Last night, I did some research on one of the upcoming features of HardFork 28 (GitHub link), which will be released on the 19th of this month, the change in upvoting. Basically, there will no longer be any decay in the value of our upvotes. The value will remain consistent from the first upvote to the last, regardless of our upvote mana level.
Based on the information I gathered from the comments section, I’m adding a new explanation of the system. Credit to 
Imagine you have a bucket that you want to empty. The bucket holds 10 liters, and you’re using a 1-liter cup to scoop water out. The current voting system works in such a way that after each scoop, your cup shrinks by 2%. So the more scoops you take, the smaller your cup becomes — and the less water you actually remove from the bucket each time, even though you’re still filling your cup to 100%.
The upcoming change will make it so your cup no longer shrinks, meaning it will take exactly 10 scoops to empty the whole bucket.
In both cases, the bucket still holds 10 liters — the only difference is the number of actions you need (or are able) to take to empty it. Once the bucket is empty, you can’t get anything more out of it, meaning you can't vote and distribute rewards.
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I think this is one of the changes that aligns with what is mentioned during the core dev panel discussion, improving the quality of life here in Hive. This change simplifies one of the regular activities we do on the platform, and I believe it’s a great step forward as we continue to bring Hive to a wider audience.
The reason I say that is because, if you pay close attention to your upvoting, the value of your upvote decreases with each subsequent upvote, assuming you upvote one post after another. There’s currently a 2% decay in the value of each following upvote unless you allow your mana to replenish before upvoting again, which takes about two hours. Because of this, some curators follow a discipline of giving out upvotes equivalent to 10 full (100%) upvotes per day to ensure their mana fully regenerates every 24 hours.
Seasoned or veteran curators have already adapted to this discipline and probably don’t mind it anymore. However, for new Hive users or curators, this adds an extra layer of complexity to their experience. In the case of users with low Hive Power (HP), it even risks nullifying their curation efforts when their upvote value drops below the “Reward/Dust Threshold Level.” Just to refresh our memory, the dust threshold on Hive is $0.02, meaning if a post or comment’s reward is below that threshold, it will be nullified. Both the curator and the post author won’t receive any curation reward or post payout after seven days.
To demonstrate the effect of vote value decay and how it can lead to a user’s vote being nullified due to the reward or dust threshold, let me show you an example in table form. Let’s analyze the case of a Hive user with 3,500 HP (Hive Power), which is equivalent to $444 at the current Hive price of $0.126. In this example, we’ll assume the user gives a series of consecutive 100% upvotes without allowing their mana to replenish between votes.
I chose this curation behavior as an example because new users who only have 10–15 minutes a day to curate might prefer manual curation and end up doing quick, “trigger-happy” upvotes on their favorite authors’ posts—or perhaps upvoting all the comments on their own posts.
Here are the first 10 consecutive 100% upvotes for 3,500 HP assuming no regen between votes with ~2% decay per vote:
| # | Value (USD) |
|---|---|
| 1 | $0.02293 |
| 2 | $0.02247 |
| 3 | $0.02202 |
| 4 | $0.02158 |
| 5 | $0.02115 |
| 6 | $0.02072 |
| 7 | $0.02031 |
| 8 | $0.01990 |
| 9 | $0.01950 |
| 10 | $0.01911 |
As you can see, by the 8th upvote, the value has dropped below the threshold. If the post or comment doesn’t receive another upvote to raise its value, the reward for both the curator and the author will be nullified. This makes the experience frustrating for both parties, which is why the new system aims to resolve this issue.
In the new system, the value of a 3,500 HP upvote will remain the same at $0.02293. This means you will no longer feel constrained by the reward or dust threshold, and you can upvote with confidence, knowing exactly how much reward you’re distributing to a post or comment.
Overall, I think this change is a big improvement that makes curation simpler and more rewarding for everyone on Hive. It removes unnecessary complexity and encourages more engagement from both new and experienced users. With this update, we’re definitely moving closer to making Hive more user-friendly and accessible to the masses.
