This proposal and request is being written by @yabapmatt, co-founder & current President and CEO of Steem Monsters Corp., the company behind the blockchain-based game Splinterlands (formerly Steem Monsters) that has been operating on the Hive blockchain (and previously the Steem blockchain) for the past six years.
For years, Splinterlands has prided ourselves on operating a profitable business and on being able to provide significant value back to the Hive community who have made this all possible. We have purchased millions of HIVE tokens off of external markets, we have burned millions of HIVE tokens to create accounts, we have funded and initially designed and built two of the most widely used tools on the platform - Hive Engine and Hive Keychain - and we have brought thousands of users and tons of attention to the Hive blockchain during that time.
It is with extreme humility that I am now asking the Hive community for help.
How We Got Here
In the crypto bull market mania of 2021 and early 2022, the company leadership at the time decided to expand massively and branch out to building many other game products and a blockchain-gaming platform (all on Hive, of course). This was done under the assumption that the bull market would continue indefinitely (or at least for quite a while longer) and that the more products the company could put out, the better.
As it happened, the bull market ended abruptly in mid-2022 and the company quickly went from being highly profitable to having significant losses while having also taken on many more projects than it could support. This was, unfortunately, allowed to continue for over a year until September, 2023, when the company's board of directors voted for a change in leadership and strategy.
At that time, the game platform project and all of the games other than Splinterlands were split out into a subsidiary company (Invennium Corp), which is being led by @aggroed. I became President and CEO of Steem Monsters Corp, with my sole focus on turning the Splinterlands game into a profitable and growing business.
Raising Capital
As part of the plan to turn the business around, we are going to need to raise capital. There are a number of options to raise capital for the business outside of the Hive ecosystem, and we are pursuing all of them regardless of whether or not this proposal is funded, but if the Hive community chooses to help fund Splinterlands, it will be an opportunity to ensure that Splinterlands remains on the Hive blockchain and is not forced to move to another chain.
It is important to understand that most outside sources of capital that invest in the crypto/web3 space are either directly or indirectly affiliated with other blockchain platforms. In fact, most of the other top blockchains have specific VC funds and/or grant programs to encourage projects to build on their chain.
Nearly every investor call I've been on for Splinterlands (and there have been many over the years) has had a lengthy discussion about why we use Hive instead of the other more prominent chains with much larger ecosystems and market caps, and often - despite our best attempts to explain the benefits of Hive - the investors are only interested if we were to move the game to their preferred chain.
I have no interest in moving the game to another chain, as I truly believe that Hive is the best chain to support our mission, but if we're unable to raise the capital we need from the DHF and/or other investors who support us staying here, then it is possible we could be forced to do so at some point in the future.
We can already see this happening with projects like Ethgard Legends, created by top Hive witness @therealwolf, which started as a Hive game but has now moved over to Base chain. I know that Base has some significant incentive programs for projects to build there, although I don't know if that was the reason behind his decision to move the game.
Either way, this is a big missed opportunity for Hive in my opinion.
Funding Request & Use of Funds
All that said, I am humbly asking the Hive community for 500k HBD in funding, paid out over the next 6 months (2777 HBD per day), in order to help fund the ongoing development and operation of the Splinterlands game product right here on the Hive blockchain.
I have and will continue to do everything I can to keep the overhead costs of running the business as low as possible to ensure that nearly all of our funds go towards building the best possible product that brings the most amount of new people and exposure to the Hive blockchain as possible.
To some of you this may sound like a very large sum, and it is relative to most of the other projects on Hive and most of the other DHF proposals, however it is actually quite small in relation to the multi-million dollar grant programs available on other blockchain ecosystems with which we are competing, and it is also quite small in relation to what Splinterlands has shown it can accomplish in the past and the value it can bring to the Hive ecosystem.
We are currently working on improving our onboarding experience to increase the conversion rate from new players signing up through spending money in the ecosystem, and once that is done later this year we are planning to launch a major marketing campaign - hopefully coinciding with the beginning of the next major bull market in crypto.
This is primarily what these funds will be used for - hiring a top web3 marketer and running a number of marketing and promotional campaigns to bring a significant amount of attention and active, paying users to the Hive blockchain through Splinterlands.
It is also important to note that Splinterlands will not sell the HBD received from this proposal on external markets. Instead we plan to swap it for our in-game token (DEC) on Hive engine using the liquidity pools there. We are able to convert DEC tokens to USD when needed to fund the marketing campaign and other expenses through our in-game Credits system, so that means that any HBD received from this proposal will remain within the Hive ecosystem unless the Hive engine liquidity providers choose to withdraw it from the pools and sell it themselves.
Hive Needs to Compete
As a member of this community for nearly seven years now, it has been extremely sad to see Hive continue to fall in relation to other chains by nearly every metric, especially considering it is superior to most of the other projects in so many ways.
As a long-time Hive stakeholder, it is my belief that we need to use our resources to get as many great projects building in this ecosystem as possible if we want any chance at maintaining relevance and value in this space.
The DHF may not have as much available as other VC-backed chains, but if we are able to allocate that capital effectively to projects that generate a significant return back to the platform in terms of new users and visibility then we can compete with the best of them.
I think it's fair to say that Splinterlands has proven in the past that it can deliver, and although we have made some mistakes recently, I hope it is clear that we are acknowledging them, we are fixing them, and we are doing whatever it takes to get back to being one of the top web3 projects in the world and showing everyone in the space the value of being a part of the Hive ecosystem.
Thank You For Your Support!
I sincerely hope that the Hive stakeholders choose to support this proposal - both as the co-founder of Splinterlands and as a large Hive stakeholder myself - but either way, I want to end this post by thanking the Hive community (which includes everyone reading this post) for your support over these last six years.
When we put up that first website for the project back in 2018 I never would have imagined it would get to this point, the amount of support we would get from this community, or the number of amazing people I've met and worked with as part of this journey. It has certainly been a life-changing experience and I hope to one day be able to contribute back to the Hive community as much as it has given me. Thank you.
-- @yabapmatt
P.S. I look forward to getting to meet and talk with many of you in person at HiveFest in Croatia! I can't wait for the event and I am proud to once again be able to sponsor the event both personally and on behalf of Splinterlands.