
262	Cherry Blossom	johnjustine	16	59
264	kaklase.com 3	webpera	17	615
285	💀Splinter Skulls 💀	drabs587	18	2942
287	cryptomonKeys	jmaii	18	2988
288	Team Pilok	hillbillz	21	1306
289	Play to Earn World	icaro-nz	17	2588
292	Citrus	citrus-soap	25	0
294	Elysium	rhiaji	16	612
296	Hivemonsters	dimarius	18	2928
297	UT	seinkalar	19	1916
299	Desperate	cryptoseba	16	1

(guild rankings as of one moment in time on July 22)

Possible Solutions always get stuck in quicksand

Whenever people debate this particular situation, people quickly align on one of two sides... either

1. they give the community guild example, where everyone participates equally, or
2. they use the sponsored guild example, where a guild leader has paid all the DEC and risks having his guild taken from him.

Obviously these two situations are extremes, but they illustrate that the current system has a problem.

A Potential Solution: the "Guild Layer Cake"

I'm proposing that a potential solution could involve a simple layered guild structure, where a guild members can choose to create a new guild (without probationary period) that optionally sits on top of the original guild.

• Both guilds participate together in the brawl as a team.
• Crown and GP contributions are combined for building level purposes.
• Players can move between the guild layers without probation.
• Crowns are distributed proportionately to the guilds based on the brawl participation
• The leader can remove his guild from the collection at any time, or both leaders can merge the guilds. Merging the guilds back would effectively "burn" one of them.
• This structure creates a single-brawl guild alliance structure...

So if a guild leader leaves the game, or disappears for 6 months... the rest of the guild can pivot to a related guild and keep progressing.

I like this idea for merging small guilds too... allowing smaller guilds to be competitive with older established guilds might be attractive for the game as a whole, and also make guilds an asset that can be built and sold easier. But it might need some additional thought about whether it could become exploitable.

Your thoughts?

Let me know what you think about the concept of a layered guild to deal with these issues, and also whether you can see opportunities or risks from merging guilds?