So I've been thinking about this for a little while. It's kind of crazy that many in the community here on Steemit are very confused and very frustrated about the upcoming changes. In case you haven't heard, one of the main talking points about the changes coming this Tuesday is in regards to voting, and vote power.
Here's a basic breakdown of voting in case you really don't understand it, like I did until I read a ton of posts.
Voting information and your voting power
It basically boils down to this (as I understand it). Currently voting on Steemit is geared towards about 20 votes per day. Your voting power diminishes slightly every time you vote. You start at 100% voting power, and every vote you cast diminishes that power a bit, but over a set time period that power automatically regenerates. Wondering what your voting power is at? Check out this amazing tool to see, it's called Steemd. Just go to www.steemd.com/@(insert your Steemit username here) and a page will pop up with all your Steemit stats, including who you voted for, who voted for you, comments, voting power, etc. You will see your current voting power in the left hand side box, the 16th line down from the top.
The current state and the coming change
So now that you (hopefully) understand a bit more about how voting and voting power works, lets talk about the current situation and the coming changes. Currently, as was stated, voting power is geared towards about 20 votes per day to get your voting power all used up. The coming change will drop that 20 votes per day to use up your voting power down to 5 votes per day. What this means on the face of it is that after you cast just five votes, your remaining votes will be basically useless, they wont generate any rewards for the one you vote for.
Why this change is scary to many
For many minnows, this, again on the face of it, seems like it wont make much difference. If your vote doesn't generate any income for those you vote for, and if you don't get any whale votes on your posts anyhow, then what does it matter? Well, for those who do receive whale votes on their posts, this is scary because if a whale can only vote 5 times a day, how likely is it that they will see and vote for your post before their voting power is all used up? It's 4 times less likely, and that sucks.
You may have noticed the vote power slider
So here's what I think is where this new change potentially actually will be ok. If users are able to adjust their voting power on a per vote basis, which we now are, then all a whale has to do is adjust their voting power down to a percentage where each vote they cast is still worth the same amount as it was before. Let's break it down: The current situation is 20 votes at 100%, the change will be 5 votes at 100%, but now you can adjust your vote power, so if you adjust your vote power to 50% per vote, you can cast 10 powerful votes to use up your voting power. Alternatively you could cast 20 votes at 25% per vote, and unless my maths are terrible (which they are, so please feel free to correct me) that should equal out to the same voting power as 20 100% votes under the current situation. Am I on or way off about this? As a side note, this question in itself is exactly why so many people are upset about this change, we should not have to ask this, it should be clear.
Why I think this change could be very good for minnows
Let's think about this for a second. We can now control our voting power on a per vote basis. Currently we haven't seen a change in voting trends because we are still under the same 20 vote goal. However, once we switch to the 5 vote goal, and again, correct me if I am off on this, but once we switch to the 5 vote goal, a minnow's 100% vote will count for 4 times more than it would have currently. What that means for minnows is that they might start to actually make a difference, if they choose to.
With this change, minnows could choose to be much more selective in who they choose to vote for, and they would have some incentive, because if their votes now count for something they might start making some curation rewards. Minnows, if they are understand this new change, could potentially start making a difference by being very selective and only casting 5 full power votes per day for content they really think is worth it.
It might backfire
Like I stated a few times, I may be completely off on all of this, but I also have thought of a way this could completely backfire as well. People may initially not understand what is happening, that has a tendency to turn people off. If it's too complicated it might be intimidating to possible new users, it might be too confusing for them to bother with.
Well, those are my thoughts. I put this post together as much to ask questions and gain some info as I did to put my thoughts out there, so please please feel free to correct, comment, inform me etc. I really want to hear your comments, especially if you understand this new change.
Hope you enjoyed my thoughts, and I look forward to hearing yours.
Dexter
Great post. But I couldn't understand the point where you mentioned that "but now you can adjust your vote power, so if you adjust your vote power to 50% per vote, you can cast 10 powerful votes to use up your voting power" Is this included in upcoming change as well..? Or it still exists with 20 votes per day and 100%.. How can we adjust our voting power ?
@miserableoracle do you not have the vote slider? When I click to vote a little percentage slider bar pops up which allows me to adjust the power of my vote. I thought this was a universal thing, it showed up for me a few days ago. That is the adjustable vote power I was talking about
Interesting. I never saw that.. Although Steemd showed me the percentage when someone upvoted a comment or post I authored but I never got to understand that.. I still don't get that slider thingy while I cast the vote. Neither I understand if my vote is valuable or not, because I don't possess that much steem power yet I guess...
Just keep going at it, eventually you will start to understand like me. I was a super noob joining Steemit but I finally feel like I am getting a bit of an understanding about it now.
Indeed.. I just saw an overview of upcoming hardfork through steemd.. According to them, they are adjusting the voting counts from 40 to 5.. As far as I understood, the voting was limited to 20 per day otherwise voting penalty will be implicated. Oh well, I will read github more to understand what exactly is going on, may be create a post outlining a few important changes and will ask questions there.. what do you suggest on that ?
So I just went ahead and authored a post about the upcoming changes..
Here it is..
https://steemit.com/steemit/@miserableoracle/steemit-hardfork-is-scheduled-in-approx-30-hours-here-are-some-updates-and-the-questions-i-have-about-it-a-little-detailed
Let me know your thoughts about it.. :)
I really don't have vote slider, when I vote, it just vote without any pop-up :/
Maybe it has to do with rep? I seemed to notice the slider come up when I hit rep 55 maybe? Or maybe it was just something that they put out to some users first and will put out to everyone later?
it only shows up if you have a certain amount of steem power.
Ah I see, thanks for clearing that up @anarchyhasnogods :)
yeah it raises the maximum of a vote but doesn't decrease what your total vote power is worth. I like that idea a lot actually.
I've seen a lot of people asking about the slider, it only appears once you hit a certain amount of steem power.
Thanks so much for that @anarchyhasnogods, do you mind if I ask what the limit is? I'm guessing maybe 350 since that's about where I think I noticed mine appear.
I'd like to know for sure if minnow vote value increases 4X after the change. I wouldn't mind voting a bit less if it meant that just a few votes could make a bit of a difference in the value of a post I like.
Yeah, it could make a really big difference, and like I said, it could be good for minnows if you think about it.
voted 100% with my 330SP...
I think that this change is very good because it is increasing the total volume of good posts getting prominence, widening the subject matter getting pushed higher up, and, ultimately, allowing a more diverse community to develop.
Thanks for the vote @l0k1, I really hope it's going to be good. A lot of people seem pretty freaked out by it, including myself, because we haven't had a full explanation of how these changes will affect things. I hope I'm right and it ends up being a good thing though!
I wouldn't worry too much. It happens to be an interesting fact that the collective pool, the market cap, and engagement of users, as measured by post count, is very closely correlated. Therefore, the changes they are making, are aimed at making this a place that more people want to stay, than leave.
+1 vote for you because
have no idea what a 'minnow' is but don't worry as it seems like a non word i'll never need or care to know what it is ha ha.
Thanks @kolin.evans, I appreciate it and I'm glad I could help you out understand voting a bit more. It's super confusing and took me forever to figure it out, plus Steemd is really great, it's helped me a lot.
Here.. This article may help
https://steemit.com/steemit/@positivesteem/of-minnows-dolphins-and-whales
And this one seems accurate
https://steemd.com/distribution
A minnow is a little fish. Early on, for some reason, the food chain of marine environments, and its occupants, became terms to refer to the various tiers of shareholding size of users in Steem.