I have seen a lot of speculation that seem to vastly underestimate the impact of moving from quadratic to linear. This is a gargantuan difference. Of course, there's nothing quite like a good old visualization. I have taken the blue whale vs man comparison from Wiki and shrunk them down by the square root of area.
As you can imagine, that mighty blue whale is our current whale. So what does the post-HF19 whale look like, in comparison? Look at that tiny speck in the bottom right. Yes, that's what a square root of a large object looks like. I have also shrunk the man (dolphin) accordingly.
Consider in this example that we have a whale with 400,000 SP and a dolphin with 40,000 SP. Assume that the man here is the dolphin.
The whale gets really, really small. The dolphin gets way smaller too, but much less so. I've left the man on top of the whale, had they shrunk a similar amount - it's barely visible. The man under the small whale is what a post-HF19 dolphin will look like. So that's how much dolphins grow with HF19.
Currently, the whale is 50 times bigger than the dolphin. After HF19, the whale will only be 7 times as large.
It gets even more extreme when it comes to minnows. Today, a minnow with 400 SP sees a vote that is a million times smaller than the whale. After HF19, the minnow vote would have 1,000 times greater impact. No, not 2x, not 10x, a full 1,000x relative to a whale.
Of course, in this example, the whole ocean has shrunk quadratically too, but hey - that'd have taken away the impact :) An important point to remember is that historically, few whales have been active curators. So, half a dozen whales or so could dominate 95% of the reward pool with less than 10% total stake before the experiment. Post the experiment, a hundred dolphins could dominate 90% of the reward pool. No longer. Whales, minnows and dolphins now have to play fair and square.
I have no idea what the final result would turn out like, but one can simulate it by looking at the current voting patterns. I'll leave that up to the developers out there, you just need to replace Vshares with Rshares and calculating proportions thereof.
Once again, do not underestimate this change - minnows will gain orders of magnitudes worth influence. One thing is sure, we'll see a very long tail, where the top earning posts earn dramatically less, and thousands of lower paying posts gain value. One challenge is minnows may continue piling on the votes on Trending posts, particularly casual curators*, but once Subcommunities are launched, I'm optimistic the reward pool will be distributed far and wide.
Bring on HF19 - this is the most exciting change in my 11 months on Steem!
*This is the increase in voting power cost by 4x, so those who curate less than 20 posts per day gain a lot more influence.
Bonus: Here's a quick and dirty estimation that compares apples to apples how a dolphin will gain relative to a whale. HF18 top, HF19 bottom.
superb write up!
Holy crap, this could be ground shaking for the community. I love the idea!
That's me without coffee. ;)
That's me with too much coffee.
😂😂😂😂
I love the gif's. Where do you get them @hilarski?
I know, he has a keen eye for gifs!
Indeed! As a minnow I glad to know about this! :)
I was reminded of this when I saw the whale scales.
cute :)
@liberosist
that sounds positively promising!
let's hope they realize this is the perfect timing to vote wisely
curious about the subcommunities
That's me with coffee... and Bailey's
Very intersting only time will tell, I'm sure we'll start seeing patterns forming. Overall if it can empower minnows more I think it's great but as long as they are voting on valued content but then ofcourse that's a whole other topic. Thanks for the visual, did help!
I certainly hope that minnows curate responsibly!
Whales are small enough to take selfies with!
Bringing in the love
a bigger version of the whale vs dolphin / scuba diver AFTER the FH would have helped... In the given image they are both so small that their proportion isn't clear at all!
still, great post! thanks!
Thanks for the suggestion, made an edit to add that in :)
cool! always happy when my 2 cents are appreciated ;)
your 2 cents made way more than 2 cents
what a world we live in
haha, yeah... what a time to be alive ;)
Don't you think that after HF19 people will have more incentive to vote for themselves? Why nobody paying attention to this?
There's nothing wrong with self-voting. Indeed, the default for new posts is to upvote. The problem is when whales collusively vote and take out large amounts of the reward pool. Which, by the way, is much less significant an issue with HF19.
There is one possible attack vector where someone can register thousands of accounts and then vote. But that'll also be easily discovered.
