I don't do these often as there is really no point. I keep my nodes up and running and producing blocks. The job of a witness. With hard fork 21 rapidly approaching I figured it was time to do one.
I don't agree with HF21 at all. Rewarding people for downvoting anything they feel like is a terrible idea. Things are bad enough with the existing blacklists, downvote trails, and people trying to drive whoever they don't like off of steem/steemit. Adding rewards to that mix will be a huge disaster. I've been around long enough (over 3 years) to know that anything that can be abused will be abused. There will be downvote trails going after anyone they feel not worthy. There will be bid to downvote bots just like there are bid bots now. Whales will be able to flag posts with payouts to put money back into the reward pool and upvote their own content to make even more money. There will be wars between bid bots and downvote bots. Some say this is a good thing. I strongly disagree. It's the average user that will be caught in the crossfire. Whales will make money either way. The little guy will become disgusted with the downvotes and leave. It's already happened. Many have left due to the downvote over disagreement of rewards. In the beginning that was not a valid reason to flag (it wasn't called downvoting) a user. Downvotes were used for real abuse like spam. Flagging someone just because you didn't like their payout would get you flagged and maybe even sent to negative rep. When some whales decided to experiment with the reward pool by downvoting high payouts they disagreed with people were driven off. The same will happen with HF21 but the casualties will be much higher.
All that said I have upgraded to HF21. Not like I have a choice. It's either upgrade or quit being a witness. POS means only the top get to decide. Doesn't matter what everyone else thinks. They will do what they want. That is what is wrong with steem and HF21 will not change that. Nothing will. Top witnesses will never support a change that would take power away from them and the whales that support them. If steem/steemit fails that will be the reason.
When HF21 activates all I can say is good luck. Steem is going to need it.
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