I know there are lots of people already expressing interest about subscribing for our service for next month, and a lot of questions about the transition away from paid membership and delegation only. I'll explain my plan and where I'm coming from.

Currently we have one baseline delegation of 50 000 SP that we need to renew every month. It is mostly covered from post rewards, but not totally, so this is where the paying members come in, we need just a little bit extra to cover this, but not too much. These payments also only cover our baseline and don't add to the pot the same way delegations do. So that's also why it's important to limit these payments. The bigger problem is that payments are static, so when steem prices fluctuate wildly, or we need to make some adjustments to voting power than these members are at a disadvantage.

Once we are fully on delegations everything is balanced, new delegations will add to the pot and vote values will remain pretty steady, except for baring for steem prices and it also ensures a more fair distribution across the board.

When I've suggested moving to a phased plan to move towards delegations only, it's because we do still need a bit of liquid steem, but not as much, probably about half as much as last month.

So my plan for the phased approach was for the first 1-2/months to limit paying members to a max of 400 STEEM worth on a first come/first serve basis, but I also wanted to make sure payments could only be made in addition to a delegation, starting with an at least 25% delegation for the first month, then to 50% and etc. each subsequent month.

This means if you want a gold membership you can no longer just pay 100 STEEM to obtain it, you would have to also send a delegation of at least 625SP and top up your tier with an additional 75 STEEM.

I think by doing it this way we will ensure we don't dilute the votes too much with paying membership and will make this more sustainable over the long term.

The other change I am considering for next month is also creating a platinum tier and raising the delegation limit to 5000SP, I have had a few people approach me about this option and it will certainly add more voting power to the pool for everyone so I don't really see a reason why not.

We are still a week away from opening intakes and subscriptions for next month and I will also be committing to giving all our current members the first opportunities for our paid spots, before we open to new paid intakes. Otherwise anyone on steemit making quality content may subscribe to our service with delegated SP.

Voting

Unfortunately it was one of those bad days in the world of crypto prices, but at least our trusty STEEM was hit a bit less than everything else. The price feed has yet to respond and still reading $3.04, but if the price stays low will be likely see a decline in voting value over the next few days, but maybe everything will rebound nicely. Otherwise we are getting close to my buy in price on a few of my other favorite cypto, so gotta try to stay positive in this dip. Of course SP and vote values current remain relatively unchanged so nothing much else to report.

Second Chance Post

Here's one of my favorite posts over the last couple days from one of our members @cryptokeepr. This guy is a running machine and in fact there are quite a bit of pretty hardcore and also beginner runners here on steemit. I've just been scratching the surface recently about all the great things happening for the fitness and running community here on steemit, and getting pretty exciting about it myself as an avid runner myself. So of course this post deserve and mention and a great place to start out if your a bit curious about running.

I know the intro was a lot, but hopefully it helps with some questions I've been getting recently