HF 21 - More Steem Power More Fun!



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Hard Fork 21, AKA HF 21 is just around the corner, in just over two days to be exact. If you don't know what a hark fork is, check this Wiki link.

Basically it means Steem economics will change slightly...

Steem Proposal System (SPS)

The main and most awesome thing is that we will be getting a Steem Proposal System (SPS), this will provide an avenue for developers and community ambassadors, marketers etc to put forward proposals to improve on the Steem ecosystem for the benefit of us all, how cool is that! The Dash coin community has had something like that for a long time, now it's our turn.

Economic Improvement Protocol (EIP)

Secondly, we have the Economic Improvement Protocol (EIP), which comes with a few changes, namely a downvote pool ... hmm, I'm a bit dubious on this, not sure how it will play out, but am willing to give it the benefit of the doubt and see what happens, my biggest concern is that people may be bullied, if that happens to you I want to know about it, please comment on this post if you ever run into that sort of issue and I will try my best to raise awareness on what is happening to you, please don't suffer in silence.

Make sure however, it is genuine and not because you are posting plagiarised content or getting too many rewards for one line of text or a single photo copied from elsewhere in the interweb, otherwise I will downvote you myself! :)

Curation Rewards Increase - Building an Altruistic Society

Okay so previously curators were taking a rshares (rewardshares) stakeweighted share of 25% on each post, which means if your vote made up 20% of the rewards of the post and Mary's vote was huge and made up 80%, further assuming no one else votes, then you will get 5% and Mary will get 20%, making up the total 25% allotted curator rewards portion.

So on a post worth $10 you will earn 50 cents, simply for reading it and voting on it, now after HF 21 curators will earn double, meaning you will earn 1 dollar in the same scenario and Mary will earn 4 dollars and you guessed it, the author will earn 5 dollars.

That is because author and curator rewards are perfectly balanced at 50/50, very Zen! In reality, most high ranking posts will have hundreds of voters, which means those hundreds of voters are sharing in the 50% and authors are still receiving 50% all for themselves, no sharing of their 50%, they keep it all.

You can understand now why no-one cared about curating before HF 21, I mean would you bother looking for good content, reading and voting if you were sharing in only 25% with hundreds of other blokes and gals?

So why is Mo' Steem Power Mo' fun? Well here is why, studies have proved that when you do things for reward for yourself, it is fun the first few times but thereafter you just do it mindlessly for the sake of earning and don't appreciate it anymore.

Consider the monkey solving a puzzle to get a treat; the first few times he does it, he is really happy with himself, but come back and visit him after a month, he may be fat with treats but he looks miserable, he trudges to solve the problem and lazily grabs the reward with a lifeless look on his face. True story, I watched or read something about this when I was young but am not sure where to get the reference, if anyone knows please link it here in comment.

So why will earning rewards through curation be different, well by curating you are earning money for yourself but also give money to others who deserve it, win-win. The ultimate winner however is you,

acts of altruism can be a great form of stress relief. Studies have shown that the act of giving can activate the area of the brain associated with positive feelings, lifting your spirits and making you feel better the more you give.

Citation - The Benefits of Altruism for Stress Management

According to this article you will actually have positive psychological effects from being altruistic, have you noticed how many grumpy people are on the Steem blockchain right now? It seems like Steem is a magnet for grumps, but maybe they didn't start off that way, they were simply curious monkies who fell into the trap of soulless self-rewarding rather than embracing the spirit of Ubuntu; HF 21 may actually change the culture of Steem over time.

Ubuntu - "humanity towards others", but is often used in a more philosophical sense to mean "the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity".

Ubuntu Philosophy - Wikipedia

Five Minute Vote Window

Currently, you have to wait for 15 minutes in order to maximise your curation rewards from voting content; if you vote at 1 minute you don't receive much. This is problematic on two folds, firstly users don't really know this, I sometimes forget myself since there is no confirmation window that asks you to confirm if you want to vote earlier and potentially get less benefit, nor is there any visible info anywhere on most Steem user interfaces; so users will vote whenever and not get the right rewards and feel cheated or feel that Steem isn't working well for them and leave.

Secondly, it could lead to deserving authors missing out on votes due to the fact that curators may have all good intentions of coming back at the 15 mins mark to vote but get sidetracked forget to do so, this also encourages blind automated voting.

