Immediately after HF 19 was activated, I started a 30 days writing challenge. The goal was to gauge the efforts versus rewards under this new distribution model. I also committed to upsteem at full power at least 3 posts per day. I did this for 27 days (life was a bit demanding this month) distributing, on average, $1.8/post. In total, $145.8 worth of Steem rewards were distributed during this challenge.
What Was The Real Impact Of HF 19?
I confess I had very big expectations in regard to the linear rewards. If you are new here, it's worth knowing that, before HF19 (June 20th, 2017) the distribution from the rewards pool was based on a squared algorithm, meaning, in short, there was a huge gap between minnows and whales. HF 19, code-named "Equality", addressed this by making the votes proportional with the voting power (no squared algorithm).
At the same time, HF 19 introduced a new feature: only 10 votes / day at full power were allowed before the voting power was to be depleted (needing around 2 days to recover completely).
These two changes, combined, created a very interesting paradigm.
1. Self-Voting Was The New Bible
Once people realized their vote is actually meaning something, they started to vote themselves like crazy. That was a very obvious effect of HF19, to such extent that the developers resorted to code hints in order limit this: one release of Condenser, the UI for Steemit, even unchecked the "Upvote post" checkbox which was, until then, checked by default. Some people were a bit baffled, until they realized they need to check that first, and everything returned to normal.
This trend continues now and it's not very conducive to interaction (hence, to growth). But from an economical point of view, it makes sense: there is a natural tendency to maximize profits, so if you can do that by upvoting yourself, if there aren't any strong ethical values there, you will probably do it.
2. Less Voting, More Commenting
In an effort to increase rewards, people started to comment more, hoping to gain more by voting. If you look at some accounts in steem.supply, you will see that some authors on Steemit are just commenting, generating serious revenue.
Unfortunately, this trend created a lot of spam, with meaningless, "follow for follow" comments, which are quite annoying. One way to get rid of these comments, as counterintuitive as it seems, is t just ignore them. They will pile up for a while, until those guys will realize nobody will vote them, and then they'll naturally migrate to other areas.
3. Alliances, Paving The Way For Communities
And that trend opens the way for what I call "alliances". I don't have yet a specific example, but I observed how people started to agglutinate, informally, of course, in what I call "alliances". I will comment on your post, I will upsteem and resteem and then I will see if you do the same. Some small "circles of trust" were created and I agree that my 30 days challenge was one of them. As people got confirmation they are going to be backed up, with votes, resteems, comments or just attention, they kept pushing.
I think "alliances" will soon transform into communities and I intend to be prepared when this will happen. Hence, steem.city.
4. Unexpected Trouble
In an ideal world, all experiments will run in an ideal environment. Alas, we don't live in an idea l world, so things happen. One of these things was the August 1st Bitcoin drama. For a couple of weeks there wasa lot fo turmoil in the crypto world, and Bitcoin plunged to $1800 (while Steem followed suit with $0.8). Luckily, SegWit seems t be locked in (for now, let's see what happens in 3 months) so the price recovered. This plunge certainly affected a few writers, who saw their rewards halving in a matter of days.
To add insult to injury, there was also some intricacy about the reward pool. In short, when HF19 hit, the reward pool wasn't completely drained, so the rewards were bigger than usual. But as new accounts joined in and people were interacting with the blockchain like crazy, the reward pool shrunk very fast, contributing to the decrease in the rewards. As far as I know, the rewards pool is stabilizing now.
The Conclusion?
All in all, I still think HF 19 was a very useful improvement of the Steem blockchain. Unfortunately, code cannot fix human nature, though, it can just make it more obvious.
And that was what happened with this hardfork.
So we're back to square number one, so to speak. There's no code staying in your way now, so just do your best: play nice with other people, give value first, be generous if you want to be treated generously, use sunscreen, don't drink and drive, don't drive and text, you know the drill.
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.
https://steemit.com/~witnesses
If you're new to Steemit, you may find these articles relevant (that's also part of my witness activity to support new members of the platform):
Brilliant and very well written post (imho)!
Upvoted + resteemed😄
Thanks, appreciated :)
I've been noticing a pattern since HF19 - the more I post the more my account value goes down.
I posted loads a few weeks ago an the price plummeted. (sorry everyone) So I stopped posting for a bit (while I ran 60kms and then recovered) and the price seems to be going back up.
So the solution seems simple - I just need to stop posting and everyone will profit from it.
So I suggest that everyone on the platform sends me 10 STEEM each day to prevent me from posting, and that way we will all do well. If I don't get 10 STEEM every day from everyone I'll go back to posting more content.
