Demystifying HIVE is a series of bite-sized posts targeted to new Hivians and for people outside of the HIVE blockchain.
The purpose is to try and break down the many complexities of the HIVE blockchain, its acronyms, and the current facts and falsehoods associated with it.
I say ‘current’ because within 6 months some of the things I say may well no longer be relevant. It is an evolving experiment, and little remains static.
It's little wonder that the retention rate is abysmal given the huge learning curve a new person needs to endure.
Without some guidance, most give up quite soon deeming it bewildering and over-complicated.
Other article's in this series:
Demystifying HIVE: Expectations
Demystifying HIVE: The Police Force
Demystifying HIVE: What are Witnesses?
So you joined HIVE, you created a few posts that have been largely ignored and you are about to give up?
Don’t you think I have NOT been in your situation? I can almost hear the murmurings, 'it's OK him saying this shit when he gets over $10 per post'.
I'm not here today to show you how to get more from your posts (that will be another day) but to gain the most from curation.
What is Curation?
There are TWO ways to earn HIVE. One is to produce content and the other to consume it.
We will talk today about consuming content, that is… reading stuff just like what you are reading now.
If you like it, then vote for it. If you are a new user and have little HIVE, vote 100% else you will likely get nothing back in terms of curation rewards.
...'if you are new to HIVE then it's unlikely you will have much Hive Power (HP). When clicking the heart to vote, use the slider and slide to 100% if you want any chance of earning a curation reward'...
You get rewarded by voting on the work of other content creators on HIVE. The amount of HIVE you will receive depends on several criteria.
- How much HIVE Power you have
- The weight of your vote
- At what point in time you vote
Your HP (HIVE Power) directly dictates the level of HP you will receive when the post or comment pays out in conjunction with the other two aspects.
...'more HIVE Power means more curation rewards. HIVE is an effective investment platform if you look at it this way'...
Curation rewards are paid in HP.
I stated earlier if you have a small amount of HP then make sure your votes are always at 100% weight. You get 10 x 100% votes per day if you want to ensure your VP (Voting Power rejuvenates back to 100% in the next 24 hours).
...'keeping your VP between 80% - 95% is a good idea, mine is a little low right now'...
If you want to vote continuously, you can but each vote will have less value than the previous and this percentage statistic (above) will go down and down. This is to stop voting abuse.
This brings me to the final point and most confusing off all topic, ‘At what point in time you vote’
The Voting Window
Hopefully, the voting window will be gone in the next hard fork (HF25). There have been murmurings that it is on the way out, and I say good riddance. It is highly confusing and I always think simple is better.
When a post is created there is what you call a 5-minute window to get the most curation squeezed out of a post.
...'this post is only 3 minutes old. If I was to manually curate it, I would likely pause until it is 5 minutes old as it has zero votes. It should not have to be this way'...
Explaining this is not simple due to 'The Curve' which is another bugbear of mine but to try and simplify things, if you vote at 100% and also know your full vote is worth 20c, then when you vote dictates how much of a chunk of the curation reward you will receive.
- After 5 minutes you will get 100% (20c weight)
- Between 4 and 5 minutes, you will get 80% (16c weight)
- Between 3 and 4 minutes, you will get 60% (12c weight)
- Between 2 and 3 minutes, you will get 40% (8c weight)
- Between 1 and 2 minutes, you will get 20% (4c weight)
The above example is highly simplistic and you might be thinking (I will vote after 5 minutes to get my full weight), but other factors are in play.
Confused? I would be, and this is the reason I loathe this vote window bullshit. It encourages you, the voter to try and vote earlier to gain more curation rewards... but not too early.
If you truly want large curation, find a fantastic post that has LESS than 4 votes, give it a full vote, re-hive it and hope that a curation group jumps on it and it moons to $20+.
...'LEO Finance has eliminated both the Vote Window and the Curve. You can vote when you like and your curation will be based off your stake size ONLY'...
This is not ideal, and if the 'vote window' gets axed (like it has on STEM and LEO), you can vote when you want and your curation reward is relative to your HP.
If that’s sentence makes no sense let me break it down.
Let’s imagine I vote on a post at 100% VP. In 7 days I will gain a curation reward. I have 156,884.29 HP available to me.
