Hey Marty, You first commented with "It's a Ponzi" and later edited it. I'm going to respond to your first comment. Here's the wikipedia definition of a Ponzi. It's wikipedia so it's more of the common use than the specific legal use, but I think it's a good basis:

A Ponzi scheme is a form of fraud that lures investors and pays profits to earlier investors with funds from more recent investors.

1. Idle mining games aren't fraud. They use publicly accessible smart contracts that allow users to see how the back end is working. The rules are explained to the best of my ability to communicate how it works in layman terms.
2. The game doesn't pay profits to earlier investors with funds from more recent investors. The game has a schedule that's included in the original post for how the mining power and rewards are calculated. The rewards are not a derivative of what was spent. The rewards are separate tokens with separate utilities and burn cases on a set schedule.
3. Ponzis don't typically have finite ends. There's a very specific amount of NFTs for sale by Hive-Engine. That's a fixed amount. Ponzis are generally meant to be carried on as long as possible. I make an exception for adding new tokens that require token burns, but that's not adding new money to a system but removing existing tokens from supply.

Another way Wikipedia describe a Ponzi is: For schemes that promise rewards based on enrolling ever larger numbers of people, see Pyramid scheme. The rewards available don't fluctuate based on the number of people involved. The contract has a defined payout which isn't influenced by enrolling larger numbers of people.

Ultimately you decided to retract the statement, which I think is encouraging because it means you know you spoke out of turn and that it's not a Ponzi and your comment was inappropriate.

As for Splinterlands accepting FARM: We've denied larger tokens from larger communities. Splinterlands is a separate business with separate ownership. Just because I make things on Hive-Engine doesn't mean that Splinterlands is obligated to do anything. I'm hopeful that if FARM or other idle mining game tokens can achieve significant volume that Splinterlands will accept them. It's not a given that they will. I will however commit to adding functionality for previous Hive-Engine tokens from games into future Hive-Engine games. In this case I'm just accepting the fungible token. In later cases I'm thinking of making cards exclusively available for them.

It's a MonEy gRaB. First off making money on Hive is something that should be celebrated. As far as I can tell there's exactly 2 businesses on Hive that make money: Splinterlands and Hive-Engine. The fact that it's easy to build games and apps is exactly the point of the whole Hive-Engine enterprise and ecosystem. The business employs 9 devs. The employment isn't possible without the ability to generate revenue. Since the DHF proposal is unlikely to get funded it's important to raise money to get additional contracts up so people can build an array of things with modular, off the shelf, smart contracts.

Others have asked "Why publish these so close together?" In part to show what's possible, in part to show there's additional utility to FARM, in part to use a new feature available to mining (boost), in part to raise money for development, and in part to include higher quality graphics in what we're doing.

Lastly, for a little theorycraft, the mining that I invented on Hive-Engine came from a pretty simple thought: How could bitcoin mining be done without using 20% of the world's electrical supply. The idea boiled down to a finite set of miners which didn't have to rely on electricity. Using proof of stake and mining turned into this. The whole thing is modelled after bitcoin. Power is like hashrate.

Anyway, I strongly disagree with you, and the best part of building on the layer 2 is the independence provided there.