Rate Limited Voting - Explained
This is a follow on to a post from a few days ago which can be view here. In the previous post, I explained how the new 5 Vote Target is redistributing power away from active curators and bot’s, to Steemit’s ‘average’ social user. I thought I would take a little time to explain Rate Limited Voting, how it works, and how it impacts curation.
Many users find reading Cryptocurrency White Paper’s heavy going, or some have never even seen one. It’s easy to forget that Steemit is meant to be the ultimate cryptocurrency on-boarding system. So, I’m spending much of my time picking out snippet of useful information for users, that may affect the way they should/will want to interact with the Steemit Platform.
Rate Limited Voting
Curation is a great way for a new user to begin to interact with Steemit. There is however, a few thing that a new users needs to know in order to maximise their return and influence on the Steemit platform.
- Up to 25% of the Rewards a post receives is allocated to Curation: The rewards a users will receive is a function of a number a variable..
- The earlier you vote, the better: This is not absolute, as I will explain, there is a tradeoff. However as a general rule, your reward increases, the more that other users vote after you..
- The first 30mins after a post goes live: If you vote in this window, a certain % of your curation reward will go to the author. If you vote after one second >99% of your curation reward will go to the author. This slides out to, voting at 29mins 59seconds, you will give <1% of your rewards to the author of the post.
- How many Vests you own? The more vests you own, the more influence you will have in curation. The more vests you own, the more rewards you can allocate to an author, the bigger the share of the curation rewards you will receive.
- Your Voting Power: This brings me on nicely to voting power and Rate Limited Voting
You can view your voting power by visiting the following webpage;
www.steemd.com/@yourusername
and, paying attention to this figure…
As you can see, my account has a voting power of 99.94%. I am not a prolific curator, so I maintain a high voting power. The next user I have selected has a voting power of 66.44%. Now, a vote from this user is still worth far more than it’s is from me (on the account of them having 23x more Vests than myself), however, a vote from this user would be worth more if they voted less.
Voting power is multiplied by a user’s vesting tokens to determine how much share in the reward pool should be allocated to a given work item.
This brings me on the an extract from the White Paper - Page 18/19
A major part of minimizing abuse is the rate-limiting of voting. Individual users can only read and evaluate so many work items per day. Any attempt to vote more frequently than this is a sign of automation and potential abuse.
Through rate limiting, stakeholders who vote more frequently have each vote count for less than stakeholders who vote less frequently. Attempts to divide tokens among multiple accounts also divides influence and therefore does not result in a net increase in influence nor bypass the rate-limit imposed on voting.
This chart was also pulled from the Steem White Paper
What these charts essential show, is that, the more a user votes, the more their voting power falls. Intermittent, normal voting behaviour will results in a user’s Voting Power remaining high, and thus keep their share of the curation rewards high. Continuous voting on posts will resulting a users voting power falling towards zero, and will take far longer to return to high levels afterwards.
The new 5 Vote Target announced in the 0.14.0 update will have the effect of accelerating the fall in voting power, for high levels of voting activity. This has the effect of, intermittent voters receiving a (relative) increase in influence on the Steemit platform. They should also should see their Curation Rewards increase for the same voting activity.
I hope this explains this little characteristic of the Curation Rewards system. Happy to take any questions.
With the addition of the percentage-based voting, users can vote more than 5 times, just not at full power. Only thing I didn't see in your well-written explanation. Thanks!
Quiet right, they can vote as many times as they like still... I should have made that clear. Thanks @blakemiles84
I like the voting system, but feel that comments are not given the proper rewards that they once were. If quality comments are not rewarded well, less people will take the time to make meaningful comments. I think this would cripple a major part of steemit that I love.
Maybe giving different weight or separate voting percentages to comments would be something that could be looked into.
I second this idea! It's important not to overlook commenting, as without proper incentives I feel the current high standards of discussions on Steemit would devolve back toward trashy Facebook / Reddit standards. Partly that's kept in check by reputation, but partly by the expectation of being rewarded for well written comments as well. My personal philosophy is to spread my votes as wide as I can, on both comments and posts. I don't really give that much thought to curation rewards. As a small fish I won't ever make much from curating anyway. But for those who are hesitant to vote on a comment because they don't want to see their voting power lowered too much, it would be helpful indeed for commenting to draw on a separate voting percentage.
