Should you Care about your Voting Power?
What is your Voting Power?
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When you upvote a post or a comment, you are using your "voting power", that is between 0% and 100%.
To know your voting power, you can check the page corresponding to your account on steemd.com.
Suppose your user name is "steemdummy" on Steemit. (there is not such account so far).
Steam Dummy
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Then you would check:
https://steemd.com/@steemdummy
On the left column, you will see a line "Voting power", with a percentage.
If you have never upvoted anything, or if your last upvote was a long time ago, your voting power should be 100%.
Depending on the number of Steem Powers you have, the value of your vote will be maximum when your voting power is 100%.
If your voting power is less than 100%, the value of your vote will be less.
Suppose the value of your vote, with 100% voting power, is $0.40. Then, at 50% voting power, it will be $).20, and at 25%, $0.10.
When you upvote a post or a comment, you may indicate that you don't want to vote at your current voting power, but use only a percentage (from 1% to 100%) of your voting power. I will call this percentage the Vote Strength.
So, if your vote is worth $0.40 at 100% voting power, when your voting power is 50% and you only vote at 50%, your vote will be 25% (50% x 50%) 0f $0.40, that is $0.40.
Changes in Voting Power
As the rules are going to change in 3 days for Hard Fork 19 (HF19), we will use the new rules
Voting power decreases each time you vote and increases continuously over time.
Each time you vote at 100% vote strength, you loses 2% of your voting power. That is, your voting power becomes 98% of itself.
If your voting power is 100%,immediately after your vote, it becomes 98%.
If your voting power is 50%, immediately after your vote, it becomes 49%.
Whenever your voting power is less than 100%, it increases automatically over time at a rate of 20% per day.
So, if at some point your voting power is 70% and you don't vote at all for 24 hours, your voting power will become 90%
If it is 50%, after 24 hours it will become 70%.
Voting at the same voting power
Suppose you always want to vote at the same voting power. How many votes will you be able to give each day?
The answer to this question varies with the voting power you want to keep.
If it is 100%, after each vote, it becomes 98% and you need to wait the necessary duration until it reaches again 100% before voting again.
This duration is one tenth of a day (2 hour 24 minutes), because in one day the voting power increases by 20%.
So, the maximum number of votes at 100% is 10. If the maximum value of your vote is $0.40, the 10 votes will be worth $4.00.
Now, if you want to vote repetitively at 50%, after each vote, your voting power will be 49% and you will need to wait one twentieth of a day before voting again.
So, the maximum number of votes at 50% in a day is 20. If the maximum value of your vote is $0.40, as you vote at 50% voting power, your votes are worth $0.20, and 20 votes in a day are worth $4.00 again.
In fact, if you use the maximum number of votes to keep the same voting power that is lower than 100%, each of your votes will have a lower value, but you are able to vote more often and the total value of all your votes over a period of 24 hours will be the same as if you were voting 10 times with 100% voting power.
For 33.33% voting power, you are able to vote 30 times.
For 25% voting power, you are able to vote 40 times.
I could show you the math behind this claim, but I don't think it is necessary.
So, Should you Care about your Voting Power?
If you are like myself a somewhat prolific curator for rewards, it is my contention that you should not care about your voting power, because reducing the frequency of your votes to keep a high voting power will not increase your rewards.
This mostly applies if you are curating mostly for your own rewards. You may have other reasons to keep a high voting power, for example, if you want to give bigger rewards to your favorite authors.
Steemians that curate mostly for their own rewards (while at the same time rewarding the authors that they upvote) should better focus on aspects other than your voting power to maximize your curation rewards.
For example, you could follow the advice of @liberosist that he gave in this post: Mind Your Votes! II - A guide to maximizing your curation rewards:
- Power up
- DON'T vote on trending posts
- Look for undiscovered posts
I would add another advice:
- Try to upvote early (but not too early) posts from Steemians that have a long track record of highly paid posts, such as @trafalgar, @sweetsssj or @papa-pepper.
Voting power is the biggest killer here its very conservative among the whales!
Thanks @vcelier for sharing these very important details about the usage of voting power.. i will be now monitoring my voting power at steemd.com
You are welcome.
This is a great and informative post! Is there anyway you could take the time to help new members such as myself figure out why some people that have the same amount of upvotes/comments make more than others? For instance my post yesterday had more likes and comments ( didn't make anything from it ) than a comment I left that actually made me my first cent on Steemit?
@royalties, you are just starting on Steemit.
Do not expect to get rich quick.
You should watch the Video series by @papa-pepper "Advice for Newer Users". The last video is here: https://steemit.com/help/@papa-pepper/advice-from-papa-video-14-tips-for-newer-users-on-steemit
In one of the first comment on this post @papa-pepper lists the whole series. I recommend that you watch them in order.
First, you need to tell us something about yourself in a post tagged as "inteoduceyourself". Tell us as much as you can so that people may be interested in following you.
I have upvoted your comment and it is now at $1.96.