...'curation rewards can be viewed on https://hivetasks.com/@slobberchops. Replace my handle with yours'...
In our imaginary example, another curator (voter) votes the same post at exactly the same time has 15,688.429 HP available. That is 10% of my stake.
Both accounts were are 100% VP at the time of voting.
In 7 days, I get 3 HP in rewards; the other guy will get 0.3 HP in rewards.
Again this is a simplistic view of things as nothing on HIVE is simple, but I hope that explains things a little.
The Auto-Voters
There are free services you can use on HIVE to automate voting and make use of this ridiculous voting window.
...'hive.vote can be found at... yes.., hive.vote and is a popular auto-voter'...
I use hive.vote and have a list of 30 or so authors to which I issue votes too. Hive.vote is configurable, and you can enter the weight of your vote, and the time elapsed to try and play the curation game.
rewarding.app is a more powerful and configurable tool, but clunkier to use with less thought being put into the user interface.
If you decide to use either of these to gain more curation rewards, leave some of your voting power to manually curate. I do some every day and feel it’s important.
...'leave some spare VP for manual curation, you might miss something good, and meeting new potential good authors is good for HIVE growth'...
If you use 100% of your VP daily, then how can HIVE grow? New people appear and it's a case of, 'oh shit, I have no VP left to vote this award-winning post'.
Voting Power
You will have heard this term a lot, especially if you are reading this. VP starts at 100% and can go down to near zero if you abuse it.
It rejuvenates at around 2% per hour and will make it's way back up to 100%. If you leave it at 100% then you are wasting it resulting in a poorer APR.
...'hivestats.io is another tool to check your VP. This unnamed person is a purely passive voter and has a great APR yield. Don't be tempted to use these auto-voters 100% of the time'...
Make the most of your VP, and make sure it’s between 80% - 95% for full efficiency
I rarely allow mine to breach 80%, and if it does then I do no manual curation until it hits around 85%.
Some may say, ‘I have no time to manually curate’,- and that’s fine. You just read about Auto-Voters. Voting on something is better than wasting your VP.
Posts vs Comments
Did you know that when you comment on a post, you are creating your own post? The comment, just like a post is susceptible to that 'voting window' and votes on the comment will be paid just like a post, (50% HP / 50% HBD).
...'this is a comment reward though it says 'Author Reward', if you click the Permalink you can see which comment it hails from'...
If you cannot muster up a 2c vote then don't vote on comments (unless you have other reasons to do so). Anything less than 2c is considered a 'dust vote' and won't pay out anything.
If you comment, and someone up-votes your comment to a value above the dust-threshold (like ME), then you will gain an author reward in 7 days.
I ALWAYS vote on comments, that are genuine and not made of pure bullshit, spam, or say ‘nice post’. Othewise they may face the wrath of the Commentphant. Thanks @katharsisdrill for the humour, image and originality.
The Return on HIVE and Voting
Ever dabbled in the stock market? I have and dividends on a good company can get up to 5%. If they give out too much, the cash flow goes to shit, the price of the stock falls and then they cut the dividend.
HIVE gives a great return, just for voting. Mine is sitting at over 11%. Try and get that on the stock market.
...'your curation APR is relative to your voting habits. This unnamed person is not using his voting correctly and gains a crap return. It's your choice to get your rewards or not'...
If you have 66HP powered up, then you will get an 11% return on your 66HP. That’s over 6.6HP in a year.
Peanuts you say; Well what the fuck do you expect, free dinners?
I may be stupid enough to have a large stake of HIVE and most of it powered up but I reap the rewards of 40 - 50HP EVERY DAY.
...I think I do OK at between 11% and 12%. My curation is quite consistent, and don't look at the USD total. It's irrelevant unless you are planning to sell'...
That's money while I sleep. HIVE is a tangible currency, not monopoly money. It can be traded for BTC..., you know that 'thing' that is over $19,000 for ONE.
BTC can be traded for Euros, for Pounds, for Dollars.
Even if you can't write OR can't blog, you can invest. I like my 11% semi-passive return and if you have read any of what I have just written you can also have 11%..., just like me.
References Used:
https://hivetasks.com/
https://hivestats.io/
https://hive.vote/
https://rewarding.app/
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If you found this article so invigorating that you are now a positively googly-eyed, drooling lunatic with dripping saliva or even if you liked it just a bit, then please upvote, comment, rehive, engage me or all of these things.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Where the fuck is my sandwich!
