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Steemit is About to Change

Changes are coming and it's best to be ready for them. There are many posts talking about HF20, but I wanted to list the practical changes compared to how things work now.

Much of this information was gathered from here: https://steemit.com/steem/@steemitblog/steem-velocity-hardfork-hardfork-20

When is this happening?

Dates to remember:

• HF20 will occur Tuesday, September 25, at 11:00am EST

• Smart Media Tokens will be released March 24th, 2019

The Biggest Changes

Bandwidth ---> Resource Credits
Voting Power ----> Voting Mana

Ironically the biggest changes are behind the scenes and will be unlikely to change the practical use of the STEEM block chain.

Bandwidth

Every time a Steemian interacts with the blockchain with a post, comment or vote, a small amount of 'bandwidth' is used up. Similar to Voting Power, the 'bandwidth' will recharge over time. The more Steem Power an account has, the more 'bandwidth'. Rarely is this ever an issue, unless a user with very little bandwidth becomes extremely active on Steemit.

The big news with HF20? Bandwidth is being replaced with Resource Credits.

Resource Credits

Resource Credits are non-transferable credits given to each account based on how much Steem Power they have. They are 'spent' whenever a user interacts with the Steem blockchain. Similar to Voting Power, Resource Credits will regenerate over time. If an account doesn't have sufficient credits, the transaction will be prohibited, a similar situation as when bandwidth is depleted. This is an unlikely situation as most users will have plenty enough Resource Credits to do their typical Steemit thing.

Is this Resource Credit a new coin?

Not really. Resource credits are completely behind the scenes (like bandwidth) and requires no conscious engagement by the user. Basically, you don't have to think about it. Since Resource Credits are non-transferable, they cannot be bought and sold like STEEM or SBD.

Why is this good?

Spammers will now have to 'spend' resource credits to do their spamming. This may help discourage the practice.

Why is this really good?

I'll say it up front: one of the most frustrating things about Steemit.com is account creation. It takes forever to get a new account and sometimes people never get one at all! This is because every new account costs actual STEEM to create and many people are not willing to spend money to create a steemit.com account.

After HF20, Resource Credits can be used to discount or even pay the expense to create new accounts! The details of how many RC's required and limitation will become apparent after the fork.

Bottom line: Resource Credits will make creating new accounts much easier. This may solve a frustrating aspect of Steemit.com

Voting Mana

Voting power will be called "Voting Mana" as a part of the gamification of Steemit. Voting Mana will still regenerate over five days like voting power.

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When STEEM is 'powered up', extra Voting Mana is added to the account. This means if your voting power is low (Voting Mana), you can Power Up with Steem and restore Voting Mana immediately.

Voting Mana is measured as a number instead of as a percentage, which will take some getting used to.

You can only delegate equal to the amount of Voting Mana at that time. This is to prevent users from depleting their voting power to 0% and delegating to another account with 100% voting power.

Why is this good? This new system provides an increase in voting power compared to what we see today, especially for high SP accounts. Minnows rejoice, the dolphins and whales (and especially bots) will not deplete their Voting Power as quickly! This allows voting bots to vote more times each cycle, depending on their Steem Power.

The Steemit experience. What's new?

The curation window is changing to 15 minutes.

Currently, when a Steemian offers an upvote within the first few seconds of posting time they experience a 'voting penalty' and most if not all of their curation reward is given to the author instead of the voter. This diminishes over the next 30 minutes. A vote after 30 minutes will contribute 25% to the reward pool. When the reward pays out, the curators get a percentage of the pool based on the strength of their vote.

After HF20, the curation period is reduced to 15 minutes and the curation lost by the 'voting penalty' will be returned to the reward pool rather than rewarded to the author or curators. This is further incentive for Steemians to get out and vote on good content, as they are likely to receive more generous curation rewards. It will also be in the curator's best interest to upvote a post after it's at least 15 minutes old.

The 20 second comment limit will be changed to 3 seconds! This is great news for champion commentators, since they no longer have to wait 20 seconds between comments.

Delegation wait time decreased from seven days to five days. If you've ever withdrawn a delegation those seven days are agonizingly long. Having this reduced by a few days is a relief.

The ability to vote on a post within the last 12 hours. Instead of prohibiting votes, the vote's impact on rewards will diminish to zero over the final 12 hours. A vote just before payout will not be credited.

Conclusion

This pretty much sums up the practical changes to the STEEM blockchain. The changes are minor enough that it will not require a major change in how we STEEM.

What are your thought? Are these good changes? Or should there be some more?

@ironshield

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Benjamin Turner: God fearer. Rooted in Messiah. Husband of @lturner. Father of four wonderful children. The guy behind the camera. Steemit enthusiast.

Bless the Most High!

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