Currently players are able to purchase upvotes on content posted on the Steem blockchain from the @steemmonsters account using the Dark Energy Crystals (DEC) token. Additionally, players are able to earn DEC by delegating their own Steem Power to the account. The purpose behind this was to incentivize players to post content about the game on the various Steem-based websites and to provide additional utility for the DEC token.
As a result of the recent changes to the Steem blockchain implemented in Hard Fork 21 last month, we no longer feel that the current system serves those goals as effectively as before. Effective 1 week from today, on September 30th, 2019, it will no longer be possible to purchase votes from the @steemmonsters account using DEC or otherwise. After that date any DEC sent to the @splinterlands account (where funds are currently sent to purchase votes) will be automatically refunded.
Going forward we will be assembling a team of curators to actively seek out articles, videos, and other content posted to the Steem blockchain that provides value to the game and to the player base and manually upvote it from the @steemmonsters account. The posts that are selected for an upvote and the size of the upvote depend completely on the subjective opinions of the curation team. We do not plan to use our stake in the Steem platform to downvote content for any reason at this time.
For anyone who currently has Steem Power delegated to the @steemmonsters account, we want to thank you for your support and let you know that as of September 30th, DEC will no longer be paid out in return for delegation.
For content creators, we hope that this change will encourage you to create and post even more, with a focus on content that adds value to the Splinterlands game and community as a whole. Adding value can come in many different forms including, but not limited to:
- Guides / Tutorials
- Suggestions & Feedback
- Data Analysis
- Sharing Cool Fights
- Awesome Card Pulls
- Event Announcements
- Humor
- And Much More!
We're continuously amazed by and thankful for all of the awesome content created by our player community, and we look forward to using our stake to continue to incentivize content creation through the unique reward distribution model that the Steem blockchain provides.