I'm particularly invested in the change to a 5 minute window because I proposed it a few times and in the end gathered enough support, threw a few toys around, made a scene and eventually got this change pushed through, whew! I'm really passionate about this, I know it will enhance my User Experience (UX) and hope it will do the same for you.

Convergent Linear Rewards and Curation - Mo' Steem Power Mo' Fun!

So in order to be the best and most altruistic version of your monkey self, you need to have Steem Power to make a difference and even more so because of the Convergent Linear Rewards curve, say what now? For those of you who are not maths boffins, it simply means that while the rewards on a particular post are under a certain value, the your vote has less effect, the idea behind this is to stop micro-siphoning of rewards in secret, I remember the days of vote trails voting comments in secret where no one can see and getting rewards in a high-frequency fashion from meaningless comments that never came up on anyone's radar.

This sort of thing hurts the bottom line of authors and curators who post legitimate stuff and should be frowned upon, we have the downvote pool for that now after HF 21 but it is still hard to detect, which is why the new rewards curve is supposed to make it less rewarding to do that and make it more obvious. Like a cat with a big tail sticking out of a bag.

Already some Steemians are getting the idea, I came across a post by author @midlet, entitled HF 21 Predictions, he makes this very postive "glass half full" statement:

I leased 20k Steem for about the same price for 3 months. We'll see if that turns out to be profitable. Even if it's not, I have more fun on Steem when I feel like I have more influence, so it's money well spent in my book regardless. I spend a lot of time on Steem, and it's one of my main forms of entertainment. I'm okay with spending some money so I can have more fun. But yea, truth be told, between posting and curating, I expect to make that back and then some, we'll see.

This warmed my heart, because although many of you may not know it, I am kind of the Godfather of Steem Power delegation, I'm saying this in a humble way simply because I am proud of it and not because I want to toot my own horn.

One of the reasons I wrote a post nearly 3 years ago, entitled Steem Whales Stockpile SP: Government Spending Analogy and the Solution Revealed, was to introduce the concept, which I then called Voting Power Delegation, VPD for short. I had discussed this concept with James Calfee, a developer at Steemit Inc at the time; then a couple of months later there was a hard fork with this concept implemented as Steem Power delegation.

Thereafter, I decided to test out how popular delegation would be in the community and held a competition, with a grand prize of 50,000 SP delegated for a month. Once the proof of market demand concept was established; I, together with @reggaemuffin and @cryptomancer of buildteam.io, founded the Minnowbooster.net project (which is transitioning to dlease.io) the first of its kind, delegation leasing market in crypto, conceived within the Steem community.

The spirit of Ubuntu led me to conceptualise the concept of Steem Power delegation and later creating a market for it, because it simply helps all disenfranchised Minnows, hence why it was called MinnowBooster initially. I realsied there is no way an average author could purchase that much STEEM POWER to match whales who mined STEEM early, or even authors who had been on the platform much longer than themselves.

The only way to catch up and level the playing field was by leasing Steem Power at a fraction of the cost of owning it, this still creates a sink for spending STEEM and incentivises stakeholders to hodl rather than power down all their stake, instead delegating their SP for circa 20% at current market rates on dlease.io and virtually increasing their lockup period by the duration of the lease. In addition dlease.io is now available as a professional-grade leasing platform as a feather in the cap of the Steem network; we are busy working on the backend to split it from MinnowBooster, after which time we intend to approach loanscan.io to list it as a representation of investment potential on the Steem blockchain.

Steem Power leasing is going to come to the fore again after HF 21, if you have been reading the above, you can easily tell why having Steem Power will help you get over the new rewards curve hurdle into the efficient zone and increase your powers of altruism to become a hero of your niche community!

Overall, Hard Fork 21 may actually land up being a soft fork, metaphorically speaking, because it will likely soften hard hearts and change the ethos of the community to one of togetherness and inter-reliance ahead of selfish inward gazing self voting, to a degree anway.

Happy forking!

Yours in Steem,

Ricardo Ferreira
@thecryprodrive
BuildTeam CEO
Steem Consensus Witness


Traditionally, a crowd member declares "Amandla!" meaning "power" and the crowd responds "Ngawethu!" adding that the power "is ours."

