Hello friends

This post is to seek your advice on the above question.

Many of you might have noticed that I no more author posts as frequently as I was doing before the HF-21. In fact, I have already indicated about this a week before the HF date.

I knew that my presence on this platform was meaningful to this community only until the "big" talent arrives here in hordes. And then these talented individuals will take away all the attention from people like me. I've a hunch that we've almost arrived or soon going to arrive at that stage ...where people like me should announce retirement of the sorts.

Frankly, I'm not a community person by any standards. The feedback and the reactions to my blogs after the Hard Fork have already conveyed me their message that I'm an unwanted element here ...and I respect it. However, I still write sparingly as I still fail to see the expected level of quality content here. But I eventually intend to stop altogether.

Of course, I'd like to wait and see what communities and SMT brings up or I may continue to write sometimes in tribes like SteemLeo ...like this post. It's possible that I can find some tribe or community where I might belong but until that time I'd like to stop making posts.

The Pareto Principle

According to the Pareto principle or the "80-20" law of the vital few, 20% of Steemians make decision for themselves and the rest 80% of the Steemians; for what kind of content should thrive here and how the reward pool should be shared. (However, it's not the case here. It's less than 0.01% here). What more, I don't see the diversity in this vital 20% community members. In fact, over 80% of these 20% 'vital few' harp on the same string. This could be because the community isn't sufficiently large enough yet. Although over 80% of the total account on this blockchain were created after mine, not even 20% of those are active here. So Pareto's principle doesn't seem to hold true as of now.

Oh, but how does it all mater! Looks like I'm digressing from the subject of this post. So let's come back to the crucial question:

Does powering up STEEM make any sense?

Prior to HF-21, I was thinking that powering up STEEM will be very rewarding after HF-21; as curation reward will increase to 50% from the earlier 25%. But then I decided to wait and watch first. So the result?

It's been a month to the HF-21 now but personally I don't see curation rewards inviting enough to me for a power up.

These days however, I see a lot of biggies powering up and making a power-up posts; like they have done the best thing ever. But somehow I'm still not very convinced.

Here's my earned curation rewards' curve:

I don't see any improvement in my earnings after the HF-21. In fact, I see the curation earnings for most of the accounts has in fact decreased after HF-21.

My monthly curation rewards are about 1% p.m. of my effective SP. I may improve a little on it but it's not easy for me. With some more attention I can take it to about 1.25%p.m. at best but I am not the best of curators. And with the rampant downvote culture, it's also a risk to upvote posts with high potential payouts.

In fact, I see the majority of curators are earning between 0.66% to 1.5% per month only. Considering these figures, my 1% reward isn't that bad. Thus my effective return on investment is 12% APR plus some negligible vesting interest of about 1.25%p.a. But my STEEM holding share is also decreased by about 8.33% STEEM inflation. So effectively, I earn less than 5% APR through my curation efforts.

Even if these rewards were 15% - 18% p.a., it won't be too lucrative to me.

Now a days there are several opportunity to stake your crypto and earn several fold better return than this (without doing any effort like curation work).

Considering this, is it any wiser to power up my STEEM holdings? Or should I be powering down?

Well, this assumes that I am not going to author any post or comment. Of course, when I curate posts, I do at times leave some comments too. But HF-21 has actually discouraged voting on comments. Comments weren't earning any significant rewards anyway.

But I may also author posts sometime. Since HF-21 has encouraged manual curation, the ones who gonna upvote my posts will upvote them anyway, irrespective of my SP holdings. We are not actually expected to do any vote exchange (because quality matters over relationships!). So that doesn't encourage me to hoard SP.

The only reason to hold SP, it seems, is to lock STEEM as a long term investment to gain from its appreciation in the future. TBH, I don't feel the current changes are going to push STEEM prices upwards in a short run. I don't see any major appreciation before SMT launch ...though I may be wrong here.

However, I'd like to hold some STEEM until SMT and until communities rolls out. I may like to invest in some SMT if it's of my interest and if that entice me to post actively here. But these are just some possibilities I'm considering just because of my long association with Steem chain. Otherwise, a nominal SP is sufficient to carry out normal transactions on Steem blockchain.

So why should I power-up and not power-down?
Am I missing something in my thought process?
Are there better opportunities for earning curation rewards than what I'm seeing now?

Please enlighten me on this issue.

Thanks a ton!