How Hardfork 0.19.0 May Impact Steemit
Less than a day ago @steemitblog announced the release candidate version 0.19.0 of the Steemit blockchain. In technical terms, this means a new hardfork, in layman terms this means a few new features.
One of the good things learned during the last six months is that putting too many changes into a single hardfork is difficult. People find it hard to swallow, so having more hardforks but with less changes in each should be beneficial. I fully agree with that.
In this hardfork, apart from a few bugfixes (one involving account creation) there are only 2 major changes:
- The rewards curve is now linear
- The voting power increases 4 times
Let's take them one at a time.
Linear Reward Curve
As of now, the reward curve, or the saying someone has in the platform, is not linear, but squared. In other words, if you have 10 coins and vote with all of them, the impact of your vote is not 10, but 10x10. That makes whales so influential. Because of this algorithm the stake someone has right now in the network is increasing exponentially.
With the new change implemented in HF19, if you have 10 coins and you vote with all of them, the impact of your vote will be 10. I think this is a very beneficial change and, as a witness, I fully support it. It will bring more clarity and predictability to the platform and it will support the creation of a powerful "dolphin middle class", instead of a "whales oligarchy".
Increased Voting Power
Right now, the voting power you use when you're upvoting content allows you to vote roughly 40 times a day until your vote is "exhausted". This power regenerates over an interval of 5 days.
After HF19, you will be able to vote only 10 times a day at full power, until you get out of voting juice. So there will be significantly less votes, but with more power. Of course, one can diminish the voting power manually for each vote and still reach a similar voting pattern with what's hardcoded now, but it will require more time and focus.
This change has its origins back in the days of a "bot dominated" Steemit. Just 3-4 months ago, it wasn't uncommon to see users voting several hundreds times per day (with various software tools, or bots). During the last couple of months, situation changed dramatically. Many bots disappeared, as keeping the pace with the increased volume of articles was simply not profitable anymore. In this new context, reducing the number of votes to a maximum of 10 per day seems counter productive.
I have to think more about this, so until I'll have a clear position, I'm neutral.
The hardfork was just announced but not yet scheduled so we don't have a fixed date for it. If you want to see all the changes, here's the github announce.
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.
https://steemit.com/~witnesses
I am really a fan of the increased voting power situation. This, along with linear rewards, will give small fish much more feeling of importance in the network; that feeling crucial for this stage of the blockchain.
I agree. Steem is still young - but for those of us who maybe signed up in the early stages, and didn't get active until now - but WANT to play a role in the community - it can be disheartening that our votes don't mean much (especially if we don't have a ton of money to invest in the monetary aspect of Steem)
I am fascinated with each hard fork. Some have been beneficial to me, others not so much. But..... to be in the growing stages of this platform....priceless!
I believe many users may be looking at this differently than intended. Nothing is limiting the number of votes you can use per day, it will just be way more likely that everyone will actually be using all of their voting power on a regular basis. It's not even necessary to adjust your vote percentage, it will happen automatically as you make more than 10 votes per day.
Good information, although that does not seem like that many votes with the new changes. Hope I will be one of those middle class dolphins!
Thanks for the update! I'm really excited about the first one. Not sure about the second one, but I think if we will still be able to adjust our voting percentage, then it should be okay.
I think the ten votes is better because that's about as many as I can really read every day.
Are you back in the game a s a Witness?
Yes, I already wrote about that.
I dip in and out. Glad your back in the game Bro. Always have something interesting to say in your Posts.
Thanks, mate :)
Very useful information that would otherwise have passed me by - thanks!
I agree with some others that 10 full power votes seems low, but it will mean I am more selective.
The 10 votes a day will most likely make voting on comments less popular than it is right now, not that it's all that common now, and it seems like they like to fuck with the community:
increase paywindow to 7 days, remove mechanism preventing abusive voting in the last seconds of the post and make the timeframe fixed, fix one thing while breaking something that was already fine and working, and this new change is of the same nature: linear voting curve, and messing with the voting power for no other reason than to cater to those that aren't as active, like @ats-david mentioned.
Thanks for the update!
I definitely agree with the linear rewards part of the proposal... it should make more people feel like they actually "have a say," and if someone feels like they simply must have more influence, it might encourage investment in Steem Power.
I am concerned that "Voting power increases 4 times" is a label that does us all a disservice... it feels more like "number of counting votes reduced by 75%." By extension, I have sincere concerns that such a move will serve only to reduce the social/interactive aspects of Steemit. I mean, if you're "tapped out" after 10 votes... what's the point of "social?"
Seems to me a differently scaleable voting system would be better. Leave the default at 100% as it is now, but redesign the slider so users have the option to cast a 400% vote for a specific post. As you said, we'll still have the choice of voting with less than full power... but I'm sure you're as aware as I that most people don't read things, including changed to the rules. If it required manual action to vote at 400%, it might not reduce site/voting activity as much...