If there was no bad language, you would know it was some doppelganger writing this and not really me. No fucking sandwiches, you have to pay!
Pay for a sandwich?! But all I get in return is... shit!
Which is why staking Hive in order to get paid for enjoying content is a great deal and everyone should do it.
Veggie scotch egg for me please :) Apparently that would count as a substantial meal.
Wow, what a great resource for new Hivians like myself! I read the whole 'Demystifying' series, and loved it! This one in particular really helped me. I've wanted to understand voting more since I received my first comments from readers. And I got bits and pieces from people here and there, but sometimes the information was conflicting.
This post explains a lot of the nuances in clear language, and even more helpfully, with visuals!
I'm not very clear on the window or the curve, but it sounds like they may be on their way out, anyway?
Anyway, great series, appreciate you writing it.
Good to hear you got something from it, I try and explain things with a little dark sardonic humour if possible The curve.., we had it, it vanished, it came back, its about to go again. That's 4 years of history. I prefer it gone myself, things are easier to explain then.
The window is also about to go, giving everyone an even shot at curation.
Yes! And that twist of humour adds a lot to the reading experience. Definitely made me chuckle here and there. (Early, "but not too early", lol, what a system.)
One person told me to upvote comments at 10%, another told me to save my RC and don't upvote comments, and your post here says that you "always" upvote sincere comments... if you don't mind me asking, is there a consensus on best practices here?
P.S. No obligation to answer or explain, you've already helped so much, and I'll continue doing my own research either way. Thanks!
You don't have enough VP to generate even a 1c vote on comments or posts. Leave comments alone as you will waste both your VP and RC's. I have plenty so DO upvote them.
Clearest explanation so far. Brilliant, thank you.
I have no idea what to think of it. I have read a lot here, especially the last weeks, and commented a lot. The articles I voted for were all very good. But are there also many small authors who don't get such big rewards?
Am I doing something wrong because of that? I think not. I'm not here to chase money, mourn or anything like that. I'm looking for interesting content and interaction with people who share the same interests. If I were to follow this curation logic, would I still move separately? I simply vote for those I know are regularly voted for. Thanks to Blockchain, it's easy to find out. But what is the effect?
In this sense, I'll probably stay on track with 4% APR.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Here is how a small account is doing.
The small added in table is his position on Asher's Curation and Engagement League, he is in 87 place of top 100 earners. He may have less than 60 HP, but as a percentage he is doing better than a lot of people below him with more HP.
I expect he votes mostly on post, but I did not research that deeply. For the week he only made 87 votes, just a little bit more than ten votes a day.
It will not be to difficult to move off of the 4% APR if you just change a few habits.
Well, I might have to deal with this topic again. It is not quite clear to me yet.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
If you are not here necessarily for optimization then don't let this bother you. At 3,327.13 HP your full vote will only be 2-3c, and a quick look tells me you are voting too much.
Less votes and more at 100% would be better. The biggest problem I see is that you are comment voting, and you have insufficient VP to make this worthwhile. Those votes will be turned to dust, yielding both you and the prospective author zero.
Don't vote on comments, and you will see that 4.2% figure start to rise.
!ENGAGE 15 - Thank you for meaningful engagement.
Made in Canva
The goal of this project is to "highlight Awesome Content, and growing the Hive ecosystem by rewarding it".
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
ENGAGEtokens.Thanks for this, I am picking up what you put down.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
I don't know the exact ratio. It takes about 50 HP to get a curation reward of 0.001 . Accounts with under 50 HP rarely get rewards. It is silly to tell new users with between 0 and 25 HP about curation rewards, because they won't be seeing curation rewards.
Small accounts only get curation rewards if they front run large upvotes. Even then the curation reward is tiny.
Just go into the wallets of new accounts that did not buy HP. They usually have no curation rewards.
I think it is best to bring up the question of curation rewards under the banner of why new users should buy HIVE POWER.
It was getting too wordy as is, why don't you do something similar? We can never have enough tutorials on HIVE and it's workings.
This is brilliant, four and a quarter years on Steemit and Hive, and I only worked all this out last week. Never before have I seen it properly explained. Great job!
