Going forward, the Splinterlands economy is arranged in such a way that most products should be priced in a fixed amount of DEC tokens with the goal of creating demand for DEC tokens and creating price stability for them. Any additional demand for DEC tokens above the target price goes directly to the SPS token through the burn mechanism.
Validator node licenses can currently be purchased with SPS tokens at the current market price and not DEC only because the license sale was launched before the SPS burn mechanism for DEC was live and available within the platform. Had the burn mechanism been live, licenses most likely would have been priced at a fixed amount of DEC for each tranche, so we feel that at this point it should be put to a vote of the SPS token holders whether or not to re-price the validator node licenses in DEC instead of SPS at the current market rate.
If this proposal were to pass, 80% of the DEC tokens spent to purchase licenses would be burned while the remaining 20% would go to the DAO which is the same as the current distribution of SPS tokens spent for licenses.
Generally, we feel that this would be an overall net positive change for the Splinterlands economy as it would provide a significant sink for the DEC token that would help it maintain its target value at which point it can help kickstart the flywheel effect of high DEC demand causing buying and burning of SPS tokens.
We also feel that it is typically a better player experience to have assets priced in fixed amounts of stable-valued tokens. Currently many players may be hesitant to purchase licenses while the SPS market price is low because they would have to spend a larger amount of tokens than they would if they wait and the price goes higher in the future.
Additionally, it may also lead to an increase in licenses being purchased by the community as DEC is currently trading at a significant discount to the target value on external markets.
It is important to keep in mind that validator node licenses are being sold by the DAO, and all purchases directly benefit the DAO (which is different than for other things like Chaos Legion packs), so it is generally beneficial for the entire community to try to increase sales as much as possible.
The concept of a product-backed stablecoin is quite unique and powerful, and we believe it can - by itself - provide a significant amount of value and attention to the Splinterlands ecosystem if we can make it work. To do so, we need to price as many products in DEC as we possibly can, which is why we are bringing this proposal to the community.