SPS Governance Proposal - Bring Brackets to Modern

This proposal was submitted by @clayboyn for review and approved to be ran as a DAO sponsored proposal by all members of the SPS DAO Foundation.

The purpose of this proposal is to offer a potential path forward for the SPS DAO to address the numerous concerns that have been brought up since the removal of the old league system. This proposal aims to introduce a holistic solution that will allow players to participate at different levels of financial involvement while also addressing the problematic issues that ultimately led to the previous league system being removed. The scope of this proposal has already been approved by the team and will be implemented if it passes.

Proposal

If this proposal passes:

1.) The following brackets will be created for the Modern format with reward shares allocated as shown. Players will be able to select a Bracket at the start of each season and will be unable to change that Bracket until the next season begins. able to forfeit any progress made or rewards earned in a chosen bracket to start over and select a new bracket if they so desire. (Edit 3/11/26 updated after a few requests and further discussion with the team to okay this as additional scope of work.)

Please note this will not change or override the previously approved reward decline. The amounts shown are strictly illustrative based on current seasonal rewards distributions. The percentage of rewards is what is clearly being defined for each bracket and the monthly rewards will continue to decline over time as intended.

2.) The card level ranges for each of the new brackets will be defined as follows:

Cards that have been combined to levels higher than the max level for a selected bracket may be used but will have their level reduced to the max level for the bracket the player chooses. Cards below the minimum level threshold will not be available for play.

Edit 3/12/26: Based on feedback, Champ levels have been slightly reduced from max only to make it viable to strategically level cards and to also make leveling and playing rewards cards more viable.

3.) It will be up to the Splinterlands team to effectively manage the liquidity bots for each of these brackets and to adjust them as needed. We suggest using the follow bot difficulties as a starting point:

4.) Once an account plays any cards within a bracket, those cards will be bound to that account for the entire season in which they were played, whether owned, delegated or rented. This cooldown cannot be mitigated and will persist through buying, selling or transfer of the card. Phoenix Ash cannot be used to reduce this cooldown.

5.) Players will be able to win glint immediately after battle, but SPS will only be awarded at the end of each season, similar to Survival mode, to allow for a player count which then determines the size of the pool for each bracket. The rewards allocated to the brackets require hitting target player counts in the corresponding bracket to be fully distributed and are still based on matches won and existing SPS staking requirements.

Each Bracket's targets are defined in the tables below and are presented using the current seasonal reward amounts for illustrative purposes:

Closing Thoughts

This proposal has been a long time coming and has required an extensive amount of compromise to ensure alignment with what many vocal community members are asking for as well as what top stakeholders will support. It's not the old league system and quite a bit of work has gone into understanding and addressing the issues that led to the removal of the previous league system to hopefully build something better that will both address the demands of the community and concerns of the team and largest stakeholders that want to avoid exploitative behavior. I think we have something good here and while nothing is ever perfect, this could be a great foundation to help us move forward in a productive manner.

Thanks for your patience, time and consideration on this issue.