_{Logo Splinterlands owned by @splinterlands - Edit by @libertycrypto27 - Font used is Open Source}

_{La versione in italiano è subito dopo la versione in inglese - The Italian version is immediately after the English version}

Splintershards Node Validator License: Skip or Buy? Hypotheses and Calculations

The last days of May will be important days for all Splinterlands enthusiast players like me because:

tomorrow, May 25, 2022, the Validator Licence Presale will begin.

a major change to Ranked Rewards will be introduced on May 31, 2022 that will incentivize players to increase their game activity.

In today's post I want to focus on the pre-sale of Node Validator Licenses because on this important event I have received both today and in the past few days many questions and some requests for advice.

Splintershards Node Validator

With the creation and distribution of the governance tokens, the Splintershards (SPS) tokens, Splinterlands has begun a decentralization process that will continue tomorrow with the pre-sale of validator node licenses and will end when the validator nodes are up and running.

To become a operator of a Validator Node you will need to:

purchase a license
download and install an open source software on a Linux machine with a specific version of Windows or Mac

The governance system will follow a Delegate Proof of Stake (DPOS) model similar to the consensus model found on the Hive blockchain.
All SPS token holders will be able to vote for a certain number of accounts that have enabled a validator node.
The top node validator operators (those with the most votes) will be responsible for validating SPS transactions and will be able to control SPS foundation funds.

This voting possibility will be just one of the future use cases that SPS tokens will have.

All validator node operators will receive rewards for their work and effort:

on a monthly basis 3750000 SPS tokens will be distributed in the following way.
- the 10% will be divided among the top 50-100 Voted Validators
- 90% will be divided among all validator node operators
on a daily basis 20000 tokens VOUCHER will be distributed equally to all validators.

Note: the rewards will be received when the nodes are up and running (planned in Q4 2022)

I have created a simple diagram to summarize what the distibution of rewards will be.

Validator License Presale

The first step in becoming a validator node operator is to buy a license.
Licenses will be sold in successive phases (9 phases in total).
Each phase will have a set number of licenses available for sale, and the cost of licenses will increase in each successive sale phase as clearly shown in the table below.

_{Screenshot from @splinterlands/splintershards-sps-validator-node-overview-and-license-presale}

To purchase a license you will always need to use SPS tokens as a method of payment but the total amount will depend on the dollar value of the SPS tokens at the time of purchase.

The VOUCHER tokens will play an important role in the sale of licenses because:

during the presale they will be essential to make the purchase (500 VOUCHER tokens required)
in the phases following the presale they will allow for a maximum discount of 50% and will have a discount value per single VOUCHER token used of 0.10% of the sale price.

The effective cost of a license during the presale

During the presale, the cost of a license will be $1000 of SPS + 500 VOUCHER tokens.

The VOUCHER tokens are the tokens that SPS Staked token holders receive as a daily reward and are also second-level tokens of the Hive blockchain that can be purchased from marketplaces outside Splinterlands such as Hive Engine/TribalDex/LeoDEX.

To calculate the actual dollar cost of a license, it is necessary to:

calculate the dollar value of 500 VOUCHER tokens.
calculate the amount of SPS tokens whose value equals $1,000.

Today May 24, 2022 the best sale offer of 1 VOUCHER token is 3.90 SWAP.HIVE whose dollar value is $1,853.
The market value of 1 SPS token is $0.101.

If at the time of the presale opening the values of SPS tokens and VOUCHER tokens are the same as they are today buying a license will have an effective cost of 1926.25$

In fact you need 9900.99 SPS tokens to reach a value of 1000$ and you need to spend 926.25$ to buy 500 VOUCHER tokens.

To help those who have asked me for help or advice on purchasing a validator node license during presale, I thought I would make a number of hypotheses about possible future scenarios following the purchase of a license during presale.

For each hypothesis I considered:

a hypothetical future value for VOUCHER tokens and for SPS tokens.
a hypothetical number of licenses sold.

For each hypothetical I calculated:

the **monthly ROI (considering only the rewards)
The time in months to reach the break-even point (considering only the rewards)

Hypotheses and Calculations

In the first three hypotheses, I considered three different quantities of licenses sold and calculated the value of the rewards based on a hypothetical future value of SPS tokens and VOUCHER tokens equal to the current value.

