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thanks! ill follow up here after they hit payout and let you know what happened.

@sparkesy43 So, i got paid on the first comment; 0.005 SBD, 0.002 STEEM and 0.006 STEEM POWER... but it doesn't look like you got anything (please correct me if I'm wrong)... if it was a 0.028 upvote, and cost me 0.014... I also lost 0.001 on this... I also missed self-upvoting this one- that would have bumped it into profit range

Nah, I don't think I did. Depending on the steem price the initial voter sometimes gets a very small curation reward, but the main aim is to ensure that the person who made the initial comment that got the vote is rewarded and stopping that first from being turned to dust.

As for the exact maths behind it all, @davemccoy and @danielsaori are your guys. I'm just a fan of the emd product