When it comes to voting strength, don't worry, be happy

This past Tuesday, when the 19th hard fork (HF19) happened, we all got a huge boost in our upvote value. Mine was around $1.15.

But then many of us saw that number rapidly decrease as we continued upvoting content that day. We also noted our voting strength percentage depleting beyond anything we'd ever seen before HF19.

People I hang out with online started talking about how they needed to preserve their voting strength, limit their upvoting, use their slider more, etc.

My take on this is that we should all keep upvoting just like we used to, and perhaps even more so. Here's why.

Your voting strength will never deplete completely. Each upvote takes a smaller bite out of it than the last upvote did, and you can track that as your upvote value drops with each additional upvote you cast. That smaller and smaller bite can shrink infinitely, but it will never ever run out. And it will hit a point where the rate your voting strength replenishes matches your upvoting rate, and that's the voting strength your account will settle at.

You embrace your equilibrium voting strength, and if you're not quite happy with the upvote value, all you need to do is power up more STEEM to bring that value up while keeping at your equilibrium voting strength.

Here is how it breaks down when you do the math.

Let's assume you're always voting 100% on your slider for this scenario.

You start out with 100% VP (voting power).

Your first upvote takes away 2%, so that leaves you with 98%.
Your second upvote takes away 2%, but not of 100%, but of 98%. That works out to 1.96%, leaving you with 96.04%.
Your third upvote takes away 2% of 96.04%, (which is 1.9208%) leaving you with 94.1192%.

You can take that out to as many upvotes as you want to, but I'd recommend an excel spreadsheet, rather than a calculator :D

So far, we have assumed no replenishment, or a scenario in which you placed three upvotes within a few seconds of each other.

But voting strength replenishes at a rate of 20% in a 24 hour period, which works out to 1 percent every 72 minutes. As far as I know HF19 didn't change that.

The more you upvote (again assuming full strength on slider), the smaller your pool of voting strength is that it's taking 2% from. That 2% of what's left could be as low as 0.1% (or even lower) of the entire voting strength potential (what it would be at 100%)

There's going to come a point for each curator (and it will be based on how much upvoting being done) at which the amount of depleting from upvoting is going to match the amount of replenishment taking place at the same time. At that point the voting strength % you see on steemd.com/@yoursteemitaccount will not change much, especially if you are involved in any kind of automated voting (will fluctuate more if your voting actually sleeps when you do!), and that amount is what I would call your equilibrium voting strength.

Voting strength depletes rapidly from 100%, but it slows way down by the time it hits the 20s. And it replenishes constantly at a rate of 1 percent every 72 minutes.

My advice to Steemians worried about their shrinking upvote value and depleting voting strength percentage is to let it go. Vote as you normally would. Do that over a period of several days, and regularly check your voting strength percent to see which amount it seems to remain on. That number would be your equilibrium upvote, and it's likely to stay the same until you radically change your upvoting practices in some way.

In other words, don't worry, be happy, and upvote to your heart's content.