The Steem Blockchain went through the scheduled HardFork number 21. Overall it went well with the small pause of couple of hours, as most of the Steemians are aware.

For me personal it was a fun experience. I couldn’t resist it and I was lurking around. The Discord channels can offer a lot of fun during these events. I was jumping on the SteemMonsters, PAL, LEO and the SteemDev discord. It all went smooth at first and then the BC halted. In these couple of hours memes overflow the discord channels 😊.

The first thing I did after the HardFork was a comment. Then I went and downvoted one of my comments. Checking the free downvotes option.

Checking my pending payouts!

These are the three posts that I made in the last seven days. The above is a screenshot from the current situation, after the HardFork. Sadly, I didn’t take a screenshot before the HardFork, but as I remember the situation was like this.
The top post had around 0,48$, the middle one 0,75$ and the bottom one 4,1$.

Overall reduction in posts value, authors and curation rewards:

• Post number one, reduction in value from 0,48$ to 0,28$, (42%)
• Post number two, reduction in value from 0,75$ to 0,34$, (54%)
• Post number three, reduction in value from 4,1$ to 3,89$, (5%)

The second post is a bit odd. A 54% reduction in value? I’m taking this number with some doubt and assign it to the blockchain stabilization time.

The reason for the lower rewards on these posts is only because of the CURVE, or the reward curve as mostly referred. Not the author/curator split, or the SPS. No, just the CURVE. This is one of the most challenging things to understand from all the new things in HF21.

The Reward Curve

It was linear, now is converging superliner. It is not superliner. Its converging 😊. Basically, what this means is that in the old system the reward was equal to the number of the upvotes you get (cumulative SP voting on your posts).
Now it is not. If you get a tiny number of votes (cumulative SP voting on your posts) the reward is less than before. The more votes you get the bigger the reward, up until some value when it is acting as before and becomes linear, to avoid extra large rewards.

From my example above this number is somewhere around 4$. It is more than 20 STEEM. That’s is the number other people are mentioning as well. Everything less then 20 STEEM in rewards will have lower payouts compared to previous. This is most of the users! Just a small number of people are making more then 20 STEEM in rewards, without using the bitbots.

People were talking on and on about the 50/50 split, but it is the reward curve that is dominating. A 40% drop in payout value for most of the posts. This goes for both, authors and curators.

The 50/50 Split

Now that the curve has done its thing and reduced the overall value of most of the post by 40%, next is the 50/50 split. The curve is cutting both, the authors and curators’ rewards for the posts with rewards less then 20 STEEM. The split is further reducing the authors reward.

Overall reduction in authors reward:

• Post number one, reduction in value from 0,36$ to 0,14$, (61%)
• Post number two, reduction in value from 0,56$ to 0,17$, (70%)
• Post number three, reduction in value from 3,0$ to 1,95$, (35% )

The SPS, Steem Proposal System, sometimes referred as the Steem DAO is also taking a 10% cut of the reward pool. This is already calculated above.

Most of the authors will get 60% reduction in rewards payouts.

At first this sounds bad. My first reaction to these was negative. But let’s think reasonable. All these changes are stimulating more curation and less posting. To be precise quality posting. People will need to produce some quality stuff to get something out of this blockchain without first investing in it. The old system was stimulating everyone to be authors. We all know that most of the people are not very good at this. Most of the people are spectators not performers.

I will compare this as an unpopular measure to fix thing. Similar like in the society. Nobody wants unpopular measures to be taken but sometimes they need to be done. With the price of STEEM, things are already bad anyways. This is a change. If it brings STEEM up to a 1$ everybody will be happy.

These changes also are more investors friendly. People with more stake will earn more. That is how it usually goes. But a balance is needed between the investors and workers friendly environment. Sometimes it is tricky to find it, and most of the times it is just oscillating between the two :).

The Largest Stakeholder

Here I will also mention the largest stakeholder acting. The acting of the largest stakeholder is also a big signal for investors. Continuously selling portions of stake from the largest stakeholder, is a no go for investors. No HardFork will change this. If we want more investors friendly environment the selling from the largest stakeholder needs to stop and be publicly announced. Even if they need the money, they can borrow elsewhere, stop/pause (6 to 12 months) the selling, and maybe than sell less at much higher prices. Imagen if Jeff Bezos was selling his Amazon shares each month and this is a publicly know fact. It will do no good on the prices of the shares. Occasionally he does sell, but this is happening once in a few years. A lot of the times companies use their profit to buy some of the shares out of the market. Waiting for that day to come for STEEM 😊.

Is this the right solution?

I don’t know and I believe that nobody does. We are on the front of the new technology and a new economy. These are uncharted waters. Nobody has been here before. We will need to learn and adapt on the way. That is the killer future of successful people and businesses. Learn and adapt fast. I'm just excited and glad to be a part of this.

I was planning to write about the increase in the curation rewards as a compensation for the authors reward and downvoting. Downvoting seems to be clearing up the trending page already. That is good. But we need more time to see how it all goes. This post is already to long for my taste, so some other time 😊.

All the best
@dalz