Splinterlands: Why am I so Bullish on Runi?

Splinterlands is one of the most popular NFT based games around and what makes it different from the rest is its durability. It has been going strong for over 5 years now despite the ups and downs in the market. While most NFT gaming projects run into funding issues sooner or later Splinterlands has managed to stay ahead of the curve.

Anybody who has been involved in NFT gaming space is aware of how the card based game mechanism of Splinterlands functions and how it runs over the Hive blockchain via it’s native tokens, earlier DEC and now SPS.

The focus of this post is to talk about another aspect of Splinterlands ecosystem which is not so popular yet and seems to be running under the radar.

What Exactly is Runi?

Runi was a limited special edition card collection that Splinterlands launched on Ethereum blockchain. It was planned to have a supply of 6,500 NFTs. The allow list mint was priced at 0.19 E and the public mint was priced at 0.38 E. At the time of mint Splinterlands did not share much details about the use cases. They just said that there will be a mechanism to integrate this ETH NFT into the Hive gameplay as a special Legendary card which can be used in normal ranked battles. Rest of the roadmap with other utilities was expected to be released later down the line.

Splinterlands probably assumed that considering they have a active user base of more than 250,000 active players so selling out this limited mint of just 6,500 will be a matter of minutes. However what they did not account was that the broad market sentiment around NFTs had already started to cool off. There was not a lot of new liquidity coming into the NFT market. Expecting players to spend $10 on a starter pack is completely different than finding buyers willing to spend 0.19 to 0.38 on a NFT whose utility is not very clear. Just 3,500 of the 6,500 max supply got minted during the days scheduled as mint period including the public mint. Many people saw this as biggest goof up by Splinterlands till then as normally they were very careful about introducing anything new.

Why am I so Bullish on Runi then?

I had a serious liquidity crunch around the Runi mint period thanks to my degen plays with the 10K NFT collections which were getting pumped and dumped before the Runi launch. Still I was interested in the concept behind Runi and had faith in the team that they would have thought something worthwhile about Runi in their roadmap. I slowly started setting aside some ETH and waited for markets to correct further so I can get a good buy level. While exploring the Runi that had been minted out I saw that the majority had a grey background and some of them had a colourful background. Splinterlands had not said anything directly about the colour factor but they had hinted that these rarer colourful Runis will be more useful once all utilities come out. I started stalking the Opensea collection to monitor if someone listed a coloured background Runi on a discount.

Finally I managed to snipe a Runi with bright green background for 0.19E. Bagging a rare Runi for the allow list mint price was a great bargain in my opinion. I immediately linked it to my profile and staked it so I can use it for the ranked battles.

My Bet is Runi will explode once the Market Recovers!

I would state the obvious before going further that I am not giving any financial advice and DYOR like always.

Of all the crypto based assets in Splinterlands ecosystem I am personally most bullish on Runi once the bull run starts in full steam. NFT market in general has been punished too much already and sooner or later liquidity will start flowing into the quality projects.

As soon as the funds start flowing Runi is going to experience a major supply shock as just 3,500 of them available and if you look at Opens you will find just 1% listed. Most Runi owners are using them to play the game. During last few months when even the biggest NFT projects including giants like BAYC and Crypto Punks have started to fall significantly from their highs Runi floor price has been very stable. At the moment it is around 0.38 ETH which is a clear indication that Splinterlands players are not willing to throw away their Runis at a discount now.

Me and my Runi are eagerly waiting for the next bull run, have a look at my beautiful Runi. Now that’s what I call Art!!

Cheers,

Sam