There is still a lot of confusion, and a lot of questions, about how upvotes are now calculated under the new reward curve put in place since HF21. Very few people can actually perform the calculations "by hand" so let's forget the formulas and the graphs; this article is more an attempt to describe a heuristic method so that more users have a feel for what is going on.
I know that HF22 also took place but a lot of articles and discussions were about HF21, and especially the EIP, so we won't mention HF22 again.
Firstly, let's take a quick look at how curation rewards are calculated. I hope that most users now have a working model of how curation works when they upvote.
Your curation rewards depend on three things: the sum of existing votes before your upvote; the size of your vote; and the sum of the votes that come after yours. So, without any formulas you should have a pretty sound idea of how your curation rewards increase as more voters follow your vote.
Now, the new reward curve does something similar to rewards. No longer is your upvote a fixed value when voting, but its value changes depending on the behaviour of other users.
Turning your upvote into a payout involves essentially two processes: your upvote is turned into rshares that are added to the post; then at the end, those rshares are converted into STEEM and distributed to the author.
Sitting in the middle of those two processes is the "reward curve". Its function is to turn rshares into STEEM using whatever formula it is given.
Just before HF21, most users could ignore this reward curve function because it was linear and, to a decent approximation, the total pending rewards of a post was the sum of all the vote values. This is no longer the case, hence one needs a working model of what this new reward curve is actually doing.
So we need to hold in our mind an important distinction between our "vote value" and its corresponding "reward value" - they are no longer the same thing. The "vote value" is what the blockchain calculates from global parameters and your SP; think of this as your 100% potential "maximum vote value". The "reward value" is then what you actually see on a post after you have upvoted it.
This is where most people's shock response comes in - your upvote is worth less than you thought!
Yep, it is worth less.
So let's see why this has happened.
In general, the reward value of your upvote depends on the size of the upvote itself and on the total value of all the other votes, both before and after yours. Every fresh upvote moves the post rewards up the reward curve so that it gets closer to the linear relationship between vote value and vote rewards.
Like a rising tide raises all ships, so as the total rshares value of a post increases so does the reward value of every individual upvote in STEEM.
That most websites have chosen to show rewards in US$ just confuses this issue even further as this value also fluctuates with the STEEM market price. If you ignore this and just think in terms of STEEM then the rshares-into-STEEM process is fairly straightforward.
Again, under a linear reward curve, this step was simple and post rewards in STEEM would not fluctuate much during the 7-day life of a post. Now that process starts off being very non-linear, indeed quadratic, with a minimum "reward value" of just 50% then rising (very slowly) towards 100%, which means that the "reward value" would finally be equal to the "vote value".
Where does the 50% come from? It's how the reward curve formula is designed so that if the value of rshares is low then it approximates to half the linear value.
So, every new upvote on a post increases both the vote value of that post and its reward value as it climbs the curve from 50% to 100%.
Just as a numerical example, if you see your upvote should be worth 10 cents, but you upvote a new post early and you see that its reward value is only 5 cents, then that's correct! That's 50% of your "vote value" turned into "reward value". If you come back later to the same post and see many other votes, then look at the value of your own vote, you may see it has gone up to maybe 6 or 7 cents. Still below the 10 cents, but as the whole post value has moved up the reward curve so every upvote becomes worth that little bit more.
Hope that helps.
The take-away is that your upvote is worth more if the whole post is worth more.
The down-side to waiting to just upvote valuable posts is that you will be quite low down the curation reward curve, as that still depends on timing whereas upvotes themselves are not time-sensitive.
Any further questions, just ask.
PS. Have now posted a follow-up: Why do SteemWorld and SteemNow show different values for my upvote?. Hope these two articles, together, help users understand the changes.
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Thanks. This indeed gives a better feeling for what is going on. Hopefully people won’t wait till the end of the seven days periods to figure out where their upvotes are most valuable in terms of rewards.
Thanks, I've tried out various analogies on Discord chats - I hope I have made it as simple a mental model as is useful to most users.
As I said, voting very late is useful to the recipient - the poster - but will still be rather low curation rewards for the upvoter, although more than before.
The awards were ridiculous and now even cry at all - I am disappointed with HF (like 99% of the people here) there is no incentive for new arrivals.
Steem is starting to sound like a Ponzi Scheme where only the whales are rewarded. This is not what I signed up for. And if it continues like this, I don't know if I'll stay for much longer. One thing is certain, I won't be buying any more Steem. Not under these rules.
everyone says that we need new people and there will be growth / if steem will not grow without new people - it means there is no value - the whales get rich and are not going to share - and we, as spectators / insist on high-quality content and come up with a bunch of rules that a newbie will not follow and even if he decides to become an author, then he will find disappointment and flight - a bunch of rules - increased centralization @trincowski
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Exactly. This Fork is the worst thing for new users. It's really hard convincing anyone to try Steem and then they arrive and earn almost nothing at all. So 95% of them leave.
