Recently, I've followed quite a few discussions about the confusion surrounding the payout numbers. The core of the problem is that 1 SBD is currently valued way higher than 1 USD. In my mind, it's still worth 1 USD to me, so you can imagine my current happiness in what I think is a premium in selling SBD, and you won't see me whining when SBD returns to its intended value.

But about the number, this post by @dragosroua has a correct computation of the rewards once you've figured out what portion of the amount is going to the author. The one thing that leaves much to be desired is the substitution of what he called a STEEM Token Unit, or STU. I don't think this token makes it any clearer, but it seems to have helped some people.

Yes, there is something about vests, but ultimately the blockchain code is valuing your posts in STEEM. How it works is that it takes the ratio of the amount of vests on your post and divides it by the total vests, and then gives you that fraction of the reward pool, which is in STEEM. So no, the underlying value the blockchain assigns to a given post is not this made-up STU, it's actually in STEEM.

Okay, you might ask, but if that is true these numbers don't make any sense! Why are the rewards giving out so much SBD? Why doesn't the supposed 50/50 split of SBD/SP make any sense?

I'll tell you what you are missing:

The blockchain thinks 1 SBD ~ 1 USD.

And so does the whitepaper, and the blockchain code could care less about what the market values SBD at, because SBD is defined to be a token that can be redeemed for 1 USD worth of STEEM at market prices. So a debt token. Why should it care what the market thinks SBD is worth? The market is willing to pay more for this debt token, but you know what? It can't prop it up for long. At 6 USD per STEEM, we're printing SBD at 6 times the rate that we were before (when it was at 1 USD around 2 months ago). But I digress.

The blockchain thinks 1 SBD ~ 1 USD.

This means that if you were supposed to get 1 STEEM as SBD, once it computes the value of 1 STEEM = 6 USD (based on price feed), it's going to give you 6 SBD. Because again, the blockchain doesn't care what the market thinks about SBD. The blockchain is issuing 6 tokens that it thinks is worth 6 USD.

Summary of method

I'll give a summary of the referenced method. We are starting at the $ value that they show you next to your post, and what people are calling "STU"s.

Assume that 1 STEEM = 6 USD on price feed. And the website shows $144 as payout. (I wish).

Subtract out the curator portion (multiply by 3/4). So of $144, $108 goes to the author.
Apply 50/50 rule. $54 goes to SBD, and $54 goes to STEEM POWER.
The author will get 54 SBD.
Convert $54 using price feed (divide by 6), so that the author gets 9 STEEM POWER.

Result? If the website shows you $144, you will be getting 9 STEEM POWER and 54 SBD.

This does not account for votes that happen in the first 30 minutes that give the author more, but it roughly gets the right values.

As a quick note, this section used to be adjusted to first immediately do as much computation as possible in terms of STEEM, but it doesn't really make the point any clearer and the computation was longer for no reason. Thanks @geekorner for the suggestion.

Code walkthrough of the method

It comes from this line of code

d.pending_payout_value = asset( static_cast<uint64_t>(r2), pot.symbol );

A couple lines above this you'll see the logic where they take the ratio of vests and multiple by the total reward pot size.

This confused me a bit, because the pot appears to be in STEEM, but this line is what immediately converts the pot from STEEM to SBD (again, what it thinks an SBD is worth) using the price feed.

pot = my->_db.get_reward_fund( my->_db.get_comment( d.author, d.permlink ) ).reward_balance;
....
if( !hist.current_median_history.is_null() ) pot = pot * hist.current_median_history;

I won't go into more detail, but read around this section and you'll see the pieces I was talking about earlier, specifically the part where it takes your vests and computes the ratio of the pot that the post should be receiving. So the amount stored in pending_payout_value is what the blockchain thinks is in SBD worth or USD worth (same).

Browsing Utopian

Why did I write this post? Well, I got the idea that maybe the website should actually show the estimated SBD and SP they would be getting. Or maybe at the least mention the one rule I think everyone's missing:

The blockchain thinks 1 SBD ~ 1 USD.

Eh, maybe it won't clear things up at all, because this explanation really doesn't seem to settle well with folks for some reason.

At any rate, I wanted to see if this was at least suggested anywhere. Searched github's issue tracker for the repositories and Utopian, and did not find anything. Hum. Maybe I should suggest this as a separate item on Utopian.

I then found this suggestion and had a knee-jerk reaction that made me want to scream. There's also this post that was accidentally not posted from Utopian-IO.

I'm not sure why I didn't react earlier to the STU, but I guess at the time I thought it's still technically right. Just less elegant.

What is an STU then?

STU's aren't real, but if you really want, here you go:

An STU, or what's displayed in the website on payouts next to the $ sign, is what the STEEM blockchain believes an SBD should be worth. In other words, 1 STU = 1 SBD ~ 1 USD.

Okay, I'm sure you don't like that either. Here's another way:

1 STU = 1 USD worth of STEEM = (1 / STEEM feed price) STEEM. Which at a feed price of 6 USD, means 1 STU = 1/6 STEEM.

That should match with all methods that are currently calculating how much payout you are supposed to get. What do these two ways of thinking have in common?

The blockchain thinks 1 SBD ~ 1 USD.

Let me put it this way. I am the blockchain, and I've assigned $144 to your post. Of the $108 that's destined to go to you, I give you some of that in STEEM at market rates, so that's your 9 STEEM POWER. The rest I give you in terms of coupons worth 1 USD, which is SBD. There's your 54 SBD. As far as the website display is concerned, they are paying it out exactly how they believe it should be working.

Why do I say it's worth 1 USD? Because as the issuer, I (the blockchain) have an in-built mechanism that does that conversion exactly. You give me 1 SBD and I'll destroy it and give you back 1 USD worth of STEEM. (Steemit's website rightfully disables this option right now because you should be trading on the exchanges while SBD is over 1 USD).

Everyone else is being silly and complaining that it's not accurate because an SBD is worth 6 times more than it should be. If you all agree with me that this should be worth 1 USD (even though the exchanges aren't), nobody should be having any problems. Yeesh.

TL/DR

The blockchain thinks 1 SBD ~ USD, and so do I. Forget about the market rate of SBD, I'm getting great value in selling SBD. And if you see above, it will go back down to 1 USD eventually. So this all doesn't matter in the long run.

(and STU's aren't real)

But anyway, the amount of SBD and STEEM POWER you get is computed for you along these lines at steem.supply.