Voting Bots

Note: This is not a tutorial on voting bots. If you want a tutorial, read Safe Usage of Voting Bots

Just recently, I learned about Voting bots. Voting bots can be found at Steembottracker. You can use them there as well.

I have been experimenting for several posts with voting bots and there are a lot of very colorful opinions about voting bots. I still haven't made up my mind because I just need more data, but I am the victim of @grumpycat. I became the victim in my very first voting bot experience just trying to collect data for this post.

What are they? What are they for?

The purpose is to convert SBD into more SBD by getting a vote from a user with ridiculous amounts of STEEM power.

Just as an example @upme is a steem voting bot. Check this out:

Yeah. That's a pantload of STEEM POWA! In an ironic twist of, you can legally buy their vote. LOL.

Voting Value

Each voting bot has a max vote value.
This is just an example:

Let's assume @upme has a max vote value of 400 SBD. You can buy a vote by bidding with a voting bot with 6 SBD. What you are bidding for is not an entire vote, but a percentage of a vote. If you are the only voter, you are going to get 100% of the vote. If you are not the only voter, then the following:

1. The value of all votes are tallied
2. The value of your bid is compared to the value of the tally. If your bid was 6 SBD and the tally is 100 SBD, you get 6% of the vote.
3. Keep in mind the full vote is 400 SBD, so you get 6% of that.
4. The tally will never exceed 400 SBD. Therefore, the max profitable (see below) bid is always approximately Vote value - Vote tally

Note: there is an amount where you are completely not profitable. It varies based on the bot and how much of the vote is up for sale. Also, this is just an example.

You're basically in competition with a bunch of user for this one vote. The bot is used exclusively for voting on bids. This means that @upme doesn't vote on anything, but what you and others are bidding. The reason for this is Voting Power

Voting Power

Everyone has it, but for bots, this is how they stay fair to everyone. We always get 100% voting power (not the same as % of a vote). Each time you vote on something, your voting power decreases. It increases at a rate of 20% every 24 hours. This means that if you vote beyond 20% in a day, you can get it all back in 24 hours.

Wait a minute! How much voting power to bots use? Bots use approximately 2% voting power with each voting cycle. They use 2% vote (spread across numerous votes), but with that they only lose 2% voting power at a time. This 2% recovers every 2.5 hours. That's important because that explains why bots voting cycles occur every 2.5 hours.

Viability

Ok, so do they even work? I dunno. Just this morning, I got my very first reward. I also ran into a few other people that had voted thanks to @grumpycat and I analyzed their reward data on posts that @grumpycat hit and ones that were not hit.

Note: This is only the first day after rewards and I am a noob when it comes to @steem. If anyone has documentation that shows the contrary or information to the contrary of what I am providing, please post it in reply. I would love to know it because it will make my content better and me a better user.

I will now share my rewards. Thanks to @steem being completely and transparent, my rewards are available for other users to see, so I do not feel weird sharing this information because you all can get at it anyway.

My First Payout

I'm guessing I should get $37.52.

Payout Refresher When you post, any votes made after 30 minutes of your post will get 25% curation rewards. If you use a voting bot after 30 minutes of posting, 25% of that vote reward from the bot is evenly distributed to all the other voters (including yourself)

How Much I Actually Get

I'm not the best at math, but...that's not $37.52. In fact, the total of my voting bot rewards so far is approximately $40 SBD. Ouch.

Moar Data

So I decided to see if this is what happens to others.

$372.65 is a ton of gil. Wow. Someone's got a good following. Anyway, let's check out the rewards.

Moar Rewards

Ok. Again, when did 372.65 == 186.321?

I Need Moar Data

I have more bids in the works to get more data. If you can send me what you've got, that would be great.

Is it a Scam?

It's looking like it. Looking like a big fat Ponzie scheme all the time.

On top of your SBD that you give voting bots, they're already making a ton in curation rewards off of voting. Every minute, they make more STEEM power that they they convert into their bot.

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Update

A couple shoutouts to

• @joshpeterson for DTube - Steemit Tips for Newbies/Minnows: How to estimate your rewards with Steem Supply!
• @faisalazmi for explaining rewards to me and taking the time and effort to actually show me the math (Great job)

37.53 : 2 = 18.765 SBD
4.279 (Steem power) x 4.61 (steem price right now) = 19.72
18.765+19.72 = 38.45 ( price is changed due the market currently price)

• @dragosroua for http://steem.supply/rewards which actually has a paragraph explaining rewards and calculations.

This explained a lot for me and was more helpful than words can say. It went a long way to correct my math and my judgement; however, viability is still in question. I still need more data. Beyond what I have done so far, there are a number of other ways to control the output/result of a bid. I definitely want to explore those things. Whether it's actually worth a post or not, I don't know.