With this change, instead of earning almost nothing, they will earn nothing at all.
I see user retention going from 5% to 1% or less.
Steem has just became a private club. As an investment opportunity, it's absolutely terrible. No one will be willing to invest in a place like this.
PS: Since now upvoting comments is useless, I've upvoted your last post instead.
Nice )) @trincowski
Yeah time for the tipping token to rise!
or I'll make my own!
Comment upvotes are now worthless, or more accurately worth-less than on a post.
Yep. That's the general feeling now. It doesn't make sense to put any effort in posting, if you know you are not a whale with thousands of followers.
This is going to make a lot of people leave and the ones of us who stay are lowering their quality standards.
This HF is a shot to the foot.
Making the whales earn more at the expense of everyone else is not going to make Steem get adopted, it is going to turn it into a graveyard... or at most, a low quality blogging platform.
More, since many people I was following are posting less and less, I'll probably get to a point where I don't need any more Steem to support others... so I'll probably starting to cash out, for the first time ever.
You echo the feelings of others who may have grown largely organically and now seriously considering powering down. Thing is, one can power down without immediately selling - can park those funds in tokens such as MAPR and then cash out if and when STEEM prices come off the floor.
But, yes, one week later and I see activity continuing to fall.
Great explanation .. well done
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I really hope the people in power read comments. Tough to decide to power down and get out now when you never have, but it seems like the only responsible thing to do.
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I feel your dilemma. Perhaps find that new model steem requires a new model of engagement to thrive. Now almost 2 years since I figured on splitting my social and my earnings into two different approaches with different aims and outcomes.
Great 'wordy' simple explanation @rycharde. :)
Now, I guess it's just matter of light a good cigar, crank the music volume up and relax lying in our hammock waiting for the upvotes and curation rewards rain all over our backyard.
After all, today is already a weekend!!
Cheers!!
Well, thanks for the effort you put into this @rychard . But here's the thing, disgruntled or not. I've had a dozen people try to tell me and others about the positive move this hard fork has been, and that without this move, Steem or at least steemit was doomed to fall to nothing, which would essentially be the end of the game. So that's really the bottom line, that's what we are talking about here - the very survival of this platform and the currency it runs on.
Aside from all the figures the graphs and positivity - or wishful thinking as some view it - we have to remember the mission statement of steemit at it's inception, which was:
'a social blockchain that grows communities and makes revenue streams possible for users by rewarding them for sharing content'.
And so I think it is fair to say, and should be admitted, that this is no longer the mission of this platform, for whatever reason, at least with respect to the vast majority of users. Steemit has changed for the sake of it's own survival - I'm not saying that's a bad thing, or carried out with negative intentions, but it can't be passed off as anything else. It's not so much a strategic move to improve the platform, it's a straw clutching exercise because of the dire situation Steemit has found itself in - which is that of failure.
All the sureties in the world wont change the unpredictable nature of both the platform the currency and the decisions pertinent to the hard fork. It could indeed save the currency/platform. Equally, it could kill it stone dead. Yes, I can assure you that may well happen, and we will never know if it would have survived without the hard fork.
It's no longer about good content or bad content, it's not for the majority of users about content at all - it's about survival. Steemit will have to change what it is to survive, and if that means a platform full of whales, then so be it. If it becomes no more than a currency exchange platform that's fine. Only time will tell of course, but I for one am a bit fed up with people suggesting this is a positive well considered move on behalf of its user base. It's not that, and there is no way to dress it up as that. You cant make a silk purse out of a sows ear so to speak.
Don't misunderstand me, it is what it is, and it must become what it must become to survive. But enough of the pretence. I'm of course a minnow of the lowest order, but if I need to get off this platform to make way for whales, then I'm fine with that. I'm not in the currency market, and I have no money to invest and even if I did, circumstances would dictate that Steem would be one of the last places I would choose to put my hard earned cash just now.
So anyway, the very best of luck to the Steemit platform and its currency and it's users. I will of course keep following its progress, but it would be nice to see a little honesty and plain speaking in amongst all the nonsense. And by nonsense I'm not referring to your blog here @rychard, your input was most informative. I am of course generalising.
You believe them?
You may find this post prophetic.
But you are right, and I have rarely seen that articulated - steem has failed in its primary objective.
That's very simple and stating it would clear the air of any pretence that it is being "improved" - it isn't, it is being fattened for the few by centralising their control. What they are saving is not the blockchain (which is not human and has no POV) but their future profits.
Thing is, its primary objective is still an open and interesting question in blockchain economics - but one that will be solved by others.
Indeed @rychard, well put.