There has been a number of changes to the Splinterlands economy in order to cope with the growing numbers of Splinterlands players, combat the number of DEC farming bots, and overall keep the Splinterlands economy healthy. That being said how far do we take things?
Previous to the newest update, DEC and rewards cards were made unavailable in daily and seasonal rewards chests for Novice and Bronze league players. This made sense as with a growing player base and people creating bot accounts it was needed, though inconvenient for some, to introduce that update. The new update, however, eliminates DEC battle rewards for players in Bronze III league. This makes the earning potential for new players with little investment essentially zero.
Now I know that play to earn games require an investment of both time and money, but how far do we take this? How far do we raise the minimum league to earn DEC from battles? Getting the minimum power to reach Bronze II is relatively easy so what is to prevent the people running the DEC farming Bots from simply delegating cards to reach that power threshold to continue farming? My main concern, especially since Splinterlands seems to be the largest platform for Hive onboarding, is that the bar will be raised so high that it will prevent people from sticking around or onboarding at all. While I don't personally think this step goes to far hopefully the Splinterlands team is able to find a good balance to combat bot farming and keep new people around. Maybe add a credit reward for battles in the future if the league for DEC earning continues to go up?