Abit Witness Upgraded to 0.18.1, And An Explanation Why Post Rewards Dropped Much

My nodes have been upgraded to version 0.18.1, all fine so far. The new rules are scheduled to take effect (hard fork) some seconds after Thu, 30 March 2017 15:00:00 UTC (11:00:00 EDT).

Related links:

• Release Notes: https://github.com/steemit/steem/releases
• Steemit Blog: https://steemit.com/@steemitblog

Some changes about the new version:

• We will be able to reply to old old posts.
• (EDIT: THE CONCLUSION BELOW IS NOT ACCURATE)
  At the hard fork time, payout time of all posts and replies that have a pending payout will be rescheduled. For posts and replies that were made earlier than 7 days before, the payout time will be unchanged; otherwise the new payout time will be creation time plus 7 days.
• (SHOULD BE THIS)
  At the hard fork time, payout time of all posts and replies that have a pending payout will be rescheduled.
  • for both posts and replies, if creation time plus 7 days is earlier than their original next scheduled payout time (either first payout or second payout), the payout time will be unchanged,
  • otherwise the payout time will be changed to creation time plus 7 days

Please expect that posting/curation rewards will drop much after the hard fork. On the first day, reward would be around 3% of pre-hardfork level. It will increase over time, until reach a steady state (need one month or so).

the TL;DR explanation borrowed from @smooth:

The hard fork switched from paying out the full reward pool every day to paying out 1/30 of it. It will take 30+ days for the reward pool, which is still being filled at the same rate as ever, to grow 30x larger so the rewards are back to equilibrium.

One reason is the new 7-day single payout mechanism.

Another reason is described in the release notes:

All payouts now look at the prior 30 days of payouts to determine the share of the reward rather than the current pending rshares.

The reason for this change is twofold. 1. Looking at a 30 day decaying window reduces variance in payout due to small changes in vote densities. 2. On votes we are currently updating the comment the vote is on, every comment in the tree up to the root, and the global property object. With this algorithm we only need to update the comment, significantly reducing the amount of time spent processing votes. With this change, payouts will initially dip and then ramp up over the next 30 days until the reward fun reaches a steady state.

My explanation: there is a content reward pool in the system. Currently, funds in the pool is only enough to pay rewards of a day. So, for example, people who posting during weekends will earn a bit more, because less people are posting. After the hard fork, we'll accumulate more funds in the pool, so it can support rewards of a month. So in the first month or so, people will get less rewards, especially in the first days, much much less than before. After there are enough funds in the pool, the difference of rewards among posts created at different time will be smaller than before.

//Update:
If you have a post/comment that had a pending reward X before the hard fork time, and at the hard fork time it got rescheduled to be paid after Y days, a rough estimation of the final reward will be: X * Y / 30.

//Update 2:
Another rough estimation: if currently it shows a pending reward A on your post/comment, and it will be paid after Y days, the final reward would be: A * (Y + 1.5) / 1.5.

Or, when you see a pending reward B on a post on a day which is D days after the hard fork, and it will be paid after Y days, the final reward would be B * (Y + 1.5 + D) / (1.5 + D)

The estimations above are VERY ROUGH. Due to STEEM price changes, vote changes on your post or others' posts, the final result may vary.

//Update 3: more detailed math is here.