Hypothesis 1:

2000 licenses sold, 1 SPS = $0.101, 1 VOUCHER = $1.853

In this case when the validator nodes are activated those who purchased a license during the presale will receive as a reward:

1687.50 SPS tokens per month
10 VOUCHER tokens per day = 300 VOUCHER tokens per month

The total value of the rewards received in a month will be 726.18$ which corresponds to a monthly ROI of 37.70% that would allow the break-even point to be reached in only 2,653 months.

Hypothesis 2:

5000 licenses sold, 1 SPS = $0.101, 1 VOUCHER = $1.853

In this case, when the validator nodes are activated, those who purchased a license during the presale will receive as a reward:

675 SPS tokens per month
120 VOUCHER tokens per month

The total value of the rewards received in one month will be $290.47 which corresponds to a monthly ROI of 15.08% which would allow the break-even point to be reached in only 6.63 months with rewards alone.

Hypothesis 3:

10000 licenses sold, 1 SPS = $0.101, 1 VOUCHER = $1.853

In this case, when the validator nodes are activated, those who purchased a license during the presale will receive as a reward:

337.50 SPS tokens per month
60 VOUCHER tokens per month

The total value of the rewards received in one month will be $145.23 which corresponds to a **monthly ROI of 7.54% which would allow the break-even point to be reached in 13.26 months and only considering the value of the rewards.

In assumptions 1-2-3 I considered the current value of VOUCHER tokens, which, however, is a value pushed up by the upcoming start of the presale.
In the next hypotheses I considered a more probable value of VOUCHER tokens and a higher value of SPS tokens than the current one.

Hypothesis 4:

5000 licenses sold, 1 SPS = $0.300, 1 VOUCHER = $0.95

In this case, when the validator nodes are activated, those who purchased a license during the presale will receive as a reward:

675 SPS tokens per month
120 VOUCHER tokens per month

The total value of the rewards received in a month will be $316.5 which corresponds to a **monthly ROI of 16.43% which would allow the break-even point to be reached in 6.09 months and only considering the value of the rewards.

Hypothesis 5:

10000 licenses sold, 1 SPS = $0.300, 1 VOUCHER = $0.95

In this case, when the validator nodes are activated, those who purchased a license during the presale will receive as a reward:

337.5 SPS tokens per month
60 VOUCHER tokens per month

The total value of the rewards received in a month will be $158.25 which corresponds to a **monthly ROI of 8.22% which would allow the break-even point to be reached in 12.17 months and only considering the value of the rewards.

In the next hypothesis I wanted to consider an extremely pessimistic case.

Hypothesis 6:

10000 licenses sold, 1 SPS = $0.050, 1 VOUCHER = $0.47

In this case, when the validator nodes are activated, those who purchased a license during the presale will receive as a reward:

337.5 SPS tokens per month
60 VOUCHER tokens per month

The total value of the rewards received in a month will be $45.37 which corresponds to a **monthly ROI of 2.36% which would allow the break-even point to be reached in 42.452 months and only considering the value of the rewards.

The last hypothesis, on the other hand, is an optimistic one.

Hypothesis 7:

10000 licenses sold, 1 SPS = $1.00, 1 VOUCHER = $0.95

In this case, when the validator nodes are activated, those who purchased a license during the presale will receive as a reward:

337.5 SPS tokens per month
60 VOUCHER tokens per month

The total value of the rewards received in one month will be $394.5 which corresponds to a **monthly ROI of 20.48% which would allow the break-even point to be reached in 4.88 months and only considering the value of the rewards.

Should the SPS tokens received from airdrop be used to purchase a license?

It is just my opinion but buying a license with SPS tokens received from the current airdrop does not make much sense and the reason is simple and logical.

People like me who believe that the SPS tokens will gain value in the future should not use the SPS tokens received from the airdrop because if for example in the future the SPS tokens reach the value of $0.50 the license purchased during the pre-sale would no longer have a cost of $1926.25 but would have an effective cost of $5876.75 ($4950.5 + $926.25).

If I, for example, used 9900.99 SPS of my 33231 SPS tokens in stake to purchase the license during the pre-sale I would lose a probable future gain and also lose an APR of 55.35% (SPS tokens + VOUCHER tokens) that I could get in the remaining 63 days before the end of the SPS airdrop currently in progress.

The best way to purchase the license during the pre-sale is in my opinion to use stable coins (HBD, BUSD,...) or fiat currency to purchase the necessary SPS tokens because in this way the purchase cost incurred will always be fixed even in the future (1923.25$).

BUY or SKIP?

