So far in this series of articles, I have covered getting paid in crypto while you browse the web using Brave browser and getting started with Alien Worlds; a free-to-play digital card-game which occasionally pays out random NFT prizes. I've also covered the process of trading in your mined TLM virtual ore for WAX tokens (and potentially other crypto or actual cash).
CPU Problems
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At the moment a lot of people are reporting issues with CPU usage on Alien Worlds. It looks like the WAX network may be having issues with scaling thanks to all the new players. A month or two ago, all you needed was 5-10 wax staked to CPU usage to play for several hours. The amount of CPU resource available is shared between all the staking users and you might have had to stake the odd couple of wax when the network was busy. It's not clear what's causing the issue at the moment but my guess is the influx of new players.
Multiple Tools
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Anyway back to tools. If you've found a second shovel you might have noticed that the game interface doesn't let you equip it. Some of the video's I've mentioned recently suggested this must be possible and it is. Rather than repeat content, I'll just link to it here. If you can't fathom it from the written article, I recommend this video version on YouTube.
Some Thoughts on Land Prices
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It's interesting to see that with a standard drill and a couple of shovels, players were getting around 5 TLM in a single mine back in January. By contrast, with a standard drill, standard shovel and a standard capacitor my highest mine today was 0.0936 TLM. It's hard to say if this is going to be the new normal or just a temporary situation. There must be a knock-on effect for those who invested in land. It's now much harder to justify those crazy secondary market prices if earnings have been slashed to around 1-2% of what they were five months ago. At the time of writing, the cheapest land on AtomicHub is listed for 54,000 wax (around 12,000 dollars). Thanks to AWStats, we can see that this land has only yielded 0.1 TLM in the last 24 hours from a commission of 15%. The commission earned is therefore 15% of 0.1 TLM; not exactly a great earner.
Is this the Binance effect? Is it the result of the influx of new players. The current CPU issues are certainly having a negative effect for land owners as well as players. If miners can't mine for very long and don't earn much when they do, land owner commissions are probably likewise going through the floor. This would mean land values are currently way over-priced. In the last month they have risen ten-fold on the secondary market while passive income from them appears to have decreased by up to 98%. I imagine there are a lot of angry land owners at this point holding and hoping for fixes and a recovery. If this doesn't happen, it begins to look like a rug-pull. Land went 10x while income from it simultaneously went 0.02x. This suggests anyone who bought to invest is likely to take profits or cut losses as they could now earn more from staking the wax than they might earn from future commission. The question is will we see the bubble burst or are there enough new buyers from the influx to support higher costs with lower yields?
Usual disclaimers apply here (see above). I'm not a financial advisor; I'm just a person who suspects 54k in wax has a better return from staking than 15% of 0.1 TLM. Virtual assets can go down as well as up (and if they go down to realistic levels I probably will buy a plot of land in A/W, but after my research I have my own opinion of what they should be selling for and it's way lower than current prices).