STEEM POWER TO THE PEOPLE, AMANDLA!



If you like what I do, vote for @thecryptodrive witness with this vote link: https://steemit.com/~witnesses

Or use the quick SteemConnect link: https://app.steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=thecryptodrive&approve=1



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Thank you. That everything is clear and explained in profit. This is really great news for all of us.

Yes, if you look at it with a positive framing mindset, you can turn it into an opportunity.

I have been leasing SP from minnowbooster since joining last year and I believe it has help me grow.
I was thinking voting time was going to be changed to 1 minute based on a previous post of yours. Thanks for clearing that it is 5 minutes.
The problem with Steem HF is the details are not always clear going to it. We have to rely on people like you to understand what is to happen.

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Thanks for being a loyal customer of MinnowBooster @ketcom, if it helped just one person grow it was worth doing, so I appreciate the feedback.

Yeah everyone voted for 1 min before but then Steemit Inc thought there could be some risk in that, so we all voted on 5 mins to be prudent.

Thanks a lot for your response and feedbak @thecryptodrive. One last question please if you don't mind.
At what point between the 5 minute can one vote to get the best result?
This is important for some of us that use autoupvote bots as we can't manually curate all the people we would like to.
So, my question basically is, is there a penalty for voting at 1 minutes, 2 minutes, 3 minutes e.t.c.
Thanks.

Yes so at 1 min you only get 20% of the full rewards you should receive from curating, at 4 mins 80% and 5 mins your full 100%. Now there are cases where you may want to vote at 4 mins if you anticipate alot of people will vote at 5 mins, you want to frontrun because whoever votes first gets most benefit, so better to get 80% of more than 100% of less if that makes sense.

Thanks a lot for this strategic information, you are the man.
Thanks also for taking up the SP Lease offer of @upvotebuilders at minnowbooster. @upvotebuilders is a community I initiated.
Cheers.

No probs, thanks for offering a good APR. My account is a showcase account for potential investors so keeping it above 20% APR is great, your orders help.

Copy That.

I'm tapped out now but should have more SP coming in 5 days.

Dear @thecryptodrive

Great read. Long one, but surely worth the time.

HF21 is definetly a hot topic right now :)

The Dash coin community has had something like that for a long time, now it's our turn.

I'm not very familiar with dash community. Did SPS (i'm sure they called differently) worked well for them? I wonder how SPS would work out here. Steemit community isn't very generous so I'm not sure who would provide funds to this program.

Currently, you have to wait for 15 minutes in order to maximise your curation rewards from voting content; if you vote at 1 minute you don't receive much

Very true. I wonder who was this 15min implemented. What are benefits of it? I could never figure it out.

Steem Power leasing is going to come to the fore again after HF 21

Exactly. That's another reason why I'm not very optimistic about HF21. Delegating bots will most likely grow in power like crazy.

Major two things (for common user) that will change is:
a) non-linear reward curve - it will most likely "kill" culture of upvoting comments (time will tell).
b) 50/50 reward split - since PALnet seem to be leading in that direction we can already witness how does it really work. And so far it seem that 50/50 only create extra selling pressure, since curators are more willing to dump their easy earned PAL tokens. Can we expect different behaviour on Steemit? Why would we?

I'm full of hopes that HF21 will make things better, but right now I'm not very optimistic. I strongly believe that when it comes to PRICE steem has still long way to go (down).

Upvote on the way.
Yours, Piotr

Hi Piotr,

Dash has had a fund almost from the beginning, how it works is someone submits a proposal and then all the masternode stakeholders vote on whether to accept it, I don't know the exact mechanics but that is the broad overview, the funds come from the chain and the same as SPS on Steem the funds will come from inflation and not from donation, although I think people can donate to increase the fund.

The 15 min vote window was meant to allow users time to read and vote posts before automated votes managed to vote first, that was more important when there was only a little content, but now there is lots of content that goes uncurated so if a bot votes first, you can easily find something else to vote. The 15 min window was too long for reader to wait to get their full rewards and people move on, the world is too fast paced for a 15 in delay, 5 mins should be fine for blog format, but if Steem content goes in the direction of micro-content like twitter then that window may need to be even shorter.

Yes the bots who have delegation will earn more, but I think people will stop delegating directly to the bots and start curating more themselves or join curation guilds because incentives are there.

