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Thank you to all those who supported or at least entertained my proposal. It was good to interact with so many of you about it. I like Matt's proposal but to me Matt's proposal is not a small tweak to mine but an entirely separate idea with an entirely different impact on morale and the card economy.
It's clear to me though, that my proposal would not be possible to implement in time and I don't want to put that pressure on the team so I'm changing it to match Matt's suggestion. I asked him for new text but he's been understandably busy so I'm just going to copy his comment up here with one tweak and say this is the new proposal. Hopefully we can revisit the original proposal on a future set as I believe it has merit.
The New Proposal (from Matt's comments below)
Overall great idea and proposal - I am going to suggest going about this a slightly different way though, which should achieve a similar result - tons of cards being burned!
Ever since the success of our 5 year anniversary DEC burning event back in May, I have wanted to do something like that again, and I think this is a perfect opportunity for that. So I propose that Splinterlands does another burning event that works pretty much exactly the same way as the last one except that players must burn cards instead of DEC.
The company can provide titles and other prizes like we did last time, but we don't have as much available now to give out so I would propose to the DAO that some of the RW packs that are being given to it as part of the daily burn be made available as prizes for this promotion.
I expect that the DAO will receive something around 150k RW packs in total from the daily burns, so I'm thinking that the proposal could be for the DAO to allocate 50k-100k* of those packs to this event as the bulk of the prizes. I can work out the details and math for the amount and type of cards burned that lead to a chance of winning a prize, but I expect it will be similar to what you've proposed here.
Also, from an implementation perspective, if the packs set aside for the DAO are used then we're not under as much of a time crunch, and also by simply doing the burn event again we can re-use all of that code so it should be much quicker and easier to implement than if we do something that works differently.
Let me know your thoughts. If you like my idea and want to edit this proposal, reach out on Discord and I am happy to help you with that, or if you prefer to keep your proposal that is fine as well.
"" Matt originally said 50k packs and I can only imagine that's what he intends to go with. I made it a range because I don't know if he's sat down with the numbers yet and I want to give him some room if he needs it. Everything else is copied exactly from his comment below.*
Everything below is no longer an active part of the proposal
If you had the option, would you burn 200 BCX of penny cards in exchange for one Rift Watchers pack?
The Proposal
Allow the burning of cards as a way to purchase RiftWatcher packs. The following are the proposed burn amounts required to purchase one pack.
- 200 BCX of any common card + one voucher (one maxed copy + 2 vouchers = 2 packs)
- 60 BCX of any rare card + one voucher (one maxed copy + 2 vouchers = 2 packs)
- 12 BCX of any epic card + one voucher (one maxed copy + 4 vouchers = 4 packs)
- 3 BCX of any legendary card + one voucher (one maxed copy + 4 vouchers = 4 packs)
This proposal aims to voluntarily eliminate millions of surplus cards, while offering players a way to gain valuable RiftWatcher cards that would likely otherwise burn.
The Big Picture
There is an oversupply of cards. Land soaking them up is speculative. We still have 2.8 million CL packs to open (15 million cards). The team has acknowledged this oversupply by putting out two proposals to burn packs and the community has passed both. This proposal aims to help with this accepted problem.
Since the proposals passed to start the RiftWatchers burn and sell it in DEC, just 43k packs have sold. At the same time 580k packs burned and 80k went to the DAO. This means its very likely that we won't sell many more packs for DEC before they are all burned.
Since burning is not stimulating sales meaningfully, it's main advantage is lowering potential card inflation. So why not use them to create card deflation instead?
Further Benefits
RiftWatchers is an exciting set that players want. Being able to trade the cards no one cares about for cards we do want would bring excitement to many players.
While it's hard to say how much we could decrease the card supply by, if one million Rift Watcher packs sold this way, it could lower the total BCX supply of commons and rare cards by 10's of millions while making a significant dent in the overprinted epics and legendaries.
Of course, only cards that are significantly devalued due to oversupply would ever be burned. For instance, as soon as a common card is scarce enough to be valued by the community at just 4 cents, the incentive to burn it is gone.
Anticipated Pushback and Rebuttals
Let's wait and see what land does first
There isn't time to wait. Thousands of RW packs burn daily. The proposal system takes two weeks and it takes time to implement if this does pass. To try this again later we would need a whole new set that wasn't meant to be team revenue. This is the perfect opportunity to try something bold.
There aren't enough cards for land/we have a card shortage
According to Aggy, fully maxed out land would soak up 75% of all cards in existence. Most estimates I've heard in the community are that 20-40% of land will be utilized. That leaves a ton of cards out there and will not endanger land or play.
It should also be noted that land is already here. It went live on the mav server already (meaning real card staking is imminent) and card demand is at its lowest point in almost two years if you measure by total card market cap. Literally, today marks the lowest market cap since Chaos Legion released and it continues to drop.
If land were really going to demand enough cards to make a dent, we wouldn't be at 2 year lows on prices a week or so before actual staking starts. We have plenty of cards for land and play still. Plus, Rebellion is around the corner. If we did hit a shortage of cards, it would boost the demand for Rebellion and give the team more runway.
It will devalue RiftWatchers cards and be a slap in the face to those who bought in early
Yes. It probably will devalue RiftWatchers cards. But, it should not be considered a slap in the face. if you're sitting on enough RiftWatchers cards to be worried about their value, you're probably sitting on tons of other cards that will gain in value as they become more scarce. Also, you can take advantage of the deal as well. Even the mavs probably have a few RW cards they haven't maxed yet on their alt accounts.
This is a discount on RiftWatchers and discounts devalue cards
Yes, using discount to stimulate demand encourages overbuying, oversupply, and devaluation. But consider how insane it is that burning 200 BCX is currently a discount to get a year old pack with 5 cards in it. The fact that this is a discount shows how big the problem is that we need to solve. While discounts usually encourage card oversupply and card devaluation, this would do the opposite overall as it will lower the card supply, not increase it.
Some DEC will not go to the DAO
This is true. We might sell fewer RW packs in DEC. Pulling DEC out of the economy is important but the time when we were going to spend billions of DEC on RiftWatchers has passed. The sales data shows that most of us are content to watch them burn rather than spend $4 on them. And burning them takes no DEC out of circulation
At this point the only benefit that burning them has is to lower future inflation. Burning one million packs saves us 5 million BCX of card inflation. For context, we printed 8 million BCX of just venari heatsmith. We can aim higher than just dodging some future inflation.
What about the DEC created from burning cards?
If you burn cards for packs, no DEC would be given. If current mechanics dictate DEC must be created when a card is burned, hopefully the team can design the system so it burns the created DEC.
Possible modifications I've considered:
I can't wait to hear feedback but here are some places this could be modified by the community. To be clear, these are not currently part of the proposal.
- If the community would rather, the DEC from burned cards could go to the DAO as payment for packs.
- If feasible to code, it could be made so any packs purchased with card burns aren't eligible for airdrops. That would make DEC purchases more attractive.
How would this be done technically?
I do not know the hurdles involved in implementing this change. Time is critical though as packs are burning. If this passes, it should be implemented in whatever manner brings it out the fastest, even if it's not a perfect representation of the proposal.