Celebrating 6 Years Of Collection Power Accumulation

In this post looking back at 6 years of Splinterlands, I want to take a closer look at Card Power, what it is and why I think it should be an important aspect to focus on going forward.

What is Card Power

Card Power is a concept that was introduced when Splinterlands or SteemMonsters was first launched. Effectively, you could crush a card and get a guaranteed amount of DEC, instead of relying on the market. It was quite a brilliant feature to be honest, as it made cards more scarce and made it easier for players to liquidate their assets. So, in the picture above, a Serpentine Spy would get you a minimum of 10 DEC at anytime.

The rarer the card, the higher the Card Power, in general. So a gold foil legendary card, especially the earlier editions, would have really high CP, like 75,000 or more.

Card Power or Collection Power really came to attention with the rollout of SPS and how it became a requirement to achieve a certain amount before you could unlock higher level leagues.

Why Collection Power Should Matter

Collection Power was removed as a requirement for entering higher level leagues and I kind of agree with this approach. A good player shouldn't be limited just because they don't have enough cards.

But as we've seen the Splinterlands total value of cards take a bit of a dip since the highs, something needs to be done to make it so that cards remain valuable beyond extracting rewards from the Modern League.

At the moment, the Glint boost modifier only includes SPS and a Guild bonus. When it comes to the battle itself, there are some boosts for Alpha, Beta, Gold Foil cards etc. But this doesn't look at the total Collection Power.

Then when it comes to the SPS earned per battle, it depends solely on the SPS staked. And so that's where I think the ecosystem will need some work going forward.

Because we want to encourage players to buy new packs. But why would they if their card value goes down soon after? Why does it go down soon after? Because there's not much use to owning cards beyond their use in battle, so you don't need that many cards.

One way to solve it would be to get a massive influx of players, but it is a chicken and egg problem in my opinion. Players will come in if they see prices holding steady and rising. That's what we've all learnt from Bitcoin and the crypto winter. No one wants to buy when prices are low, everyone wants to buy when prices moon.

So, cards are relatively cheap right now and it's worth looking at picking up some non-soulbound ones as I expect the team to focus on Collection Power in the months to come. Not financial advice, just my strategy for the coming months in Splinterlands.