Steemit Hard Fork 20: A Summary of What To Expect
Pending Hard Fork 20 will fix several issues on the Steem blockchain
Image source: pixabay - skeeze
Bandwidth and Security issues will be addressed in the next hard fork for Steemit, making its 20th in order to fix issues arising on the blockchain. One of the largest move will also be the Resource Credit (RC) system, to improve bandwidth efficiency by intelligently allocating its resources and prevent spam from hogging the network.
You may also have noticed several times when steemit's main page loads slowly, or wallet transaction details do not reflect the state of the current blockchain. If steemd nodes and node operators face memory constraints, the issue can get amplified. Actual transaction cost will be calculated so that resource allocation do not get overwhelmed.
Read more here: https://steemit.com/bandwidth/@steemitblog/blockchain-update-2-hf20-progress-and-bandwidth-changes
Image source: pixabay - AliceKeyStudio
Some other updates include self-voting curation rewards. Currently, authors receive curation rewards while curators do not receive their fair share. To remedy the problem, the unused portion of the curation rewards will be returned to the rewards pool instead of being awarded to the author, thereby increasing the overall percentage of rewards that will be paid to curators.
So self-voters, take that. I do vote for my own posts as well but not excessively. The community acceptable guidelines is less than 20% of self-votes. My 30-day history on steemreports.com show that my self-vote is at 7%. For those who have been self-voting at 80% and above, be prepared to lose those additional 25% of curation rewards.
Curation updates: This will better serve the original mission of the curation rewards budget: to ensure that the Steem blockchain distributes rewards to the most valuable content.
Source: steemit - steemitblog
I also found the "Fix for End of Payout Period Downvote Abuse" to be very crucial. Everyone has made some mistakes. Or angered some Steemit "celebrity" or whale. What they do to you is downvote your posts at the 6th day 23 hour 59 minute mark to remove as much rewards from you as possible.
This abuse now gets a fix with a cool down period, where upvotes or downvotes in the last 12 hours of your post has a reduced effect. This would probably not resolve abuse since abusers are still given 6 days 12 hours to downvote your post. Eliminating downvotes might be cold turkey, but the blockchain-wide ban might cause spam to go out of control.
Steemit is now introducing the idea of a "freemium" model, as long as Steemit users have sufficient stake in the blockchain (stored as Steem Power). We could see limitations given to new users who might have joined the platform solely to introduce unwanted spam. These accounts or users have no interests in having a stake on Steemit and thus given a penalty when their Resource Credits run out.
An article on Hacked.com - Greg Thomson also pointed out how posts may lose its value over a week, at the point of reward. As Steemit rewards are distributed after 7 days and based on Steem prices, posts worth $50 may be worth less a week later. But this works both ways. As a writer, I do recommend everyone to continue to add quality content onto Steemit. Be civil, professional, and stay away from scuffles.
Image source: pixabay - Pezibear
While Steemit has scored top marks for functionality on running a social media platform, the developers are not stopping just there. On a lighter note, a whale statue has been built in Netherlands. The life-size spermwhale fountain is positioned at Harlingen harbor, spraying water as one donates (1-100) Steem to the network.
Developer Roeland P. Lanparty wanted to display the power of the Steem blockchain and its capability for quick transactions:
"It would be fun to integrate cryptocurrency payments and let users squirt it randomly”. He also pointed out that he “found the analogy between the whale fountain and the ‘whale’ slang used to signify wealth in the cryptocurrency community funny.”
Source: Hacked.com - Greg Thomson
Stay tuned for more crpytocurrency news on Steemit.
So an already complex set of rules will get even more complex with HF20? How will this encourage adoption by more users and better user retention? Ok, penalties for upvoting--upvoting really seems to be against the whole idea of quality. But so is selling and buying upvotes. Why address one and not the other? Yes, I know we are playing with game theoretic concepts here and that it is hard to design incentive/disincentive systems. But shouldn't we then experiment with different rule sets simultaneously to let competition determine the winner? If we can't do that, I think we should all have an equal vote on HF20.
when HF20?