My SPS Journey - Is Splinterlands Leaving Hive?

Recently, there was some big news about the possibility of Splinterlands leaving Hive. This was in response to whether they can get the funding of 500k HBD from Hive over a span of 6 months. You can find the post here.

At the moment, the proposal has garnered a vote of about 15 million HP, 12 million short of the 27 million HP threshold to receive the payout. That said, the status is still "Upcoming" and there's still 4 days to go.

On Hive, on Discord, even on X/Twitter, there were several (heated) discussions about this whole proposal. Some felt that the tone felt like the team was threatening Hive, some felt that it was reasonable for Hive to support a key project like Splinterlands, etc. In any case, I do see where both sides are coming from and I kinda agree on some parts on either side as well.

People who know me well will probably know my views about Splinterlands for some time. At the risk of starting a heated debate here, I will keep my views mainly to myself. But what I wanted to say is, the price of token (be it SPS or Hive) does not determine whether the project is good or bad. What this means, it doesn't mean if the price of the token is low, the project is definitely bad, and vice versa, if the price of the token goes up, it doesn't mean the project must be fantastic. So I don't think we should use price movement to judge the merits of the proposal.

In any case, whether this proposal passes or not, it's actually largely depending whether the Hive whales support or not. As much as one can say every bit counts, I am pretty certain a mini Hive account like mine with 4000+ HP would not move the needle at all. Anyway, feel free to read the proposal if you are a Splinterlands player and make your own decision. I won't influence anyone's decision here. Hehe!

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Alright, I thought it was also timely to do a stocktake of my account so far.

At time of writing, I currently hold 22,514 SPS in the game and another 2,155 SPS on Hive Engine. That's a total of 24,669 SPS.

If I call it my SPS portfolio, it's actually divided into 3 parts.

The Battle Tranche: 2,755 SPS

The first tranche, or the battle tranche, is obtained from playing Splinterlands. This includes rewards battle wins, brawls wins and the staking rewards that came along with this tranche. This tranche is meant to be more permanent given that SPS is required for the game rewards, and I also use it to fund all my SPS delegations to help new players (it's free with no conditions attached!!!).

The current total SPS in this tranche stands at 2,755, and it should continue to grow with time from the battle wins and participation in brawls.

The HBD Tranche: 20,714 SPS

The second tranche, or the HBD (Hive Dollar) tranche, was a deliberate decision to convert the HBD earned from posting to "invest" in SPS.

6 months ago, I decided to swap 600 HBD into 19,162 SPS because of my bullishness for the price of SPS. You can find this being mentioned in a few posts of mine. And this is kept and monitored separately from the SPS that I get from playing Splinterlands.

I quickly learnt that one can do many things to grow that amount of SPS. As shared in my previous posts, one can earn yield from staking SPS (to get SPS and VOUCHER) and renting out the SPS (to get DEC). Over the span of 5 months, from staking SPS and renting out staked SPS, I have accumulated a total of 1,552 SPS so far over these 4 months. With that, my initial purchase of 19,162 SPS has become 20,714 SPS.

While the price of SPS has declined in the recent months, my focus is maximising the yield for now. Let's hope one day my efforts will pay off.

The Hive Tranche: 1,200 SPS

The third and final tranche, or the Hive tranche, was funded by from Hive. Like some players here, I do some trading of tokens on Hive Engine as a form of hobby and fun whenever I have a view on the price in the short to medium term.

When there are bargains on Hive Engine, I could use some of my liquid Hive to buy the SPS, and when the price is good, I do sell off for gains too. Of course, this tranche is not staked, and it's more for the purpose of trading. That said, the current price of SPS in Hive isn't that favourable so I think there is potential to wait for a rebound in the prices.

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Of course, no post about SPS can escape about looking at the price chart of SPS over the past year.

It's not really doom and gloom once you zoomed out a little longer - you can see that there are indeed both ups and both downs. By capitalising some of the trends/movements, there are definitely opportunities to get some gains, but of course, there is always risks in trading. And that's why my Hive tranche is kept relatively small.

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Before I end, of course, I should always reiterate that this is not financial advice. This is just my personal viewpoint and one should ALWAYS do your own due diligence for anything you want to put your money in.

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If you are interested to sign up to play Splinterlands, my referral link is here.