Splinterlands Picks Sides in Steem Conflict
⚠ Splinterlands turns its back to Justin Sun
Trading card game Splinterlands is moving from the Steem blockchain towards Hive after a major conflict of interest. They do this because they feel it’s needed to ‘ensure the best possible future for the project’. The development team wants to switch blockchain on June 1st 2020.
Earlier this year Justin Sun and the Tron Foundation took over the Steem blockchain. According to the latest rumors Sun is planning an unannounced hard fork, presumably as a way to cut funds away from the original development team. The Splinterlands team only heard about the hard fork through the grapevine, and nobody in charge at Steem contacted the app developers.
“We cannot continue to operate on a chain where the changes aren’t public and we are not given adequate time for testing and review”
Splinterlands announcement blog — May 19th 2020
Because the team doesn’t know what to expect from the hard fork, they don’t rule out an earlier switch. They suggest that the hard fork could cause problems to the game. The developers underline that all assets are safe.
Hive is a hard fork itself
Hive is a new blockchain that hard forked from Steem as soon as Justin Sun took over. That’s why the developers of Splinterlands can easily switch between blockchain, and that’s why they can guarantee that all assets will be safe.
There’s lots of controversy surrounding the involvement of Justin Sun into the Steem blockchain. The latest is that Steem is freezing 5 million dollars worth in tokens that supposedly belongs to Hive supporters. Sun had acquired blogging platform Steemit in February, including rewards for the founders. In response a part of the Steem community initiated a fork to freeze those rewards and keep it out of the hands of Justin Sun.
In the weeks that followed Sun tried to remove node operators and their influence from the Steem system. This ultimately resulted in the launch of the Hive blockchain, as the community considered the Steem blockchain compromised. Support for Hive is quite strong, underlined by its performance within the market.
Free from conflict on Wax
If you don’t want to pick sides in this blockchain conflict, it’s also possible to play Splinterlands on the Wax blockchain. Thanks to Wax the browser-based card game can use easier on-boarding of new users, as they only require a social media account or e-mail address. This possible since April.
Splinterlands originally launched on the Steem blockchain as Steem Monsters. The developers later changed the game’s name. Earlier this year Steem Engine announced support for non-fungible tokens on the Ethereum blockchain, allowing gamers to trade their cards on popular marketplaces like OpenSea.
Splinterlands is also playable on mobile devices. In Februari the development team released an alpha version of the app. Compared with the desktop game, the mobile game is a bit bare-bones.
Splinterlands gameplay explained
Splinterlands Untamed is a trading card game for desktop and mobile devices. Players can buy digital card packs. The cards in these packs are tied to the player’s account, and can be used in the game or sold on an open market. Each card has mana points, which determines in which phase of the game it can be played. In addition cards of attack power, life points and a special power. For example, some cards can shield others, or force enemies to attack them first.
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