A quick question...
For setting autovotes, do you know which delay works out best, 4 or 5 mins?
Well damn, I was too late then!
I use 4 minutes, but barely ever get in the top curators on @abh12345's weekly posts. I think the people on that chart are 100% auto-voter ones. I do too much manual curation to appear in it.
Curating comments is worthwhile too if you can breach the dust level. This one is your 'post' but as it's 10 hours old and I am the first voter, I will get half of the rewards for the vote I am about to give it.
I read a long time ago that the first 4 votes are the most valuable ones on a post (or a comment) when it comes to curation.
The curation on a comment for me might be peanuts, but it all adds up.
I'm setting up my @gimp account for 100% auto - as I up the delegation the % return looks less for 7 days until it catches up but I think it will do about 16%+
I'm thinking Pulp Fiction now, hehehe...
yes, me too, just re-watched it a few days ago, my all time fav movie
Cool explanation here, I learned something about the 5 minute window. I often vote before the 5 minute window out of annoyance of having to wait but then I see the rewards pile in and FOMO and give it a vote lol. Not efficient but I do 99% manual curation so it sort of works.
Looks like you are doing OK, 11% is decent!
The slider!!! That used to be the first milestone us minnows yearned for back in the old days.
LOL, I remember it was one of my first goals to get 'the slider', and not cheat like those 'busy.org' people did!
Thanks for the post, I wish I read something like this on day one. Most of it has become clear to me over the previous month or so since I joined, but this is very concise and articulate; and I still learned something new
Good to hear, I must be doing something right!
Please forgive me for being a nosey prick, but why does your Leo wallet show only 57 Leo but have a value of $305?
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
My LEO is better than yours? 😉
I think..., it's because I am about to release a delegation of LEO from my @slobberchops.tri account (it's coming back to my main). This is in preparation for a dedicated @slobberchops.leo account I have setup.
The delegation idea didn't work out due to how they add the LEO directly to the delegated one staked. Too much arsing about.
I can see the tribes are going to be a nightmare to explain!
This is excellent for Hive newbies! We need landing pages for articles like this so they don't get lost in the shuffle!
I am making in chaptered so the latest one includes all of them at the top. Hopefully it will help some people. I struggled when I started and there was nothing at all cosine and basic enough to understand.
Thanks for the explanation on the 5 minute window, after 8 months on Hive I still didn't get it. All I knew was "don't vote in the first 4 minutes".
Honestly, I wish Hive just moved to the linear curation rewards Leo is using and dropped all the rest of the system. It makes voting and commenting so much more enjoyable: If I see a comment or article I like, I vote it. No matter if it was made 2 minutes or 5 days ago.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Some people vote comments as a sign of appreciation no matter if the dust vote kicks in or not. We all have our reasons.
Whether Linear will return or not, I don't know. The Curve was added to stop comment abuse, which was terrible at the time. I have already mentioned I would step up to combat this abuse if Linear rewards were returned. It's not difficult to find abusers using a SQL query.
We now have free down-votes and I for one, use them if needed.
Is your real name sod?
You post this and then about an hour later @blocktrades releases the HF roadmap stating they'll be changing the voting window.
Most unfortunate.
But as you say, things can change!
On that note, come on Hive....!
good read, thanks
i still use dustsweeper's services for this :)
Most of my voting is manual, so my curation rewards are not optimal, but I can live with that. I like having control and I do read a lot of posts. I agree the voting window is bollocks as it only affects auto-voting when we need more manual curation. Votes should go where they are deserved and no user is that consistent. I accept that many just don't have the time, but manual curation trails can be another option. I find there is too much to vote on each day, so I have to limit myself.
All good stuff though.
There is too much stuff to see, communities have helped a lot and I use several every day on the lookout for the good stuff. At other times, I am low on VP (like today) and then do little manual voting. We all pick our methods of how we should use it.
Thanks for the explanation about the votes, that 5min threshold has always intrigued me. Although I am relatively new to the platform I always do my manual healing as I like to read and learn new content. Thank you for this publication and for the data I didn't know.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
It's all so complicated, always has been.. that's just the way it is. Good to hear it helped.
It's great to see someone is thinking of new users as well. Not many are wasting time to do tutorials, so thank you for this.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Few of us do think about the newbies, I wish there were 10x the amount of content like this, I could probably learn something then!
