There has been a lot of talk about abuse on the platform and the problems with curation these last years and it looks like Hardfork 21 will bring some drastic changes in order to "fix" this. I personally think it's a really dangerous gamble right now and that it might turn out into something of a Dolphin Killer for these reasons...
I've been on Steemit for nearly 2 years and have seen many come and go. Pretty much everyone who came for the wrong reasons (money) did not succeed and quickly left the platform. Most of the ones that I know who stayed I believe did so because they knew they could build up their account (and upvotes) if they put the effort into it without having to count on random whale upvotes regardless the topic they blog about. For many including myself, the small consistent upvotes are worth much more compared to having to hope for a whale to selflessly upvote you based on the content.
I really fear HF21 will wipe out all this hard work cutting down relatively small earnings most have now even more.
Upvoting Comments will be Impossible
The non-linear reward curve will make it impossible even for whales to thank readers who leave a meaningful comment with a small upvote. It's already hard now with the low price as a dolphin. Even though getting upvotes should not be an incentive to leave a comment. It's one of the things that makes Steemit great and generally a friendly placeDownvote Pool will trigger people like crazy
Anyone who ever got downvoted regardless of how rational they are will know that it triggers you like crazy giving an urge to retaliate. Unless it has to be delegated to abuse fighting initiatives It is probably a very bad idea to allow people to have some free daily downvotes.It becomes impossible to build on the Rules
Since the rules can change drastically, everyone that build something upon them likely will see their plan completely go to waste. The@upvoteshares project I'm running should be able to work around it and has a failsafe to refund every shareholder in case the program would come to an end. But many initiatives like SBI will have a hard time because curation changed so drastically. Also, it becomes impossible to build something on the new rules because they can completely change at any given time.
It's getting overly complicated
Steem already was a quite complicated platform and this trend is only getting worse. It took me a long time to understand how everything works but now I'm barely able to keep up.
I personally don't see many of the bad things about the platform changing. The ones that abuse will probably be the first to find a new meta on how to go about things. There is less reason to hold SP, especially as a dolphin as it won't really do all that much. I do believe it will likely make the front page more quality driven and attractive for potential readers which is good for steem inc because that will get them more revenue from the advertisements (I see that as one of the main reasons for this hard fork) It will likely also be way harder for new members to get something going.
I would much rather see a real communities feature on the platform. I hope they give up on the idea that it has to be all about "quality content" and more about connecting to like-minded people.
This was my first day on intermittend fasting and had no issue whatsoever. A 30 minute morning run along with a walk to the supermarket before having my first meal of the day. This followed by another hot yoga session got me over 16k steps on the day.