More of an issue is the voting power change. It is indeed true that those who only vote on themselves will stand to gain far more influence. That said, such people are less likely to be voted by other people in the community as they won't be as engaged.
You do have an interesting view on this. I'm just worried that the community jumped to this kind of decision too quickly. I would consider the different curve not the flat one.
Don't you find strange that witnesses is not enough active about this matter? I would vote for witness who opposed to liniar curve to see more thoughtful approach.
Actually, this has been debated for several months. If you recall, nearly 4 months ago, a near-linear curve was added to HF18 but was removed because it needed more deliberation. Finally, witnesses came to a consensus for HF19 on a linear non-curve.
As I understand it if you approach it selfishly like this then your posts are probably not going to be very good, which means your ability to profit from such an approach will be significantly limited. A super massive beast of a whale might profit a lot from upvoting their own posts, and people would flock to them resentfully so they can gain some share in it, but they're actually limiting their own profits by doing so. We don't care if someones rich, we'll happily make them even richer, what we hate is the extent we think someones both rich and selfish. So if a moon-sized whale wants to profit only with selfishness, they're really only hurting their profits. What if being lovable was more profitable?
(Why good leaders make you feel safe | Simon Sinek )
If your posts are good AND you only voted for yourself, well then everyone still wins and it really doesn't all that matter if you only voted for yourself. But obviously it's far more likely that someone who's trying to approach it this way and just "pay themselves" to earn rather than developing an audience and posting good content to earn, is probably not going to be that concerned with the quality of their posts.
If you only vote for yourself then you also miss out on profiting by giving your vote to another and sharing the pot. Even if really big whales were to post this way people would piggyback off them, it would be a rather unsightly relationship of teeny tiny parasites attaching to self-centred blubberous mass, but it would still nevertheless be a symbiotic one. Am I missing something?
It seems to me the best way to design a system like a social network is to model it very much on nature, where even the most ugly and to us the most monstrous, do serve a purpose and play a very important part in the system.
Steemit seems to have done a wonderful job in that regard, I don't know how consciously this was, to kind of build a system where it literally insensitivities selfishness to express itself in the most productive positive forms; selflessness, empathy and helping others, while heavily disincentiving self-centredness money making approaches, impoliteness, trolling. But to my mind the most interesting things is that if someone does play selfish with their votes in spite of the disincentives, they don't cause the system to topple over because it causes a natural counter reaction to even it out. I don't know, I just think that's really clever and particularly special.
(Simon Sinek: Why Leaders Eat Last)
One actually greatly reduces their curation rewards by voting on themself, like massively. In the end self voting typically results in less money earned. Self voters are great, that means more curation rewards for me :)
I have been seeing so much concern over the HF19 and this post right here is what I was looking for. You broke this down brilliant and I am now really confident in the up coming change. Thank you for that. I may do a follow up post on my own understanding level to help encourage others I have brought over who are unsure of this change. big thanks again
The gifs really do make it an easy layman's explanation. I had an understanding of the impact, but not the actual degree of it till seeing this. I will be sharing this post in Discord for sure!
Quadratics are weird!
I didn't know it was as much as 4x.
Wow, can't wait to test it out now.
The main thing I'm waiting to see is the updated reduced amount of votes you can make per day as I upvote quite a bit at the moment.
I see that your voting power is 99%. Don't worry about it - you will gain influence if you vote under 20 times a day. My VP is 50%, I will stand to lose a lot! Happy to cede influence to minnows though :)
Hardfork Robin Hood - style
Does anyone know how HF19 will affect votes in progress? What I mean is, will a post created before HF19 but payout out afterwards experience a radical change to payout?
Check out @timcliff's comprehensive post on the matter https://steemit.com/hf19/@timcliff/potential-payout-changes-with-hf-19-launch
Darn, this changes the entire game.
This is very welcome for the newbies. Most of their votes sink in the deep dark vaults of Steemit because apparently there is a 0.001 SP threshold in order ro receive a curation reward.
I can telll you that even while voting just right by voting as one of the first on a popular article and after 30 minutes, can still get you below the 0.001 SP threshold. Not very encouraging.
All of this will change with HF19 :) However, do note that voting on posts that already has a large payout won't get you any rewards. Instead, look for undiscovered posts and try to promote them for maximum curation rewards.