I don't understand how 50/50 split increases selling pressure, currently it is 75% author rewards (50% liquid, 50% staked) + 25% curation rewards 100% staked.

After HF 21 it will be 50% author rewards (50% liquid, 50% staked) + 50% curation rewards 100% staked.

So you can see from the bold sections above that staking will increase. On PALNET I think sell pressure is because they have miners, whose only incentive is to sell and not provide value, also their total supply cap and circulating supply is high, if you look at the current circulating supply there is 15 Million tokens, and the total capped supply is 7 Billion, their market cap is 530K, bitcoin have a marcap of bitcoin is 188 Billion and have a similar circulating supply of 18 million (PALNET 15 million), so the issue with PALNET is not the reward split but rather then tokenomics keeping the price low.

Hope this helps and happy HF 21 to you!

hi @thecryptodrive

I wonder what's your impression several days after hf21 and hf22. Are you still positive about future of steem blockchain? :)

Cheers
Piottr

Also regarding comments, sure there will be a decrease in voting comments, but comment still have their place to build community, make alliances and get known by voicing your opinion, we walk a dangerous line when we reward dialogue, imagine in real life you only speak with people if they are prepared to tip you, it would be wierd right? I think comments should flow and people should comment and reply for the sake of community and not for getting tips.

Late thank you for your reply @thecryptodrive

I want you to know that I really appreciate your time and your comments

Check out my latest publication..
It brought some real emotions. I've been downvoted by over half million SP (attack of few accounts), however I also received solid support and few strong upvotes and now I will be enjoying the biggest genuine payout in my lifetime ;)

Yours
Piotr

Thanks for linking your post @crypto.piotr, I will comment further on your post.

A good explanation indeed.
It really soften my nervousness about hf21.

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No worries, glad it helped, the Godfather is here for you! :)

Good origin story!

More of a mid-way story for me, but yes an origin story for Steem Power delegation. :)

Good.
Cant wait to see how this will go.
Hope those outsiders, will come to notice our blockchain now.

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I hope the world notices Steem too, they are missing out!

Hi @thecryptodrive

Thanks for very good info on HF 21

You write in words that everyone can understand, I now see HF 21 with different eyes compared to what others have said about this before.

I also hope that we will see a more positive culture in the Steemit community after HF 21

And I have now voted for you as a witness

Thanks for the witness vote @xpilar, it means alot to me.

I am tired of the negativity on Steem and hope that HF 21 and future changes will bring about a positive culture change of togetherness.

Have a great week and hope HF 21 is good to you.

Yes, I think the changes make this community better 👍

Let's hope the best...
Maybe this is an offer we can refuse, Godfather ;)
In any way Steemit should focus more on "outside" marketing,
and not expect their community to do it for them mainly (that is the
answer i got from Mr. Spud4)
You talk about the Spirit of Ubuntu, are you also a creator of Ubuntu/Linux?
I am planning to use Ubuntu/Linux on a new Laptop. Do all Steemit Apps/Programs run solid with Linux/Ubuntu?
Thank you
Buona domenica :)

Grazie Luca, I agree external marketing is key. I know Steemit Inc has done some press releases and there is a HF countdown on Coingecko and there have been loads of media articles this year, I have archived as many as I could here, Steemit inc have improved a lot, I know they are working hard, they know the Godfather is watching them, haha!

Regarding Linux, you assume me to be more of a Pezzonovante than I really am, sadly i’m not the Godfather of that; and yes Steem nodes run on Linux Ubuntu, which was actually a distro developed in Cape Town, in my birth country of South Africa, by millionaire Mark Shuttleworth, so in a way Linux Ubuntu runs in my heritage so you were kind of right.

9961EDBE-DA31-42B1-A25C-82B6B344F9E2.jpeg

Te Salud!

Ciao Bello ;) Thanks for your answer and the infos, but this here:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@luca1777/blocktrades-is-this-request-consent-normal
...just f... it up for me today. Please read also the comments.
No more energy/time/motivation...
Soon come

Here's the update ;)
(Answer to Blocktrades)
It worked with Opera, not with Mozilla this time, but last time..?
Are you sure it's the computer clock?
Where can i send my invoice ;)
Maaan, how many hours i spend since i joined last year to "work around"
stuff and problems on steemit...
I'm just saying, maybe yall should think about this.
Stuff should work before it's public.