Yes I have to strongly agree with you on that. Comments are one of the most valuable things I have found here. I almost never write something like "great job" and click post. That doesn't help anyone. I'd rather someone be highly critical than to make the same response a bot could make without having to read anything in my article.
I try to make each comment count. Even though I'm in the top 25 people for commenting (including bots) I try my best to make comments that will either engage the original poster or let them know why I liked or disagreed with their stance. Also I find it a great way to share ideas that person could implement and also converse with those who have strong opinions.
Sometimes comments are longer than posts and can be just as valuable to me. Creativity is often found in comments. Maybe there should be a feed for the best comments whether that be most voted on or highest dollar etc, but rewards for comments should be greater than some curation I think. I may be biased because my curation is low, but comments are the best way for new users to engage with successful posters and I know I'd be discouraged if 50 comments made $0.00.
I'm not sure the best way to fix this, but I'd love some other creative ideas to be explored in the comment section.
I like this idea!
Thanks for the support @tinyhomeliving I feel that there are those that do not like or feel comfortable making blog posts, but have creative ideas when inspired by reading others work.
With the curation the way it is right now it is not really lucrative to upvote comments. I do it not for the curation, but for the principal of rewarding something that helps me and engages with my post or another users post.
Comments may not deserve quite as much money as people who are generating blog posts, but you should be able to upvote more comments that are well thought out and not be limited in voting power quite as much as you are now.
Multiple times I have seen long well thought out responses that the author has appreciated and commented on, but not upvoted. I think this is a big flaw and would be interested in coming up with a solution to this with some of the creative minds and commentors here.
Great explanation of this complex situation. Educating users about the new 5 vote target is essential so that people do not get discouraged. When I read about the new 5 vote change I was disappointed and thought it would impact how much I interact here, however, many people have explained how it will be beneficial to all and this post also helps to confirm this.
Does anyone know the thinking regarding making it 5 votes and not 10?
Because they have given everyone the 'slider', it doesn't really matter. Set it to 12.5% if you want everything remain the same as before... Once the change is implemented.
Thank you for this easy explanation. It was very timely as I was going to go ahead with a "junk" post asking where voting power actually lays - vests or Steem Power. Now I know!
I'm sure powering down affects the strength of my voting as well but I'm pleased to see my vests increasing on Steemd to mark my progression here :)
Excellent post, man! Very succinct breakdown and very easy to understand. I'm waiting to see what effect that 5-vote limit at full voting power has on the way posts are curated, but I don't think it'll do much of anything to discourage people from curating. It's not going to dramatically effect me.
Any chance people will vote less on unknown authors and reserve their votes to spend only on authors they have confidence in to earn the most for their votes?
It will be interesting to see what the impact of this is... I personally don't think it will have much affect, however others believe it will. I'm sure we will find out over the coming few weeks... As far as I am aware, this change means that, everyone voting power has been increased by 8x (i.e. the 40 down to 5 is caused by voting power increasing 8x), so if you set your vote at 12.5% there will be no change.
The only impact will be on users who vote on say 1-10 posts per day, their voting power on these votes will have increased close to 8x in relative terms. So they gain more influence, more active users lose a little...
Good point. Thanks for explaining. I posted about this the other day... I think it won't change things drastically, but it may lower overall payouts and may make it harder for unknown authors to get votes.. I emphasize "may" because I don't know for sure. Like you said, we will see in a couple weeks if there is any real difference.
this article is gold.
Thank you for this information!
first of all thanks alot for highlighting the main features of steemit once again in much better way as it will help more the steemit users specially the new coming members please explain the below sentence little more as i have some confusion in curation rewards in the sentence it is clear but is actually happen the situation if any one give vote in one second?
."If you vote after one second >99% of your curation reward will go to the author"
In the first 30 mins after a post goes live, the Author receives a share of the Curation rewards, of any votes which happen in this time frame. This was brought into effect to stop bots upvoting every post in the first fraction of a second, and taking all the curation rewards.
The percentage of curation rewards the Author receives, is based on how early/or late each vote is in the 30min window. The earlier a curator votes in the 30min window, the more of their curation reward goes to the author. The later in the 30min window, the less they give up to the Author. After 30mins passes, the Curator keeps 100% of the curation rewards they were due.
If you vote after 15mins of a post going live, the author will receive 50% of your curation reward...
Thanks alot for explaining more in very easy and rich sentences.
That's good news for those that don't have the time to vote as much as others. At least their votes will have more impact, especially with the slider.
Thank for the explanation. Peace.