Thanks for the tip!
That's the best explanation I've read on the subject for us non programmers and developers anyway!
I'm not a developer myself :)
Thank you for sharing/taking the time @liberosist. I came to steemit a month ago and I think I came at a time where it feels like a great shift is happening. A lot of things are still pretty greek to me but I can feel this excitement and intrepidation in the air. I am determined to stick this place out for a year and see what can come of it. My hopes are high for steemit, even though sometimes I get worried about these types of things. Mostly because I don't quite understand them fully yet. The fear of the unknown and all that jazz haha.
That's the best way to do it! Be patient, keep at it.
Thank you for this. I am excited to see how it works out too. - beleaguered minnow
Beleaguered no more! Seriously though, this is not going to suddenly hand over the platform to minnows, but it will make it a dramatically better.
But if we see it in another way, it is just that whales have more voting power and control the curation rewards, so they accumulate their SP ... With this update have large amounts of SP would be considerably less important .. And as we may know, it is the large amounts of SP that exist among all Steemit accounts that support the value of the SBD. In other words, could this update make the value of the SBD fall sharply?
I'm not sure if there's something I'm not seeing that prevents that, I would like someone to clarify that doubt.
I have seen this argument before, but consider whale power ups as a Giffen good. Currently, it would take an investment of at least $100,000 to make the most of curation rewards. Very few can afford to risk that kind amount on a nascent platform. On the other hand, today, the average person could invest $1,000 and see little to no impact from their votes. After HF19, their impact will go up dramatically. This should drive greater demand for SP investments of hundreds to thousands of dollars - the kind of money most people have.
So, it's the case of you may lose a dozen $100,000 power ups, but you could gain a million $100 power ups. Wise whales will hold on to their investment and see the $ value go up.
Also, SBD has nothing to do with whales, it's an independent market of its own.
Thanks for the clarification ... I see, thinking that way then this update will bring good things to steemit
sounds like my plan exactly, I was indeed thinking about putting in 1000 USD, if I thought there is a reasonable ROI. This seems to help out enourmously!
Mind you, don't expect much ROI on curation rewards, but see it as a bonus on top of being an investment as Steem grows and the price increases.
Good point, I meant more in vote weight and visibility. The whale system is inevitable in the beginning, and works well with a relatively small content pool
But with a larger group of users, it becomes impossible for them to be the sole finders of quality posts, so it is important that minnows' have more weight in pushing good content upwards. If not, the whole system becomes a lottery at best and a nepotism driven system at worst...
In future forks I hope to see the amount of comments on a post also impact a post's value.
If not, it is still too easy to manipulate upvoting with cheesy contests and other shenanigans that in the end don't actually generate value for Steemit.com as a platform.
What you are saying is very interesting, even though I'm fairly new and don't really fully understand it.
I'd love to hear more about becoming a "whale" and how that is done?
If you or anyone would like to provide some guidance or direction, that would be awesome. Or, even point me in the direction of where to find the info?
A very thought provoking post. Thank you.
If you're new, just pretend none of this ever happened :) Enjoy posting and curation from June 20th.
As for how to become a whale - pretty much buy up a million dollars worth of Steem and power up. You could also attempt to make enough post and curation rewards, but at this point with growing blogging competition, it could take years of not decades going that route. Good news is even if you're a minnow, your account could be worth thousands of dollars and that's infinitely more than Facebook or Reddit would pay you.
Thanks for the advice!
I've got a bunch of posts and I'm attracting followers slowly.
I'll keep doing what I'm doing - providing value and hope it comes back.
Over time, I'm sure it will.
It amazing to see some posts get several hundred dollars in payout though. That would be nice. :)
I'm following you as well.
That's funny! 😂😂😂... I'm new for 12 days and I know all the drama already 😬
Like I told someone else, pretend that none of this ever happened :)
It's going to be really interesting to see how this all plays out!
Can't wait to see where we stand end of June! It'll be a major shake up of the community, those who ragequit will leave the community in stronger hands.
I certainly believe that this update is a step in the right direction, but at the same time, things like this almost always have some unforeseen consequences. Either way, I'm looking forward to see if I notice any difference from the perspective of somebody who's only been here for about a week.
