SPS Validators launched! What do we know so far and why this is a Big Deal for Splinterlands!

Intro

In the last update from Splinterlands the SPS Nodes were officially launched. It has been more than two years since I bought my node license in the presale that took place on May 25, 2022! That presale sold out within eleven minutes and 2,000 licenses were sold. That sale added 3.6 million SPS to Splinterlands DAO. It also burned 14.5 million SPS and one million vouchers!

So the cost of the license at the time of the presale was $1,000 which could only be paid in SPS and Vouchers. It required 500 vouchers. I obviously earned quite a bit in SPS rewards during these couple years, but the price of the license is now down to $233 or 699 Hive on Hive Engine and this is up from the lows of under 500 Hive this January:

This is not an investment advice, but at less than a quarter the cost of the presale validator license these seem to be a great value. Especially if you consider that the cost of the validator license is $5,000 or 732,589 SPS from the official Splinterlands store:

So why is the validator launch is important milestone in the Splinterlands history? The short answer is that it makes it theoretically possible to run the game even without Splinterlands the company! Another reason it establishes Splinterlands as a legitimate Web 3 game with true decentralization. Prior to the launch of SPS validator nodes transactions were processed by Splinterlands the company on their servers in the very centralized way, now license holders can setup their nodes and process transactions in a decentralized way just like the Hive blockchain does. And finally this is a big deal because SPS validators and decentralization was a big deal for major exchange listings of SPS token!

What License Holders Should Do Now?

First of all this is a heads up post for the Splinterlands community. At the moment we cannot do much with our licenses. The license holder rewards are paused and should restart shortly when validator nodes are publicly available and you are running a node or someone is running a node for you. Right now the node developer is running validator nodes to make sure everything is working smoothly and after about a week they will make the blockchain snapshot available for people to run their own nodes.

You can however go to the following page and stake your license now: https://splinterlands.com/dashboard/licenses

If you go to the URL above you will see the following page:

As you can see I have one Inactivated License. To activate your license you can click the Activate License button and you will see the following screen:

Click Stake button and after a small delay you will see that I have one Activated license now!

That is it! And that is all that you can do as a license holder right now.

Process of Setting Up After Nodes Go Public

After the nodes go public you would have to have an SPS validator node setup in order to receive SPS rewards. From what I read it appears that each license must be assigned to at least one SPS validator node. You will not be able to delegate a license to someone, you would have to setup at least one node or have someone setup at least one node for all of your licenses. If you have 10 licenses you will have to have at least one SPS validator node running with all ten of your licenses staked to it. If you have a node with one license running you will get rewards for one license and if you have one node with ten licenses staked to it in your reward account you will get x10 SPS rewards in your reward account from the 90% reward pull, plus if you are one of the top validators that are actually validating blocks on your node you will receive bonus rewards from the 10% reward pool on top of your regular x10 licenses rewards.

Does it mean that you have to start using Docker and run PowerShell and Linux commands yourself and rent a Virtual Server or have a physical server yourself with multiple virtual servers running on it? The short answer is NO. I read that Peak Monsters the creators of the Peak Monsters @peak-monsters @peakmonsters and PeakD @peakd that I am using right now to write this post are going to offer a service where license holders can basically rent a node setup for only 4% of the SPS rewards. That is you will get 96% for the Validator Node rewards and they will get 4% for making it easy for you to run an SPS Validator Node. These numbers are not official, they are what was posted around Discord channels so they are subject to change. Officially it was stated for a "small fee."

I am a Hive Witness (your vote would be really appreciated) and since I own one license I will setup at least one SPS node to try to get into the top SPS validator nodes and to support further decentralization of Splinterlands! So once my node goes live I would also appreciate your SPS vote for it as well :)

If you are interested in setting up your own node here are all the details: https://github.com/TheSPSDAO/SPS-Validator

Additionally, you don't have to run this on a strong server the specs that I have seen are really basic and even a ten year old laptop with a connection to the internet would do the job:

The screenshot above is from @clayboyn our Splinterlands and @sps.dao manager

What is the value proposition of running an SPS Node?

You might be asking yourself at this point, so what is in it for the license holders and why would you want to run a node yourself?

Here is what Splinterlands white paper says on this subject:

As mentioned in the Play to Earn & Reward Pool section, there are 3,750,000 SPS tokens per month allocated to a reward pool for SPS Chain node operators. 10%, or 375,000, of the monthly total will be allocated as block validation rewards for the accounts that receive staked SPS votes and are assigned specific blocks to validate, and the remaining 3,375,000 SPS / month will be split equally between all of the LICENSE token holders that are actively running the node software.

While at first it might seem that only a small amount is being allocated to the voted validators, please keep in mind that there will only be a relatively small number of validators that receive the lion's share of the votes, so this 375k SPS / month will be split among a small group of accounts. Likely no more than 50 - 100 in total, with the top 10-20 receiving the majority of the rewards. If we assume 50 validators are splitting that equally, then they would each get 7500 SPS / month. In reality, the top voted validators will receive significantly more than that, as the rewards are proportional to the number of votes received.

Please note that it will also be possible to earn from both pools if you have one or more LICENSE tokens and some staked SPS voting for you. It is expected that many, if not all, of the top voted validators will also hold licenses (though it is not required).

LICENSE token holders will receive an equal share of the 3,375,000 SPS / month rewards per license they hold in their account as long as they are running an active SPS Chain node. The SPS Chain node software will periodically publish transactions to the Hive blockchain that will prove that the software is being run in order to receive the rewards.

https://sps.splinterlands.com/sps-chain/node-operator-rewards

This means that while 90% of rewards will be allocated to license holder who run nodes and the there will be 50 to a 100 voted validators that are processing blocks that process seems to be very similar to how Hive Witnesses work. The 10% of the validator rewards will probably work how Hive Witness rewards work here is the illustration of how that works:

Credit for the image above goes to @quochuy who is a top 20 Hive Witness.

So in conclusion it would be worth it to run a node if you own a lot of SPS or have top holders of SPS like @bravetofu and @azircon vote for you as an SPS Node operator. Here is the list of major SPS stakeholders:

I am ranked at 346th place with my 436,828 staked SPS and I will give it a try!

I have recently became a Hive Witness and would really appreciate your vote for me as a witness.

You can vote the following way:

• Via PeakD: Visit PeakD Witnesses, enter “seattlea” in the Name Search, or scroll down to my current position (97 / 93) and simply click the Vote button on the right.
• Via Hive Signer: Vote for seattlea

If you wonder what is the best way to get involved you can use my link to begin your Splinterlands and HIVE journey.