It's no secret that Splinterlands is my favorite blockchain game. I love the HIVE blockchain (originally STEEM) on which SPLINTERLANDS is built for its functionality and versatility. It has been a home of mine for many years. But when it's time to do some serious collecting, I look to the Worldwide Asset Exchange (WAX).
Early last year, WAX decided they were going to go hard into NFTs, especially the collectible kind. They are quickly becoming an incredibly popular place for NFTs to be created, traded and collected. I have been involved with nearly a dozen of their releases in the last year, including KOGs, Blockchain Heroes and Garbage Pail Kids (my favorites). Even from the collections that have not become long-term hodls for my NFT portfolio, I have been able to make some money trading on the simple-to-use secondary WAX markets in order to increase my holdings of larger collections, like KOGs.
Yesterday I purchased some Ultimate Packs of Street Fighter collectibles, and I have not yet decided if I'll be keeping those or flipping the majority of them for more liquid WAX to spend. Either way, my involvement is good for the WAX ecosystem. so purchasing these types of collectibles is always something that I can be proud of.
There is one type of collectible for which I will be desperately clawing for those #1 mints. This unique situation however does not involve a new release, but the completion of a bridge. I'm talking about Splinterlands cards.
Splinterlands cards were the first NFTs that I ever owned, and they were (literally) playing the NFT game before NFTs were cool, nearly 3 years ago. I have been part of Splinterlands since the very beginning, and I'm thrilled to see that my favorite blockchain game and my favorite blockchain for trading are finally coming together in this incredible way.
What is a "bridge?"
This simply means that tokenized assets in Splinterlands will have the ability to be transferred to the WAX blockchain, where they can be traded there on secondary markets like Atomichub. Splinterlands.com will make this easy by adding the ability to send them to WAX or pull them from WAX, as long as you have a linked WAX account. Splinterlands has had a similar bridge in existence for many months for the Ethereum blockchain, but because of the ridiculously high network costs and the tendency for Splinterlands cards to have small price tags, it has not made sense for anyone to use that bridge. With WAX, I anticipate a lot of use as soon as the bridge is open.
The bridge does not mean that the Splinterlands game will suddenly be playable with transactions on the WAX blockchain. This would require an absurd degree of planning and development, and such a feat is (for now) out of the grasp of Splinterlands and WAX. The bridge will allow players who collect and trade on WAX to do that with their Splinterlands assets, including cards, packs and land. These assets will need to be sent back into the Splinterlands game to be playable again.
The official Splinterlands collection on WAX is called "splintrlands" (without the E).
Mint Numbers
When a Splinterlands asset is bridged over to WAX, a new mint is created on the WAX blockchain. This means that the 1st of every card transferred will be considered a mint #1. If and when that card is transferred back into the Splinterlands game, the WAX NFT will first be burned so they cannot exist on both blockchains simultaneously.
When Splinterlands began, it was not anticipated that NFTs would be valued so greatly by mint numbers. Each Splinterlands card has a unique serial number, and therefore technically a mint number, but it is difficult to locate which came first even though the blockchain contains that information.
So basically, Splinterlands cards that previously had no mint numbers assigned will suddenly have mint numbers when transferred to WAX. To me, this means that when the update goes live on 2/19 at approximately 11am EST, there will be a mad rush for #1s. I wonder which cards people will go for first. No matter what, we should suddenly see a flood of low-mint WAX collectible Splinterlands cards on the secondary market at AtomicHub. This is made even more interesting by the fact that first mints will have no additional value or utility in the Splinterlands game. It will just be a representation of the fact that that card was the first minted on the WAX blockchain. I hope that I can get at least one #1 mint to hold forever so that I can prove I was there first.
To Send Cards
Once the update goes live, you'll find a new option in the "Send Cards" dropdown that will send the card to your linked WAX wallet. Make sure that your wallet is linked correctly before you attempt this, because for typos and incorrect wallets you will be rewarded with the loss of your asset.
Feel free to check out yesterday's ANNOUNCEMENT POST from the official Splinterlands blog, and email any problems to [email protected].
Good luck!
Thanks for reading NON-FUNGIBLE STEW
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