Luca, Blocktrades is not our service, they are competition to https://dlease.io which was the first original market for Steem Power leasing and still remains the original P2P delegation market, whereas Blocktrades leases SP to you directly from their account. If you have issues with them please contact them via their website.

Blocktrades sells Steem & SP, right?
What i buy there, remains mine.
So can i buy Steem and SP from dlease, too?
Or only lease..?
Blocktrades is the direct link from the Steemit Wallet.
So i thought it's Steemits Bank or Partner at least...
This place is a mess or maybe just decentralized, right ;)
:) But it's all good...

Blocktrades is an exchange, they have some affiliation with Steemit Inc, a place on their board i think. The Steem project was started on Blocktrades premises at first before Steemit got their own offices. Dlease doesn’t sell Steem or SP, you can rent SP from other users in P2P fashion from the market for a fraction of the cost of buying it, for as short as 1 week.

Ok, good to know ;)
Yo, i just got flagged by a witness i think (frederikka..?)
for my Geoengineering Report that i bring out on the regular..?
Check my Dtube/YT
https://steemit.com/dtube/@luca1777/0geimuwocyg
Could you please take care of this, Godfather ;)
And please make sure he remembers, Godfather ;)
Mille Grazie

Your explanation of how curation worked is incorrect. @miniature-tiger has a series about curation worth reading. Dunno if you were simplifying intentionally or didn't know. Order matters. In the old system, I regularly received more than double my upvote value in curation rewards.

My greatest regret about the new system is the curve. Rewarding good content will not be encouraged. It's rewarding popular content that's theoretically rewarded, but I suspect that there will be much more significant reasons for content to be well rewarded, namely its author's willingness to pay for votes.

But that's besides the point because the real thing we're losing, even if everything goes well, is an incentive to like comments and niche content, which is what drives engagement in social media.

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It isn't incorrect, it just simplifies it and doesn't go into the technical parts of frontrunning other voters for a greater share of rewards, the point was to explain the new split as basically as possible. I'm not 100% sold on the new curve either, but if it encourages people to purchase more Steem Power to keep above the threshold then it will be good for Steem. Remember we have the SMT hard fork coming up at the end of the year so we can always revert back if this is a disaster.

That reversion is what I'm pinning my hopes on if things go poorly, but no witness seems willing to acknowledge that we could go back.

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Count me in as the first, there has been some internal witness discussion that we can always change what doesn't work, we are always open to iterating.

Well good. Every witness seems nervous about the curve. Why, if it's the nerve-wracking part, must it be included?

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I think only a handful are nervous about it, a majority really want the curve. But in the end everyone is reasonable, if it doesn't work I'm sure it will be tweaked for the next HF.

Everything is a matter of balancing tradeoffs. Risks and costs versus benefits. Many are nervous about the curve because it has potential costs and risks but also benefits. On balance, the potential benefits carried the argument for now. That can be revisited or adjusted later with experience.

Just like @midlet. I invest around 25 euros a month into steem for the solo purpose of leasing SP, its way more fun that way and it lets me delegate my own owned SP to project and things.
Granted I am still a small fish in the steemit sea and my main focus is to grow my own account and so I dont have to pay for delegations with my own money :p

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That's fantastic, I'm so pleased to hear about the ways that MinnowBooster/Dlease is helping people, thanks for sharing and making my day!

Those platforms are awesome if you wanna have fun and be able to help more people hehe :p
Thanks :D

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@thecryptodrive, For sure this Upgrade will bring very movable changes. And in my opinion at this moment it's important to adopt it and to analyse how it's moving because, only there is one fear aspect here and that is, How new Downvote pool will going to play out? Let's hope for the best and wishing you wonderful journey ahead. Stay blessed.

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People don't inherently like change but once they get out of their comfort zone they generally flourish, if people, consider the {power of positive framing](https://blog.kevineikenberry.com/coaching-developing-others/36231/) and look for ways to turn every situation into a win.

I am positive about this Change and with that will going to hold the Logical Mindset to see where this new Economy is moving.

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Great post, very informative, thank you for sharing ;) resteemed & upvoted ;)

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