@papa-pepper is among the coolest steemians I know. @vcelier, nice to meet you as well! Thanks for the informative post.
You are welcome.
And indeed @papa-pepper is a cool guy!
:) btw, having a lot of fun with his Season 4 Steem-pocalypse :)
Thank you! I'm new too and this is very helpful. I think I would rather give larger payouts to stuff
I actually like or find useful (like yours). I hope my votes were of the higher percentage for you although I'm sure my new account doesn't have much weight/$ anyway Lol
Also, you can vote with less than 100% even if you don't have 482SP
Check how to vote without burning Voting power <a href"https://steemit.com/minnowsupport/@allfabeta/if-you-are-minnow-how-is-frustrated-because-your-voting-power-is-downing-so-fast"> read a post
Thank you very much. What I find strange, isthat with the link u provided (steamd.com), I can get all the data from all steem users. No login needed? I 'm confused. Is that ok? I got nothing to hide but I can imagine that there are people that don't like this. Do I miss smth?
You are welcome.
[steemd.com. not steamd.com]
No, you are not missing anything.
If you don't want people to know what you are doing on the STEEM blockchain, then you should not be on Steemit.
Thanks and up
So it doesnt really matter if you have a certain voting power or not.
Thank you for your post. I started 3 weeks ago and I'm still trying to wrap my head around all of the idiosyncracies of Steemit. Your explanation and link to Mind Your Votes! II - A guide to maximizing your curation rewards are very helpful. Followed, upvoted and resteemed.
You are welcome.
Also, you can vote with less than 100% even if you don't have 482SP
Check how to vote without burning Voting power <a href"https://steemit.com/minnowsupport/@allfabeta/if-you-are-minnow-how-is-frustrated-because-your-voting-power-is-downing-so-fast"> read a post
Bonjour !
Un Français ! Miracle ! Je viens de rejoindre steem il y a quelque jours et en tappant des recherches sur le vote je viens de voir votre post ! Ce fil datant de 7 mois je ne sais pas si vous allez me repondre , mais je tente quand même !
Je cherche a comprendre le système de vote et votre information m’eclaire merci .
Je vous suis désormais et j’espere Pouvoir interagir avec vous .
De nos jours, il y a beaucoup de français et de francophones sur Steemit.
Tu peux par exemple aller voir le blog de @roxane, une belge qui anime beaucoup la communauté francophone Steemienne.
Par example: https://steemit.com/fr/@roxane/presentation-des-nouveaux-francophones-depuis-le-30-12-2017
Ils ne sont pas forcément visibles.... Merci je vais voir et suivre ! Je me sens moins seule ;)
The allocation of rewards for voting is overly complicated, like many things on this site. I understand the mix is constantly being tweaked to keep ahead of people gaming the system. But, honestly, some of the sensationalist rubbish that I see upvoted on Steemit, shows me that people are people regardless of what ever network it is, what ever the reward system is, and people still fall for click-bait.
I have often seen better crafted posts left by the wayside, that deserve better. Just for the record, I'm not having a whinge about my own post rewards.
So sadly, I'm beginning to think, that regardless of the expected crypto-blockchain revolution, people will still be people, and people's reactions, and where they give their attention, will not change. Hence, the greater uptake of Steemit, the more content here will be dominated by the same as is on other networks, and thus too, become mainstream.
Leo, I think you are too pessimistic.
Yes, there will always be people who will fall for click-bait or for "authors" that are mostly telling how great they are and never reply to comments (such as a certain Jerry). Still, seeing successful Steemians such as @papa-pepper is something that I greatly appreciate.
@vcelier, perhaps I am. It's just the trend I have noticed on Steemit recently. Things may change, but only time will tell won't it. I'm not giving up on the platform, just yet.
I don't get this bleep bleep site yet
Thanks for sharing your advice. A question about your statement "if your last upvote was a long time ago, your voting power should be 100%". How much is "a long time ago" in days ? Also a little error here: "your vote will be 25% (50% x 50%) 0f $0.40, that is $0.40"
It depends on your voting power the last time you upvoted.
If you don't upvote, your voting power increases by 20% each day.
If your voting power was 50%, it will become 100% after 2.5 days if you don't upvote during this period.
if your voting power was 20%, it will become 100% after 4 days.
Indeed. It is too late now to correct the error.
Thanks for the replay :-) and clarification
Thanks for the Info. I have one question, is there a minimum steem power you have to have before you can start adjusting your voting power?
I think it is 500 if I remember correctly!
Around that figure, I recently read elsewhere it was something just under that.
Yes, there is, but I don't remember what it is.
Okay Thanks guys, I will get there just call me the tortoise not the hare
You are welcome.
[you should get an avatar: Settings -> Profile picture URL]
Check how you can adjust your voting power even if you don't have 482SP <a href"https://steemit.com/minnowsupport/@allfabeta/if-you-are-minnow-how-is-frustrated-because-your-voting-power-is-downing-so-fast"> read a post