The price of STEEM will plummet again and we'll all be poor. Do you really want that? Of course not.
So you know the drill - pay up or suffer the consequences!
[Disclaimer: this post is a tongue-in-cheek joke, just in case you were wondering. I don't really control the STEEM price, I'm not really trying to blackmail you, I'm not really going to stop posting good content - ever.]
That was hilarious. It reminded me of the times when I was having a nice car and every time I was washing it, it started to rain (ruining it all the polish and stuff). Every single fucking time. I could almost predict the weather with that car...
I know!! I have a similar thing. If i wash the car all the birds in the neighbourhood suddenly turn up in the tree next to my car. It's like they just know, and are sitting there waiting for me to finish and walk inside.
It must be an ultrarunners thing... ;)
hehe maybe
Nevet boring here, that's for sure. Thanks for your balanced analyses.
Yeap, there's always something to write about :)
Very True, HF 19 was good improvement but now we need further more enhancements.
I can keep with it all I just trust the coders will do the fairest thing.
indeed, especially follow to follow trend.
Even tho you gonna get 1000k of those followers
they are all not gonna follow your stuff and show some activity on your posts...
if we want to vote but there will be a message pop out that no power left and no more voting can be done i guess that's why people saving their up votes.
Hello Dragos!
As soon as i finish to read this blog i notice your area where you are letting know your readers that they can vote for you as a witness. And guess what... i vote for you!
Keep up the good work and keep the interesting blogs coming!
I know the comment is a little bit off topic but i sow the link for the voting page after i read this blog so i decided to write you here.
Thank you, appreciated :)
This is a great write-up of what happened at Steemit since I joined, which was around HF19. Thanks!
I have noticed the many lame 'I follow you now you follow me' comments. I personally aim for engaged followers, not so much the highest number of followers. When you compare with building an email list, it becomes immediately apparent why. It's not about how many people you send your emails too, but how many of those people on your list actually open your email and engage with your concent, or click on a link if that's included.
I'm all for upvoting your own posts. As an author, you've put in hard work to create a post. Why not give yourself that first vote?
But...I'm against the whole idea of upvoting your own comments. I see it a lot, and it goes against what I feel Steemit stands for. When I see a self-upvoted comment (often only $0,01 upvote: come on, why would you ruin your reputation with me for a measly cent?!) I immediately feel like ignoring it. Why? Because it gives me the impression that you as a commenter don't actually care about my post, but only left a comment so you could then give yourself money.
You should only be able to upvote comments by other Steemians.
Resteemed.
That was my pull request 😊 But I didn't observe that people just started checking again, have you anything to back this up or is it speculation?
I noticed that they started to upsteem themselves just as often... No numbers, though.
Didn't know it was your pull request, congrats or your contributions :)
I've been doing the same thing as I did before the hardfork.
Keep daily posting and keep making some meaningful posts.
If anything the number of comments (although I have such a large amount of comments. I just love interacting with the great communities and authors here) I've been making has went down but that is most likely due to work commitments has eaten into my time here on steem.
The general consensus I think is that HF 19 was a really positive thing but it also led to the huge rise in numbers for steemit which has led to more spammers as well as more trolls. However, that is just one thing we will have to deal with as the platform persists to grow.
Good comment, mostly what I saw happen, as for the self upvotes I had to upvote myself because I was getting hardly any votes, once I upvoted myself, this was about 20 cents and is now at 10 cents, I would start getting a few votes, apparently people are remiss to vote on a post that has zero votes.
As for #3, I prefer that than having a whole community leave (golos I am looking at you). I hope this won't happen again.
Vote for witness @cryptohazard
great observations, well written... thanks for your steemit reports!
I definitely share your observation around "alliances"!
Thanks for the info. Upvoted.
Great information @dragosroua. I admit that i was very confused about it. Thanks for your effort and for posting this !
your doing better than me per blog but I don't upvote my votes unless it's a accident
Great discussion and yes I shared it!
Good Post.
I didn't know about this content, thanks for sharing.
Hey @dragosroua algorithms and patterns are studied by a lot of people but there are few who can interpret and explain the things in such lucid fashion and you are clearly one such person.
Greetings know, I am aulia. I know that I am a new member in steemit so I need your help and support, and hope you will help me
Thanks @dragosroua
https: //steemit.com/@auliaramadhn1
I need your help, to guide me so that I can become proficient in steemit. follow back me and vote me
thanks
@alberti