Analyzing COLONY Airdrop: Should You Stake GLX or SPS?
We have the longest Airdrop I have seen in cryptosphere on HIVE. I truly respect a long term vision and continuously working on it. We are only in the 2nd year of earning COLONY through being a part of the larger ecosystem. It will take us 3 more years to get out of the Airdrop phase. When there are multiple paths to get something done, naturally there appears the question on the best way to get the thing done. This article is written to help you understand that.
Total Staked Supply vs Yours
The COLONY is received based on the percentage of SPS or GLX is staked by an investor. The number of COLONY received can fluctuate while the number of Tokens staked remain the same. There is a minimum number of staked Tokens to become eligible. There is no need to stake both SPS and GLX to qualify. Consider them two separate Airdrops happening for two related projects.
- 5,000 $SPS Staked
- 10,000 $GLX Staked
967,824,924 SPS Staked
The maximum supply of $SPS is 3 billion Tokens. It will take some time before all of it is released into the circulating supply. The price has held fine over the last few months. All Time Low was on 5th August of 2024. Currently we are up by 117.2% with many great plans being worked for the game.
160,754,027 GLX Staked
GLX has a 6.02X lower staked supply. What this means is that it takes ~6 times less Tokens compared to SPS to earn the same amount of COLONY. Both Tokens have equally sized pools of COLONY. Read this support article for more information.
Value of Investment Needed
Knowing that GLX is 6X better for the Airdrop is not the end of research. It is merely the top of the iceberg. There are 4 Dieselpools with LP Rewards for GLX with enough liquidity for small trades. It is best to keep the size of a single swap under 2% of the total liquidity to avoid paying too much. Dswap has a tool to DCA with pools which can make it easier to do larger trades.
GLX is ~30 Times Cheaper
Keep in mind that investors get 6X more when staking GLX to begin with. Combine both of multipliers and we have a 180X cheaper path towards attaining COLONY through Airdrop. Although we have the clear winner based on 2 factors that matter to the Airdrop, there is a larger ecosystem and market conditions to be concerned of.
Other Earnings for SPS and GLX
All 3 of our gaming platforms and their respective Tokens have real utility within the game and as a part of DeFi. The simplest and easiest to spot earnings are,
- GLGT
- SPS
- VOUCHERs
Since GLX staking is already 180X better, what we need to figure out is if SPS has anything over GLX in terms other perks and use cases.
I don't have any official numbers on APR for GLX staking. GLGT keeps slowly accumulating in the account. I have used some in the game and sold the rest. GLGT is the Genesis League Sports equivalent of VOUCHERs.
SPS + VOUCHER staking Rewards have an official number and I think this is a healthy APR that can be maintained. We have come a long way from the APRs over 400% of the launch days. The current APR has been sustained for a long time and it will likely stay the same for medium term. The part I don't have the data for is SPS Delegations.
IIRC, the APR paid for delegating SPS was around 5%. This can be used as a proxy for the value of SPS utility in the game. If players are paying 5% for SPS, they are likely making more in gameplay Rewards. GLX does not have a Delegations Market. I wish there was one that is similar to what @splinterlands is having. At the moment, building gameplay and onboarding players should be a bigger priority.
Blue Chip vs Degen
None of the above mentioned facts should convince you that staking SPS is better than staking GLX. If you want to speculate on the best gains, focus on GLX staking. I have been staking COLONY since the early days. I don't even worry about the short term price. I'm here for the long term vision.
There are few things Splinterlands is better at as as a former #1 DAPP in the world. One could speculate that these factors will make $SPS price increase come before GLX and/or COLONY. As the mature phase of the bull market is approaching, one could buy $SPS under 1 cent and sell it for profit and buy back GLX and stake it. If there were large profits made, leaving 10% of a 10X return as GLX to earn COLONY is an easy task to do.
I have barely done any active trading for any of the above mentioned Tokens. Even when I sold, most of it was reinvested back into the game in the form of Booster Packs, Promo Cards, Node Licenses etc. I earned my GLX through SPS and I earned my COLONY through Airdrops + Staking. My strategy has been to HODL and support the development of Invennium and Splinterlands in the ways I can. Writing this article was one of them :-)