I won't stop for sure, there's so much we can pass on.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
...and this was a "simplified version" of Voting Power explanation... :) :)
Great post! jokes aside... it is simplified, but it will be useful for newbies... So, let's promote it a bit more...
Made in Canva
@thisisawesome Moderator
This post is AWESOME!
It will therefore get a manual 100% upvote from @thisisawesome (will be done today), for the Awesome Daily Highlights in category CTPtalk, we give out 1 such vote in that category per day, plus 4 more in other categories, and your post will also be featured in today's Awesome Daily Curation report for more visibility.
The goal of this project is to "highlight Awesome Content, and growing the Hive ecosystem and the CTPtalk tribe by rewarding it".
Source
Thanks! I only just discovered #ctp recently, nice to see another active tribe.
I am pretty bad at curating for rewards, but I still do pretty good. I vote when I read or see a post even if it is three days or more old. I do get some lucky timed votes on stuff I read, but not often. Yet I still am in the 9% range of APR, how someone can only be at 2% is just unbelievable unless they are voting on their own comments and not meeting the $0.020 dust vote level.
I have a morning cycle where I vote and get to a 12 hour recharge point, then I do it all again before bed so that when I wake up I am not sitting at 100%
Some of it is letting the VP meter get to 100%. It's doing nothing there and this is the point I am trying to get across. Your stake is yours, so use it, even of you are using an auto-voter.
I forgot about the people that just don't vote. I know I'll soon be where I need to use one of the auto vote tools, but I am hoping the list I build and maintain will keep me being the one to pick who and when I vote.
And thus the Commentphant was hive-updated... Use this code:
[](https://hive.blog/steemit/@katharsisdrill/some-splendid-advice-on-commenting)Thanks, but it was this bit I was referring too!
Keep Hivin... ?!
Oh yeah.... 😀 No need for big changes!
Fixed. Link, image and all. This is what you should put in the post so you do not link to Stee... that place
[](https://hive.blog/steemit/@katharsisdrill/some-splendid-advice-on-commenting)Much better, updated my post with the 'Hivin'!
Great Post! Keep HIVIN!
Its a very good and infomative posts for new people or just for people who did know this :D
I'm sure you know all or most of this already, there seems to be little resources now for newbies. They are hard fucking work doing these, I tell you!
I knew all of it besides the comment one! Didn't know they had a window aswell :D So even people like who have been here for "only" 2 years can still learn :D
I bet it takes a while to write these! Hopefully is can help a lot of newbies!
I am trying to explain some of these things for some folks in different Discord servers to help them out :D
Awesome, good to hear it taught you a little!
Bite sized posts!? You realize this thing is like 2000 words don't you? :) Nice job! I think these are going to be really helpful for people who are new to the platform and are trying to figure everything out. I am glad you are still doing these. In the next year I hope to get the opportunity to point a lot of new faces to this series!
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
This was going through my mind while finishing the final edit.. yeah, sorry there's a lot to fit in. The tribes is not going to be easy to explain either, maybe it should be a 2-parter?
Might be a good idea :) There is a ton of stuff to fit in.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
!ENGAGE 15 - Thank you for meaningful engagement.
Made in Canva
The goal of this project is to "highlight Awesome Content, and growing the Hive ecosystem by rewarding it".
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
ENGAGEtokens.If you get keen to do another explaining simple shit to retards post I'd like to learn about the relationship between voting on Hive and Leo - how the accounts interact is as confusing as hell!
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Hmm, I was going to do some Tribe ones, but am not looking forward to it tbh, it's hard to get it all across. There is interaction between them, but it can be separated if you want it to be. Yes.. a future one then.
haha bite-sized
Your smallest post is 900 words....your smallest! :P
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
I know.., I get carried away and I would feel I am cheating if I delivered 200 word posts the said little and achieved nothing.
I know, same here. I could never do the D.Buzz type posts, I tend to write a lot, sometimes too much, in a post lol
Please forgive me for being a nosey prick, but why does your Leo wallet show only 57 Leo but have a value of $305?
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Es exelente lo que has esplayado, gracias por compartir, saludos.
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@omarrojas you should also read this and use it as a guide in the begining :'D
Thanks for the explanation. Great word.