The SPS tokens are, of all Splinterlands tokens, the ones that will have the greatest increase in the number of use cases in the future as explained in a previous post published by @splinterlands:

SPS Validator Nodes & Governance Voting
$4M+ non-SPS funds in treasury to be owned & controlled by staked SPS token holders
~$12M of Riftwatchers pack sales purchasable exclusively with SPS, all going to the SPS foundation treasury
Land expansion heavy reliance on SPS token staking
Private sale & airdrop distributions ending leading to over 53M fewer SPS tokens distributed each month
New reward pools to incentivize gameplay + SPS delegation

With the hypotheses and calculations I have shown in this post, I hope to be of help to those who have asked me for advice and to those of my readers who are considering purchasing a validator node operator license.

Those who think as I do that SPS tokens will gain value in the future should consider purchasing a license during the presale as I am doing and evaluating at this time but purchase decisions are and should always be personal and should result from thorough research and strictly personal evaluations (DYOR).

The information contained in this post is not and is not intended to be financial advice in any way.

Thank you for reading my post I hope you liked it and thank you for taking your time and if you like please follow me to read my upcoming posts on Splinterlands.

Splinterlands = Play 2 Earn!

Are you not a Splinterlands player?

Splinterlands is a beautiful game and it has proved to be a very good investment (at least until now) and if you regularly participate to the weekly contests organized by the @splinterlands account you will recover the registration cost (10$) in a short time.
If you decide to register, you can do it from this link:

https://splinterlands.com?ref=libertycrypto27

of course if you'd like to use my refferal link... :)

Any game that involves the purchase of cards and tokens is never a simple game but it is also an investment and should be considered as such.
I am not a financial consultant and if you decide to invest in the game of Splinterlands you do it for your own choice, after having made your personal evaluations and considered all possible risk factors.

My advice is to always invest only what you can afford to lose with a light heart.

See you on the battlefields of Splinterlands.

A selection of my previous Splinterlands posts

	Modern Format and Sneak Quest: Focus on Sneak Ability
	New Format and Little League: Focus on First Position
	To Open or Not To Open: Estimated Value and Estimated Profit of All Splinterlands Packs + 10 Untamed Packs Open
	My Card Collection Optimization and the Great Usefulness of Peakmonsters
	My Chaos Legion Investment: Profit, Roi and Positive Effects after 716 Packs Opened
	How to make a BID from PeakMonsters: step by step guide
	How to Buy Cards From Monster Market - Step by Step Guide
	The hard hit suffered by Mad-Runner: $50k stolen by @hivewallet94 - Keep your passwords safe!

Unless otherwise indicated, the images in this post are screenshots taken from the sites:
https://splinterlands.com/
https://peakd.com/

Images containing calculations, tables and formulas are my property
The font used in my images or edited by me is Open Source
The dividers with the Hive logo in this post were created by me and if you like them you can use them too, the Hive logo is property of https://hive.io/

HIVE ON and Splinterlands ON!

_{Gif by @splinterlands}

_{Logo Splinterlands owned by @splinterlands - Edit by @libertycrypto27 - Font used is Open Source}

Gli ultimi giorni del mese di maggio saranno giorni importanti per tutti i giocatori appassionati di Splinterlands come me perchè:

domani 25 maggio 2022 inizierà la Validator Licence Presale

il 31 maggio 2022 verrà introdotta un'importante modifica alle Ranked Rewards che incentiverà i giocatori ad aumentare la loro attività di gioco.

Nel post di oggi voglio focalizzarmi sulla prevendita delle Node Validator Licences perchè su questo importante evento ho ricevuto sia oggi che nei giorni scorsi molte domande e alcune richieste di consigli.

Splinterlands Node Validator

Con la creazione e distribuzione dei token di governance, i token Splintershards (SPS), Splinterlands ha iniziato un processo di decentralizzazione che continuerà domani con la prevendita delle license dei nodi validatori e terminerà quando i nodi validatori saranno attivi e funzionanti.

Per diventare un operatore di un Nodo Validatore sarà necessario:

acquistare una licenza
scaricare e installare un software open source su una Linux machine con una precisa versione di Windows o Mac

Il sistema di governance seguirà un modello Delegate Proof of Stake (DPOS) simile al modello di consenso presente sulla blockchain di Hive.
Tutti i possessori di token SPS potranno votare per un certo numero di accounts che hanno messo in funzione un nodo validatore.
I top operatori (i più votati) saranno responsabili di validare le transazioni SPS e potranno controllare i fondi dell'SPS foundation.

