The recent announcement of downsizing at splinterlands highlights the difficulties faced by blockchain-based companies. It must have been a hard decision to reduce staff but times are tough in this perennial crypto bear market. The previous layoffs in November 2022 show that the company has been facing challenges and it is commendable that they are transparent about these decisions.

During the downsizing announcement, the splinterlands team confirmed that there will be a division into two companies: Invennium Corp and Steem Monsters Corp. Steem Monsters Corp will focus on splinterlands and Soulkeep, while Invennium Corp will focus on the Invennium Platform, and Genesis League Sports. While organizational changes can be unsettling their priority is long-term sustainability and growth. It is encouraging to see that leadership recognizes the importance of giving attention to each product line ensuring that both splinterlands and Invennium receive focus without overshadowing one another. This restructuring aims to secure funding and leadership teams for each entity, which may potentially lead to effective development and progress.

I just hope with this renewed focus and dedication that the Steem Monsters Corp team focuses on delivering the Land functionality that we have been waiting years for now. Also, hope there is a focus on dealing with the card over-supply problem and with the new Rebellion set on the horizon this over-supply problem will continue to grow.

Runi Fund

The past week I added another 15k DEC into the Runi fund, but we saw the overall fund decrease by $4. This is due to DEC decreasing another 10% in price over the past week. I am solely holding DEC in the Runi fund so any moves in the price of DEC will affect the fund. If DEC ever gets back to $1 per 1k DEC peg, then the fund would be close to $315 (holding 315K DEC).

Source: DEC Price History

As I mentioned above, the price of DEC has decreased to $0.678 per 1k DEC, which is the largest price decrease since we started this new challenge. As to the cause of the decrease it could be multiple causes such as the continual delay of the Land 1.5 release, more splinterlands layoffs and the perennial crypto bear market. Nonetheless, I will continue to keep on buying DEC for the challenge as I believe that once the Land 1.5 release is out to the public and the flywheel is activated we will see an escalation in the supply of the DEC and hopefully with Economics 101 apply, we should see DEC continues its ascend back to peg. Not financial advice of course so as always DYOR!

Runi Market

Source: Runi Floor Price

Even with the wider challenges in the splinterlands ecosystem, the price of Runi were not that adversely affected. There is a new floor price of 0.37 ETH ($598.25) but the decrease was minimal and this bodes well for the long-term investment proposal of owning a Runi NFT.

Source: Runi 7-Day Sales Activity

In terms of market activity, this was the best week for Runi sales since I started tracking for this new challenge. We saw twenty-two transactions occur the past week, so quite a bit volume in the context of Runis. The range for the sales were between 0.2747 ETH ($438.82) and 0.43 ETH ($685.29). These ranges give me a target frame of $500 to have in the budget before I go out and start negotiating. I am only interested in the cheapest Runi and not to fussed at this stage with owning a Runi with certain attributes which may increase its price.

Source: New Research Reveals 95% of All NFTs Are Worthless

In a week where mainstream news headlines are all spreading FUD about the decline NFT market and the lack of utility, its good to see that there is a demand for Runis. My preference has always been to have NFTs that have utility as that creates a use case for the NFT – your mileage may vary, but that’s my perspective.

Are you new to splinterlands and want to learn to play the game? Check out my Ultimate Guide to Splinterlands: A Collection of Articles and Guides 2021. If you enjoy reading my splinterlands content, please follow and support me by signing up to playing splinterlands through my affiliate link: https://splinterlands.com?ref=mercurial9. We both would have a chance to receive a cool NFT!

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