Of course, there are always unforeseen consequences. They have taken a lot of time to get this done, I'm sure they have done their due diligence. I'm prepared for something going wrong, but it will almost certainly be a short term issue.
sinking down in my minnow chair in the back
me too.
This is massive. And a little bit scary actually....
Let's see if it gets to be as good as most of us have hoped or if this was too big a move. Otherwise we might have to rethink how we view the reward curve. Maybe it should be neither just exponential or flat.
Personally, I tend to be quite risk averse. However, I feel this is a change that should have been made a long time ago. If there are unforeseen consequences, we'll deal with it. I don't support the voting power change, but we shall see how that turns out.
It seems for me personally that the voting power could be increased a little, but you might be right about this change.
I see your VP is 50% now. Gotta start considering that now :)
Yep.. I don't wanna have to put a lid on my voting :( I enjoy upvoting too much :p
But of course this is going to matter far more for larger accounts, than it will with my tiny purse so far =)
Same here :) Your votes will matter a lot more in the future! But yes, a whale will still have hundreds of time the influence. A lot better than million times :)
As a minnow this is awesome news! More power to the little guys just like it should be but i fear it will affect the steem valuation because in thenpast whales have been stockpiling it and inturn raising it value if that's not the case the price might plummet.
Not really, this will make the platform much more appealing to the mainstream. As a result, the price should go up by a lot, as millions of Average Joes and Janes can see an impact of their $1,000 investment. A majority of whales weren't actively curating, so the few whales who were may want to exit the platform. Or they could be wise and see their $ value of their stake go up, even if their stake itself goes by a lower amount. You may not know, but there has been a pact between the whales to not vote and let dolphins and minnows do so over the last couple of months. Doesn't seem to have affected the price :)
This is the best thing ever.
The dolphins and whales have played enough.
It is now time for the minnows :D
Like in all things in life, change is good for most people, but usually never good for all people.
It will be interesting to watch how the dynamics change in Steemit over the next few weeks and months.
In this case, the change may end up being good for everyone. The rise in demand for Steem (and price) could easily offset the drop in curation rewards for whales. Let's see how it turns out.
I will still curate, I won't change my habits as a minnow. Sometimes it's good to just comment on SOMETHING good!
Sure, but think twice before voting on something that is Trending or already has a large payout :)
I like that you added the #circlejerk tag.
Just having some fun :)
This post received a 49% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @thecryptofiend! For more information, click here!
Great article. Thanks for the research. Us minnows need all the help we can get!
I'm hearing tons of opinions of the hardfork 19, some are saying it's worse as people will get less votes and the whales will circle jerk whales and dolphins will do the same while all the Minnows just watch 😂😂😂😂😂
I think this clarifies what's going on for me. I'm a very visual learner, so your example helps.
This is so awesome news. Thank you for your post, I think visualized way is so much better.
I feel like peasant how small I am hahaha
Excellent explanation, thank you!
Hmnnn...
we'll see how it turns out.
Great post mate!
When is the Hard fork coming???
It is scheduled for Tue, 20 Jun 2017 at 15:00:00 UTC
Thank you! Will this cause any disruptions?
No, no disruptions, but all pending payouts will change though.
It is expected all posts that have received a lot of larger votes will go down in value, and posts with lots of smaller sized votes will go up in value.
Thank you for all the info 😊
I look forward to HF 19... Power to the minnows! :)
Useful post ... thank you
plz follow me i am new here @superlover ty )))
This is exciting time to be onboard. Nice comparsion!
Boosting us minnows. :) Hf 19 is awesome.
Best explantion i've seen about the upcoming changes.
Nice post
Thanks, your story has been the easiest to understand for me so far on this subject. And yes the visuals might have something to do with it :-)
Great way to describe the change. I thrive on visuals so this really helped!
Excellent perspective and thanks for visualizing it for (some of) us. Exciting times!
I can't wait to see how this affects us minnows. So minnow votes will be much more powerful?
Indeed, and especially if you vote less than 10-20 times a day.
This could be fantastic...
What a great visualization, you made it much easier to understand and explain too.
I wish this was implimented when I was caught in the whales flag wars whenI first came here. My early times on steemit was bloody. So glad to see this happening!!
meep