Questa possibilità di voto sarà solo uno dei futuri casi d'uso che avranno i token SPS.

Tutti gli operaroti dei nodi validatori riceveranno delle ricompense per il loro lavoro e impegno:

su base mensile saranno distribuiti 3750000 token SPS nel seguente modo
- il 10% verrà diviso tra i top 50-100 Voted Validators
- il 90% verà diviso tra tutti gli operatori di un Nodo validatore
su base giornaliera saranno distribuiti 20000 token VOUCHER in parti uguali a tutti i validatori.

Ho creato un semplice schema per sintetizzare quella che sarà la distibuzione delle ricompense.

Validator License Presale

Il primo passo per diventare un operatore di un nodo validatore è quello di acquistare una licenza.
La vendita delle licenze avverrà in fasi successive (9 fasi in totale).
Ogni fase avrà un numero prefissato di licenze disponibili alla vendita e il costo delle licenze crescerà in ogni fase di vendita successiva come chiaramente indicato nella tabella seguente.

_{Screenshot from @splinterlands/splintershards-sps-validator-node-overview-and-license-presale}

Per acquistare una licenza sarà sempre necessario utilizzare i token SPS come metodo di pagamento ma l'ammontare totale dipenderà dal valore in dollari dei token SPS al momento dell'acquisto.

I token VOUCHER avranno un ruolo importante nella vendita delle licenze perchè:

durante la presale saranno indispensabili per effettuare l'acquisto (500 token VOUCHER richiesti)
nelle fasi successive alla presale permetteranno di ottenere uno sconto massimo del 50% e avranno un valore di sconto per singolo token VOUCHER utilizzato dello 0.10% del prezzo di vendita.

Il costo effettivo di una licenza durante la prevendita

Durante la prevendita il costo di una licenza sarà di 1000$ di SPS + 500 token VOUCHER.

I token VOUCHER sono i token che i possessori di token SPS Staked ricevono come ricompensa giornaliera e sono anche token di secondo livello della blockchain di Hive che possono essere acquistati dai mercati esterni a Splinterlands come ad esempio Hive Engine/TribalDex/LeoDEX.

Per calcolare il costo effettivo in dollari di una licenza è necessario:

calcolare il valore in dollari di 500 token VOUCHER
calcolare il quantitativo di token SPS il cui valore è uguale a 1000$

Oggi 24 maggio 2022 la migliore offerta di vendita di 1 token VOUCHER è di 3.90 SWAP.HIVE il cui valore in dollari è di 1.853$.
Il valore di mercato di 1 token SPS è di 0.101$.

Se nel momento dell'apertura della prevendita i valori dei token SPS e dei token VOUCHER saranno uguali a quelli di oggi acquistare una licenza avrà un costo effettivo di 1926.25$

Infatti sono necessari 9900.99 token SPS per raggiungere un valore di 1000$ ed è necessario spendere 926.25$ per acquistare 500 token VOUCHER.

Per aiutare chi mi ha chiesto aiuto o consiglio sull'acquisto della licenza di un nodo validatore durante la prevendita ho pensato di fare una serie di ipotesi su possibili scenari futuri successivi all'acquisto di una licenza durante la presale.

Per ogni ipotesi ho preso in considerazione:

un ipotetico valore per i token VOUCHER e per i token SPS
un ipotetico numero di licenze vendute

Per ogni ipotesi ho calcolato:

il ROI mensile (considerando solo le ricompense)
il tempo in mesi per raggiungere il punto di pareggio (considerando solo le ricompense)

Hypotheses and Calculations

Nelle prime tre ipotesi ho considerato tre differenti quantitativi di licenze vendute e ho calcolato il valore delle ricompense in base a un ipotetico valore futuro dei token SPS e dei token VOUCHER uguale a quello attuale.

Ipotesi 1:

2000 licenze vendute, 1 SPS = 0.101$, 1 VOUCHER = 1.853$

In questo caso quando i nodi validatori saranno attivati chi ha acquistato una licenza durante la prevendita riceverà come ricompensa:

1687.50 token SPS al mese
10 token VOUCHER al giorno = 300 token VOUCHER al mese

Il valore totale delle ricompense ricevute in un mese sarà di 726.188$ che corrisponde ad un ROI mensile del 37.70% che permetterebbe di raggiungere il punto di pareggio in soli 2.653 mesi.